How a dangerous Takata air bag made its way into a used car
How a dangerous Takata air bag made its way into a used car
Aug. 22, 2017
DETROIT (AP) – A dangerous Takata air bag should have been recalled before going from a wrecked car to a salvage yard, eventually ending up in a two thousand two Honda Accord and almost killing a Las Vegas woman, a lawsuit alleges.
The Accord had been stationary up and sold in March of two thousand sixteen to the family of Karina Dorado, a 19-year-old woman whose trachea was punctured by shrapnel spewed by the faulty air bag. The family claims it was never informed that the air bag was subject to a recall.
How that air bag got into the Accord is detailed in the lawsuit filed Friday in Nevada. It highlights the sometimes suspect world of auto parts recycling and shows how dangerous recalled parts can find their way into used cars that are sold to unaware buyers.
It’s unclear just how many faulty Takata inflators are being used in refurbished vehicles, but Honda, once Takata’s largest customer, says it has bought 75,000 of them from salvage yards in the past two years to keep them off the road.
“It’s an unknown, which is kind of appalling from a consumer perspective,” says Michael Brooks, chief counsel for the Center for Auto Safety, a nonprofit safety advocacy group founded by Ralph Nader. “There’s no good way to track these things.”
Takata uses ammonium nitrate to create a petite explosion that inflates air bags in a crash. But the volatile chemical can deteriorate over time when exposed to warmth and humidity and burn too quick, deepthroating apart a metal inflator canister. The inflators are responsible for up to nineteen deaths worldwide and more than one hundred eighty injures. They have sparked the largest auto recall in U.S. history involving almost seventy million inflators.
Selling a recalled auto part is illegal under a two thousand federal law that is seldom enforced. But the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the federal government’s road safety agency, confirmed to The Associated Press that it’s investigating the Dorado case. “The agency has the authority to enforce civil penalties on businesses that do not serve,” a spokeswoman said in a statement.
The lawsuit filed by Dorado alleges that in June of 2015, the salvage yard, Nevada Pic-a-Part of Henderson, Nevada, bought a two thousand one Accord to sell off the parts. A few months before that, Havanna Corp. and D&A Bodyworks LLC, two related Las Vegas companies, purchased a two thousand two Accord that was involved in a crash in Arizona and deemed a total loss by insurance company Liberty Mutual Group. The two companies, which specialize in repairing bruised vehicles, bought the car at a salvage vehicle auction in Phoenix, the lawsuit said.
From June to September of 2015, Pic-a-Part sold the driver’s air bag assembly from the two thousand one Accord to Havanna or D&A Bodyworks, even however the part had been recalled in May of 2015, the lawsuit alleges. According to Honda, the air bag was among the most dangerous made by Takata, with tests displaying almost a fifty percent chance of the inflator rupturing in a crash.
Havanna and D&A then installed the air bag in the two thousand two Accord they bought from Liberty Mutual, the lawsuit said. In March of 2016, Havana sold the refurbished Accord to Dorado’s father, Jose Dorado-Carillo, but the lawsuit alleges it failed to warn him that air bag had been recalled.
A year later, Dorado was driving home after work when her Accord was hit by another car and the air bags inflated. She spent several days in a trauma center. Her voice has switched, she has a scar, and she still faces the prospect of more surgeries, says one of her attorneys, Billie-Marie Morrison.
Morrison said Nevada Pic-a-Part had a legal duty to see if the two thousand one Accord had been recalled and to not sell recalled parts. “They should be held responsible for this,” she said. “I can’t imagine how many other cars have recalled air bags and recalled brakes and recalled parts.”
The lawsuit seeks damages of more than $50,000 each from Pic-a-Part, Havanna and D&A Bodyworks, as well as the driver of the car that hit Dorado and a company that investigated the two thousand two Accord.
A manager for Pic-a-Part said he had not seen the lawsuit and couldn’t comment. At Havanna, a man who answered the phone declined comment before suspending up. D&A Bodyworks’ phone number was not in service.
Associated Press Writer Ken Ritter contributed to this report from Las Vegas.