There are still millions of deadly Takata airbags in cars across the world, all creeping slowly towards catastrophic failure. In Your Face is an insider’s account of the largest automotive recall in history and the terrible secrets that threaten us today.
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Takata airbags can kill. They are found in nearly every make of car and truck across the world. The largest recall in history has been raging since 2008, but governments and automakers have failed to repair tens of millions of the deadly airbags that are only becoming more dangerous with time. They are right now in the face of your friends and family.
Takata launched their fateful airbag inflators in the summer of 2000. At their heart was a gas-generating chemical (PSAN) that would offer Takata’s customers the smallest and lightest airbags on the market. Smarter engineers passed on PSAN, wary of its sensitivity to moisture, but Takata couldn’t resist. It was a ghastly mistake that has put tens of millions of people at risk today, and far into the future.
In 2009, a recent high school graduate named Ashley Parham became the first victim of a Takata airbag, when she was killed in a minor accident she should have walked away from. Her inflator’s propellant had withered in the presence of heat and moisture, causing the device’s internal pressure to soar, rupturing its steel casing, and spewing a deadly piece of shrapnel that severed her carotid artery. Twenty-seven deaths have followed, along with more than four hundred gruesome injuries, and there is no end in sight.
Our purpose is not just to get these deadly airbags off the road faster, but also to indict another 100 million the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) ‘believes are safe.’ They have the same weaknesses – the same Achilles tendon – and unless something is done that moves the finish line entirely, many more innocent lives will be ruined.
Regulatory agencies and automakers around the globe are desperately clinging to the ‘belief’ that 100 million more Takata inflators on our roads are safe because they contain a drying agent, or desiccant. 56 million of those are in the U.S. and at the end of 2019, NHTSA was to make the critical call on their fate. They didn’t. Instead, the agency waited until May 2020, at the height of a global pandemic, to announce they were siding with a consortium of automakers to leave Takata’s ticking time bombs in our faces forever. We intend just the opposite – to rid the world of every last one of them. It is what fuels us. Our message is clear: Takata didn’t design or manufacture safe inflators and was a fraudulent company that too often put profit over the protection of their customers.
Steven Cliff was confirmed as the new NHTSA Administrator on May 26, 2022, 5 years and 127 days after our last confirmed Administrator, Mark Rosekind, resigned at the end of the Obama Administration. Let’s hope we never go that long again without strong leadership at the helm of the Agency.
As former employees of Takata Corporation and co-authors of the upcoming book In Your Face: An Insider’s Explosive Account of the Takata Airbag Scandal, we have the greatest insight into the wrongdoings of Takata and the real scope of the crisis. If you are a member of the media, government, or consumer advocacy group and would like to schedule an interview or discuss a related matter, please leave us a message so we can get back to you as soon as possible.
