There are nearly two dozen brands of vehicles in the U.S. that are involved in the massive airbag recall. The defective airbag comes from Japanese supplier, Takata.
The issue involving the defective inflator device is that some devices may burst improperly in the event of a crash and may shoot metal fragments to passengers of the vehicle. There are about 34 million vehicles that will be affected in the United States, and there were already seven million that have been recalled worldwide.
According to the Car and Driver post, when Takata announced the defect in April 2013, only six were involved. But the Toyota recall last June, it prompted more automakers to issue identical recalls. Regional recalls were enforced in high-humidity areas including Hawaii, Florida, and the U.S. Virgin Islands to gather removed devices and send them to Takata for review.
On Oct. 20, another major recall was issued and expanded to the affected vehicles across several brands. Starting Oct. 25, Toyota had said that they will begin to replace defective passenger-side inflators.
While there have been no reported injuries or deaths involving Toyota vehicles, it was reported by the New York Times in September that there are at least a total of 139 reported injuries across all automakers. Honda vehicles have been reported to have at least two deaths and 30 injuries.
Honda and Takata allegedly have known the defective inflators since 2004 but failed to notify NHTSA in previous recall that the faulty airbags had actually ruptured and actually resulted to injuries and deaths.
Toyota is recalling 844,277 cars to take out airbag devices which maybe faulty and can shoot shrapnel to the face of the passenger.
In another post of Car and Driver, it is estimated that there are about 3.6 million cars with faulty airbag inflators which includes brands such as Nissan, Mazda, Honda, BMW, and Pontiac.
Toyota hasn't determined yet a repair schedule but would notify first owners in the country with "consistently high humidity conditions."
