bhamg

A faulty Takata air bag inflator has killed another person, this time in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Honda said Tuesday night. The death comes about one month after a report on the Takata recalls shows that automakers have replaced only 43 percent of the faulty parts even though recalls have been under way for more than 15 years. The unidentified person is the 20th death worldwide attributed to the faulty inflators, which can explode with too much force and hurl shrapnel into car and truck cabins.

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The report, issued by an independent monitor who is keeping tabs on the recalls, also shows that auto companies are only about halfway toward a Dec. 31 goal of 100 percent replacement of older and more dangerous inflators. The slow completion rate comes even though NHTSA coordinated the recalls and phased them in two years ago. Before that, the automakers were obtaining parts and distributing them on their own. Normally automakers fix 75 percent of vehicles within 18 months after the recall is announced.

Completion rates vary wildly by automaker, according to NHTSA. Tesla was best at 78.6 percent, followed by Honda at 64.8 percent. Mercedes-Benz was the worst at 2.3 percent.

BLKROKT

Every one of these deaths should be pinned to Takata and their associated car manufacturers as a homicide. It’s a fuking disgrace that this bullsht continues.

Vladds

There are older and more dangerous takatas and newer and less dangerous ones? We have the newer ones then?Honestly, Mercedes could help with this by organizing an official conversion/retrofit to a W205 steering wheel. It will not happen of course.

Jasonoff

roadkillrob

skratch77

I got a letter from mb saying my car was under recal but nothing yet ready to get it fixed.

why don' they disable the airbags until they have the new parts for us?

let us sign a wavier acknowledging its disabled

zcct04

It may be more related to the age of the airbag, as they degrade over time. Not sure when Takata started using the unstable propellant in their inflators (late 90's?) or whether Honda was an early adopter, but almost all of the Honda deaths are from 2001 to 2003-vintage cars. (See list at https://www.cbsnews.com/news/20th-de...rted-by-honda/).

zcct04

Because the probability of the airbag saving your life is FAR higher than the odds of it hurting you. Twenty deaths over a decade is a tragedy, but airbags probably save more lives than that every day.

bhamg

What's unreal to me is that M-B has fixed about 16,400 cars out of the 711,000 they produced that are under recall. Given the lengthy time frame of ongoing repairs that number is simply inexplicable. I'd love to hear the BS spew forth when confronted about that. What are they thinking?

G_Money

I mean, you can't really force someone to bring their car in for a recall.

roadkillrob

It seems as if Mercedes doesnt have the parts so no one can get their car fixed, mine would be there tomorrow if they had the parts, I have had 2 BMW's done in the past year without issues as they had parts available.

roadkillrob

That is a good point it does seem to be older cars, although BMW recalled pretty much every model from 2001 and up also - my sons 2003 E46 got 2 airbags replaced - maybe the angle of the steering wheel or something is more pointed at your jugular than in others?

bhamg

But you can't bring it in w/o be notified that you can bring it in. Apparently not a single W204 C class of any model has been been repaired yet. There are 10-year old C's in hot, humid TX and LA that would seen to be approaching the high risk category if not there already. 2.3% just doesn't cut it. If nothing else having that figure out there now - it's the first time I've been made aware of it - seems if nothing else to be extraordinarily poor judgement from the PR standpoint. I just don't get it and I don't buy into it.

AMG3.2

Just to confirm unless something has changed -- FL steering wheel airbags have not bee recalled, correct?

G_Money

Which models of MB are affected? I know my old W211 was unaffected, but the Honda Accord I had at the time certainly was. I never saw W204s on the list (from Takata themselves). Maybe it was there and I didn't see it?

skratch77

I got a letter for my 2013 saying its an issue but no parts are available yet.

G_Money

Wait, is this about the steering column issue? They just sent out a notice about that like a month or 2 ago. Talking to an SA, they haven't been given the service bulletin or parts to fix it yet.

bhamg

Mercedes-Benz
2005-2014 Mercedes-Benz C-Class

AMG3.2

Well damn. A big reason I upgraded to the FL steering wheel was to prevent having a dangerous airbag... Fantastic.

Mort

I don't think it is about the airbag iteslf. It is the clock spring that can be defective. If the clock spring is defective the ground is compromised and the airbag can deploy from an electrostatic discharge. If the clock spring is defective you will get a driver side airbag warning message in the cluster. An inadvertent driver airbag deployment may cause risk of injury to the driver and might increase the risk of a potential crash.

ItalianJoe1

The 204's we've done, it's been the airbag on the passenger side. The 203 and 164 steering wheels are the main ones we've seen.

ItalianJoe1

That's the brand new one, not the takata recall.

There was also a recall on all early 204s for the srs module for a possible internal fault that could result in loss of airbags or accidental inflation. We still replace them from time to time.

MBNRG

Hi Joe, really appreciate your Tech info on this forum!
Myself and others have a 2012 FL C63 (the earliest Facelift in the US, Europe it was 2011), but when checking official MB website for Recalls via VIN, only the Passenger Airbag is a Takata recall.
No mention of the Driver's side Airbag. No mention of a Driver's side faulty grounding/clockspring.
Are we missing a recall notice for this Driver's Airbag for the 2012 FL in US?

ItalianJoe1

It's very possible the drivers airbag in the 204 is not of the affected design, I don't know. I have never seen one with it listed. On the VMI, if the car will be recalled eventually, it shows "pending" on the recall status. This applies to even very new cars that are still using the affected inflators, some 205 and 213 chassis cars will have airbag recalls issued down the road for replacement. I've never seen this on the driver side of a 204, only the passenger one.

The grounding thing i've also only seen on the 205/117/156 chassis cars, not on the 204.

ItalianJoe1

Here it is, i see it affects more cars than I realized. This is a very new recall, we don't even have the parts yet.