Quote:
Humble Newcomer said:

I just learned -
Takata had a recall during the 80s Asian automotive invasion on seatbelts, called by US national highway safety board the second largest recall in US at that time, 8.5 million Honda's Subarus daihatsu, etc had faulty seat belts made of abs plastic, after a while ultraviolet light made it brittle and break and seat belts would fail during accidents.
Honda actually got fined 50k as well because authorities believe they knew for 5years and said nothing.
Now they make 20% of airbags in today's cars, the inflator devices made in their Mexican plant had "improperly stored chemicals" and faulty pyrotechnic devices, In may 2013 a recall of 3.6 million vehicles started but due to Takatas poor record keeping it was impossible to determine all affected models so that prompted a second recall in June 2013 and then in June 2014, BMW and 9 other automakers announced they were recalling 3 million additional cars due to Takatas parts, and now as of may 2015 it's the largest recall in history and it's still ongoing I guess.
40 million recalled units because apparently they send shrapnel flying through the car, a Malaysian woman had a wreck at 30/kmh which is like 22mph probably, would have been just fine with no airbags but it deployed which should have been ok but when it did it sent a piece of shrapnel through her neck killing her. And her baby was delivered post mortem and died a few days later, I think that was a big nail in their coffin.
I didn't even know.
But how is it illegal to remove Takatas airbags? There's a massive recall.
Oh, you mean remove airbags period.
...is that illegal? I don't think it is. Ive known people who couldn't afford replacement after deployment and just didn't replace the steering wheel airbag. I don't recall ever being Instructed to fail a vehicle on state inspection for a deployed or missing airbag either. I could be wrong.
I'll fail you for a busted windshield but i won't fail a vehicle with no windshield at all. The law cares only about sight obstructions, not if you get hit by bugs while driving.
Not illegal but Not legal as in violations of codes (several codes).
It is illegal for a motor vehicle inspector to to pass a vehicles safety inspection with non-working airbags, many area's you can also get a traffic violation ticket for non functional airbags. Of coarse most times the inspector never actually checks anything more then the computer codes and a visual of the inside panels without actually removing them.
When all the airbag recalls started many people were just removing the fuse to the airbag systems, then some goberment agency put out a press release reminding people that was not legal. So the goberment mandates the people pay huge money for unsafe airbags, Yea its all about safty.
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