As nearly 34 million vehicles in the United States go under recall over Takata’s airbag issues, Canada remains a low priority due to cooler climes.
Numerous injuries and six deaths involving the supplier’s airbags occurred in warmer, humid climates, affecting the ammonium nitrate composition — used to aid in detonation during airbag deployment — to catastrophic effect, USA Today reports.
Most of the recalls prior to Tuesday’s nationwide action focused on a handful of states whose climate met the conditions needed for failure. However, the new recall places a considerable strain on Takata’s ability to produce replacement units — 3.8 million thus far — which it hopes to increase to 1 million per month by September. Other suppliers are helping to fill-in wherever possible, though the campaign could take years to complete, according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration administrator Mark Rosekind.
Thus, Canada is left out in the cold to wait as supply constraints and greater urgency for affected consumers in warmer climes take precedence. Meanwhile, the Canadian subsidiaries of FCA, Ford, BMW, Nissan and Mazda have issued a handful of recalls for a small number of affected vehicles, said recalls being issued closer to repair time per Transport Canada’s requirements; U.S. legislation requires recalls to be issued as soon as a safety problem comes up.
Consumer apathy will likely play a role in bringing recalled vehicles into the repair shop. Autotrader found 56 percent of those made aware of a recall action bring in their vehicles every time, while 61 percent try to keep up with recall news, and 35 percent put in the research when shopping for a vehicle.
[Photo credit: Whpq/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0]
Gets hot and humid around the Great Lakes and the St.Lawrence. The Southern Interior of BC sees 40C on a routine basis in the summer.
Maybe it has to do with the fact that those south of the 49th Parallel have a reputation for “lawyering up” quicker and more aggressively than us quite polite Canadians ;)
The BC area you describe is much like Eastern Washington, in other words, it might get hot in the summer, but its also quite dry at the same time.
Humidity is said to trigger the problem, not heat alone. In the South East US, humidity is often over 90% for many months. It also gets hotter than 104° here quite often. Its already been over 90° thus far this year.
But, screw the facts, its all about potential litigation rather than addressing the problem in the areas most affected, right?
“It gets hotter than 104 quite often.”
No, no it doesn’t.
https://www.sercc.com/climateinfo/historical/recordhigh.html
So I’ll agree with Lou_BC that it is more about the litigation and how the USA govn’t has their foot up Takatas ass right now, and how the Harper government really doesn’t care about the people here.
I’m in the southeast (Florida). I don’t think I’ve ever seen a temp greater than 99°. Summer temps are usually in the mid 90s with humidity hovering around 95%.
JohnTaurus_3.0_AX4N – everything I’ve read about this problem is related to humidity. As I have pointed out, Central Canada does get very humid. Coastal areas of BC can get hot and humid as well.
I mentioned the southern Interior of BC because the news post did not mention humidity.
I do believe that as I have sarcastically pointed out and as others have mentioned, our government isn’t as aggressive with companies like Takata.
This has a lot more to do with the Canadian government being much weaker in holding corporations to account for their actions. The squeaky airbag gets the grease.