DETROIT (AP) – A South Carolina driver is the last person killed by an exploding Takata airbag inflator.
Honda said on Wednesday that a faulty driver’s airbag had exploded in a crash with a 2002 Honda Accord in Lancaster County, South Carolina. The company would not provide details of the January 9 crash near Charlotte, North Carolina, nor would it identify the person who was killed.
Honda officials and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration inspected the car and airbag components on Wednesday and determined that the inflator had ruptured, the company said. Deaths are 19th in the US since 2009 and 28th worldwide caused by the faulty inflators.
Takata used volatile ammonium nitrate to cause a small explosion to inflate airbags in a crash. But the chemical can become more volatile over time when exposed to moisture in the air. The explosion could blow up a metal canister and throw shrapnel into the passenger compartment.
The problem triggered the largest string of automatic recalls in US history, with at least 63 million inflators recalled. The US government says more than 11.1 million had not been repaired last year. Worldwide, about 100 million inflators have been recalled.
Most deaths have occurred in the US, as well as Australia and Malaysia.
Honda said it has shared all of the information it has with the NHTSA and will continue to cooperate with the latest investigation.
The company said the Accord was recalled in the April 2011 crash in South Carolina. As of June 2011, the company has made more than 100 attempts to reach car owners, including communications by mail, phone calls, emails and even in-person visits, the statement said.
“Our records show that the withdrawal repair was never completed,” the statement said.
The company said the killed driver was not the registered owner of the Accord and Honda does not know if the driver was aware of the unrepaired recall.
The car has changed hands several times, most recently in October 2020, Honda spokesman Chris Martin said. The company sent the current owner a recall notice on November 17, 2020, Martin said.
Honda says it has plenty of replacement inflators in stock, and it urges people to perform recall repairs, especially on older models.
Drivers can check if their car has been recalled by going to https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls and entering their 17-digit vehicle identification number.
The recalls bankrupted Japan’s Takata and brought criminal charges against the company. It was eventually bought by a Chinese auto parts supplier.