WASHINGTON: Thousands of motorists may be driving cars and trucks installed with dangerous counterfeit airbags, and they should have them replaced at their own expense, the Obama administration warned Wednesday.
Most at risk are motorists who have had their airbags replaced over the past three years by a repair shop other than a new car dealership, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration officials said.
Only 0.1 percent of the U.S. vehicle fleet — about 250,000 cars on the road — are makes and models for which counterfeit airbags are known to be available, NHTSA said. Auto industry officials briefed by the agency said they were told that tens of thousands of car owners may be driving vehicles with counterfeit airbags.
In government tests last month of 11 counterfeit bags, 10 didn’t inflate or failed to inflate properly. In one test, a counterfeit bag shot flames and shards of metal shrapnel at a crash dummy instead of inflating, said NHTSA Administrator David Strickland, who showed a video of the test at a news conference.
“It is an extreme safety risk,” he said.
NHTSA is asking car owners to check a government website, www.Safercar.gov, for information on how to contact auto manufacturer call centers to learn if their vehicle model is among those for which counterfeit airbags are known to have been made.
No deaths or injuries have been tied to the counterfeit bags, NHTSA said. But it’s unclear whether police accident investigators would be able to identify a counterfeit bag from a genuine one, industry officials said.
About 1.5 million airbags are deployed each year in police-reported tow-away crashes, Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety, said.
NHTSA has compiled a list of dozens of vehicle makes and models for which counterfeit airbags may be available, but the agency cautioned that the full scope of the problem isn’t clear yet and the list is expected to “evolve over time.”