Airbags: 160,000 Honda drivers still in danger

More than 160,000 Honda Australia customers continue to drive cars fitted with potentially lethal Takata airbag inflators despite up to six attempts to notify them of the danger they are in.

Honda Australia has now become so desperate to track some of these people down it has hired a specialist company to do the job for it.

“We are just asking for co-operation getting the word out,” frustrated Honda Australia director Stephen Collins told motoring.com.au.

“We need to get all these fixed and our aim is to get 100 per cent fixed which we know is a pretty difficult target.

“I personally have written to maybe 500 or 600 customers who have had that many [five or six] letters, so we just have to keep chipping away.

“We have had customers telling us that no-one sits in the passenger seat of their car so they won’t come in and get the airbag replaced.”

The Takata inflator is the subject of the automotive industry’s largest global recall. Around 16 people have died and 180 injured after they ruptured in accidents and propelled metal fragments towards the driver and passenger.

In Australia, the recall also affects Toyota, Mazda, Nissan, Subaru, Mitsubishi, Jeep, Chrysler, Dodge, BMW and Ferrari, which means many hundreds of thousands of Australians are still at risk.

For the full list of individual models affected click here.

The first known issue in Australia occurred in Darwin on April 24 when a 21-year-old woman was involved in a crash in her Toyota RAV4 and suffered serious head injuries.

“We’ve got 630,000-odd inflators that need replacing in around 430,000 cars and we are just over 60 per cent through the job,” said Collins.

“At the highpoint, we were doing just over 10,000 per week and now we are down to about 5000 per week we are fixing.

“We have sent multiple letters to some people, we have a call centre with 30 people in it calling people.”

Collins acknowledged the difficulties of getting the message fully out to Honda drivers affected by the recall.

For instance, tracking older vehicles down that have passed through multiple owners and dropped out of the Honda system is a specific challenge.

“We have an investigation company tracking people down in the really older cars that are at higher risk,” Collins explained. “It’s a little bit like a debt collection company to chase people down.

“We also offer 32 different languages in our call centre because a fair percentage of our customers are not necessarily English speaking.

“We are trying all the mechanisms in our power to get the message out to these people.”

Collins confirmed Honda was even working with wrecking yards to remove inflators from Hondas that might be salvaged for repairs.

One Honda Civic driver in Las Vegas suffered an injury recently from just such a scenario.

“One of our initiatives is working with all the wreckers and going out and taking all the inflators out of cars so we have them and they are not sold,” he explained.

“We have a team in our office that has been working to get them out of circulation. I am not sure we have them all out of circulation yet.”

If you own a Honda and want further information on the Takata recall, call 1800 789 839 9:00am to 5:00pm weekdays.