The massive recall of vehicles with airbags installed by the Japanese firm Takata affects millions of vehicles still on the road today. For an updated list of those vehicles, read our previous blog post, Massive Takata Airbag Recall.
The defective airbags have a component that can fragment when the safety feature deploys, sending shards of metal, or “shrapnel”, flying into the cabin. So far, five deaths have been linked to the defect, along with dozens of injuries.
Recently, new information has emerged that Takata may have known about this dangerous defect and covered it up.
On Thursday (11/13/14), Takata denied a report that it carried out a secret test, and covered up the results, on a faulty airbag inflator linked to as many as five driver deaths. Takata acknowledged that it did tests a decade ago, but said that they were unrelated to the airbag currently at issue.
“Our firm did not carry out such test (on inflators) in 2004, and we absolutely did not cover-up test results, as reported in the story,” the firm said in a statement, referring to a report last week by the New York Times.
