Another person has been killed by an exploding Takata airbag inflator, bringing the worldwide death toll to at least 26. The latest death occurred on August 20 in Mesa, Arizona, in the crash of a 2002 Honda Civic. It was the 17th death reported in the United States. Others have been reported in Malaysia and Australia.
Honda said in a statement that it inspected the Civic in the Mesa crash, along with the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and determined that the inflators in both the driver and passenger airbags had ruptured. Honda said the Civic was recalled in December 2011 for the driver's side inflator and in November of 2014 for the passenger side. The company said it mailed more than 15 notices to the owners over eight years, but the free repairs were never done. The company said it also made numerous phone calls and even visited the current registered owner's home and left recall information.
The driver who was killed was not the registered owner of the car. The problem caused the largest series of auto recalls in US history, with at least 63 million inflators recalled. The US government says that as of September, more than 11.1 million had not been fixed.
Source: USA TODAY
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