8 ON YOUR SIDE – CONSUMER ALERT: Nissan asks some owners not to drive vehicles until airbags are repaired

By TOM KRISHER, AP Auto Writer

8 ON YOUR SIDE – CONSUMER ALERT: Nissan is urging owners of approximately 84,000 vehicles to stop driving them because of an increased risk of Takata airbag inflators exploding and releasing dangerous metal fragments.

“Due to the age of vehicles equipped with defective Takata airbag inflators, there is an increased risk that the inflator could explode when the airbag deploys, ejecting sharp metal fragments that could cause serious injury or death,” Nissan said in a statement.

Nissan said the “do not drive” warning applies to certain 2002 through 2006 Sentra subcompact cars, as well as some 2002 through 2004 Pathfinder SUVs and 2002 and 2003 Infiniti QX4 SUVs. Owners can find out if their vehicle is affected by going to nissanusa.com/takata-airbag-recall or infinitiusa.com/takata-airbag-recall and entering their 17-digit vehicle identification number.

One person in a Nissan was killed by an exploding passenger inflator and up to 58 people have been injured since 2015.

The company recommends that owners contact their dealer to schedule a free inflators replacement. Nissan also offers free towing to dealers, and mobile services and loaner vehicles are available at some locations.

“Even minor crashes can result in Takata airbags exploding, which can be fatal or cause life-changing, gruesome injuries,” the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a statement. “Older model vehicles put their occupants at greater risk because the age of the airbag is one of the contributing factors.”

Nissan originally recalled 736,422 of these vehicles in 2020 to replace the Takata inflators. The company said that around 84,000 vehicles had not yet been repaired and were probably still in use.

Nissan said it had made numerous attempts to reach owners of unrepaired Takata inflators.

The death was reported to the NHTSA in 2018, the company said. According to Nissan, the person killed was in a 2006 Sentra.

The death is one of 27 in the U.S. caused by faulty inflators that used volatile ammonium nitrate to create a small explosion and inflate the airbags during a crash. The chemical can degrade over time when exposed to high temperatures and humidity. It can explode with too much force, blowing apart a metal container and spewing shrapnel. More than 400 people in the U.S. have been injured.

At least 35 people worldwide have died from Takata gas generators in Malaysia, Australia and the USA.

The risk of a dangerous malfunction led to the largest series of car recalls in US history. At least 67 million Takata inflators were affected. The US government says many of them were not repaired. Around 100 million inflators were recalled worldwide. The exploding airbags drove Takata into bankruptcy.

Honda, Ford, BMW, Toyota, Stellantis and Mazda have issued similar “do not drive” warnings for some of their vehicles equipped with Takata inflators.

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