Yet another recall campaign........

[sapphireblack]

There’s been another incident in France where a female driving a 2014 Citröen ‘kissed’ the crash barrier and triggered the steering wheel airbag. Sadly she suffered a fatal brain injury due to shrapnel in her head. The owner had not received a recall letter.

I was just re-reading this and can't imagine the anguish this would bring to the victims family. If you are unfortunate enough to die in a vehicle accident, that's bad enough. But to learn that something supposed to increase survival odds actually kills you is truly horrific

[Leslie]

That is tragic , you wont how.many faulty airbags are out there plus nobody knows how they are aging due to vert different operating conditions.

[X5Sport]

Seems the French are taking things seriously. ‘Stop Drive’ instruction issued to all owners of Takata equipped cars. Another 2.5 million need new airbags or a check done. How you know whether your car has Takata I don’t know, but I guess their products were used across many manufacturers and models. We’ve had steering and dash airbags replaced on the 3er and X6.

That’s a global total of 100 Million vehicles!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly24w3z6p7o

[sapphireblack]

Those are scary numbers and taking it very seriously is good to read. When i mentioned to some friends after buying the E70, that it too had a safety recall (they remembered the E71 had this issue) they were initially surprised but one said, oh just get on and enjoy the car., just like the poor sods who have died through no fault of there own. Its sad but anger inducing too.

With Takata long since wound up, who gets the bill for this monumental task? And who settles compensation claims? I'd hate to think what this will ultimately lead to. I imagine most car makers will weather the storm, but if it costs them, its jo-public who invariably pays the price in the end.

[Leslie]

The chances of all them getting airbags in a reasonable time frame must be very low given how many are needed. We are considering a cheap DS3 for my daughter when she passes her test so it will be something to look out for .
Who pays the bill ? ultimately its the taxpayer as always The amount of money involved must be huge and would cripple the car manufacturer and its been left as long as it has to get as many scrapped and out of the loop due to old age and accidents as possible to bring costs down .
We have to remember too without those airbags fitted many more lives would have been lost but we are back to what the manufacturers tried at the start where they argued airbags had an expiry date and should be replaced after so many years knowing full well it would scrap the car which was their intended aim as they were lasting too long and not creating demand for new cars.

[sapphireblack]

Thats a somewhat cynical approach, but is one i couldn't argue with.

[X5Sport]

In our case BMW has to pay as the manufacturer has gone bust. In 2024 there were still about 1.7M UK vehicles still to be done. As it’s a ‘voluntary’ recall rather than a mandatory one (DVSA - how was that allowed?), manufacturers don’t have to chase non-respondents to letters. Most do, but it seems there’s a certain level of apathy amongst owners so after a while the manufacturer can say that they did try, but no response so not their problem any longer. Understandable but…

The current view as that as the UK has a cooler climate (erm, our second heatwave of the year is coming any day) the risk is lower than say Southern Europe.

Possibly a full page ad in some newspapers (I expect UK Gov will have to pay) with a clear “Your life may depend upon this….” message might work but even then might still not be enough.