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Honda Expands Airbag Injury Recall to Include 378,000 More Cars

It seems Toyota has some friendly competition in its current international safety crisis. Japanese automaker Honda Motor Company is expanding its recall for airbag issues by over than 378,000 more cars.

As of now, the recall includes 822,000 vehicles.  These include 2001 and 2002 Accords, Odyssey minivans, Civic, CRVs and some 2002 Acura TL sedans.  The defect involves airbags that can deploy with excessive pressure, causing serious airbag injuries to the driver.  The company has announced that it will fix the problem by replacing the driver’s side airbag inflator in the affected cars. The company has confirmed that it has received reports of at least 12 incidents, involving such forceful deployment. Eleven of these resulted in injuries to the driver, and one ended in death.

That death involved a high school student from Oklahoma City. The victim had crashed her car just behind her school. When the airbag deployed, pieces of metal burst through the airbag mechanism. These shards pierced through the victim’s neck, causing her fatal injuries. Her death was ruled an accident caused by a sharp injury to the neck. She also had a penetrating injury on the right side of her chest.

In August, her family filed a lawsuit in Oklahoma against Honda Motor Company, the car that manufactures the Honda Accord’s seatbelt and airbag system, and a number of other Honda subsidiaries.

Honda’s announcement comes just as its Japanese rival Toyota is reeling under the effect of an international recall that has so far run into the billions of cars, recalled in the United States and around the globe. Toyota’s problems stem from a jammed accelerator pedal that can stick when the car is moving suddenly and without warning, causing the car to accelerate to high speeds. Complaints of sudden acceleration have been trickling in since 2002, when the company introduced Electronic Throttle Control Systems in its automobiles. This very blog has discussed these reports of unintended acceleration that seemed at the time to receive little media attention, and as we now know, barely bothered Toyota executives either.

Then in August last year, an accident in California made headlines around the world. The crash that killed off duty California Highway Patrol officer Mark Saylor and three other members of his family, would have been just another accident, except for 911 voice recordings made from the car that confirmed that it was accelerating to high speeds, and the driver wasn’t able to slow it down. Soon after followed an apology by Toyota’s chief Akio Toyoda, and a massive recall of vehicles that since has been expanded to include more vehicles. Production and sales of eight of the models involved in the acceleration problem have been halted. Toyota also dispatched repairs to be performed at its dealerships across the country.

The company has come off as being in turn, clueless, uncaring, uninvolved and now, secretive and conspiring to conceal information on the safety problems from federal regulators, its customers and product liability lawyers in California.

The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of motor vehicle defects, airbag failures, and product liability. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.

The Reeves Law Group is not acting as legal counsel for any party in the matters discussed in this posting.

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