Lessons From the Takata Airbag Disaster

The auto industry will remember 2014 as the year it caught recall-itis. Automakers are in a full-blown panic, recalling tens of millions of vehicles for safety-related fixes. So what changed? It’s not as if quality of their cars suddenly plummeted. No, they now face a political climate that leaves them vulnerable to massive fines and mega-lawsuits.

The industry shoulders a lot of the blame for this situation. Automakers and suppliers have been slow to react to problems in the field. And in some cases it looks as if they deliberately tried to cover up these problems. Anytime a big corporation puts the public’s safety at risk, you can be sure some politicians are going to make this their cause celebre and go into full attack mode.

I don’t have a problem with that. This is how our system of checks and balances is supposed to work. The problem is when politicians and regulators, no matter how well intentioned, demand action and solutions even if no one knows what to do.

The Takata case offers two vivid examples. The airbag manufacturer has some sort of defect that can cause its airbags to deploy with excessive force, shooting metal fragments into the driver’s or passenger’s body, badly injuring them or, in some cases, even killing them. It’s a chilling problem that prompted NHTSA to order a national recall. That sounds prudent, except that Takata cannot ramp up replacement parts fast enough to meet a national recall anytime soon. It says this could take up to two years.

Instead, Takata wants to concentrate on replacing airbags in cars located in hot and humid climates, which is where their airbags are most prone to misfire. That makes sense, except to NHTSA, which wants to force the company into a national recall.

Keep in mind there only are three airbag companies in the world. And it’s not as if the other two can step in to fill the void. There are significant design and technology differences in their airbags. To me, this just shows how little our elected officials and regulators understand manufacturing. They seem to think that all it takes is the flick of a switch.

Wait, it gets worse. So far, no one has figured out the root cause of Takata’s airbag failures. And as anyone involved in manufacturing knows, if you can’t identify the root cause, you can’t fix the problem so that it never occurs again. The problem is so difficult that 10 automakers have banded together to brainstorm and share notes. This is unprecedented. We’ve never seen this type of cooperation to solve a problem. Even so, none of the top experts from manufacturers including General Motors, Ford, FCA, Mazda, BMW, Nissan, Mitsubishi and Subaru, have been able to identify the root cause.

Part of the reason is these failures are extraordinarily rare. Takata says there are only 0.000006 failures per airbag deployment. Could it be possible we’ll never find that root cause?

To me, there are two important lessons from this episode. Automakers and suppliers must notify NHTSA about a problem, any problem, immediately. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know exactly what the issue is or what is causing it, just tell the authorities. Anything less will leave you open to accusations of a cover-up. And then you’ll really be in trouble.

Second, our politicians and regulators need to adopt a much more cooperative approach to solving problems with the auto industry. That doesn’t mean they have to go easy on them, but making demands for recalls that can’t be met is not going to protect public safety. It smacks of political grandstanding.

In the meantime, motorists need to be advised to install an on-off switch that can disable the questionable airbags. NHTSA actually has a protocol you have to follow to do this legally. Here’s the link: http://www.safercar.gov/Vehicle+Shoppers/Air+Bags/ON-OFF+Switch+Requests. Tell your friends. As long as you wear a seatbelt you’ll actually be quite well protected until a good airbag replacement becomes available.

 John McElroy is editorial director of Blue Sky Productions and producer of the “Autoline” PBS television show and “Autoline Daily,” the online video newscast.