Mazda has issued a recall order for almost 540,000 older vehicles and pickup trucks located in the United States and in Canada, representing the latest addition to the expanding list of cars being recalled by automobile manufacturers for the defective airbags of Japanese supplier Takata.
The defective airbags by Takata have the possibility of exploding upon inflation due to too much force caused by the inflator, which would send metal shrapnels from the airbag system's components into the cabin of the car. This means that the airbag could possibly kill the driver and passengers of the vehicle, instead of saving them.
According to documents that the Japan-based Mazda sent to safety regulators in the United States and Canada, the recall order involves almost 503,000 cars, to replace the airbags in the driver's side, and 35,000 small pickup trucks, to replace the airbags in the passenger's side.
The car models that are affected by the recall order to replace the possibly fatal Takata airbags are the Mazda 6, with model years 2003 to 2008, the MazdaSpeed 6, with model years 2006 and 2007, and the RX-8, with model years 2004 to 2008. The pickup trucks involved in the recall order, on the other hand, are the B-Series pickup trucks, with model years 2004 to 2006.
A portion of the vehicles involved in the recall order have already been part of a previously issued recall order. In 2014, Mazda issued a recall order for about 330,000 cars in the United States to fix the same problem.
The exploding inflators of the Takata airbags have already claimed the lives of six people and have injured over 100, though the numbers are only from the cases that have been reported.
In May, the United States government and Takata have agreed to issue a massive recall involving 34 million vehicles across the United States, which is the largest and also the most complicated vehicle safety recall in the history of the automobile industry.
The recall is expected to take some years to complete, but the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said that it is working as fast as it can to determine the specific vehicles that will require to be brought back to dealers to have the faulty airbags replaced.
However, previous reports revealed that car owners that are looking to have their vehicles checked could have to wait for months to set up an appointment alone, further increasing the anxiety of consumers that use their vehicles to move around daily.
Photo: RL GNZLZ | Flickr
