Originally published at: Tennessee company refuses to recall airbag inflators despite government request | Boing Boing
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Is there a financial hook in this? i.e. if they voluntarily recall, it’ll cost them big money, but if ordered, they can write it off?
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It will be interesting when a private lawsuit calls the federal government (along with their eight years of investigation) as a witness against the company.
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I think either way it will cost them a lot of money, so they’d rather fight it and hope they get a friendly judge and/or jury.
My father used to be a lawyer for one of the Big Three, and he and their legal team fought against pretty much everything that the auto makers were required to do. Safety standards, mandatory seat belts and air bags, minimum gas mileage standards, catalytic converters, recalls–you name it, they fought it.
They generally weren’t all the successful, either, although they did tend to delay these things. Which is about all I expect from this one (and remember this is after an eight year investigation).
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But that’s all over the horizon in a future quarter.
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To a chemistry geek [loses two thirds of the audience right there], the chemistry of airbag inflation is lugubriously fascinating: it’s gotta be fast, but not so fast as to shatter things. So they started (~1980) with a sodium azide reaction but that occasionally spat hot sparks (“next!”), then went (as kindly old Dr Beschizza indicates) with ammonium nitrate (~1995). That works reasonably well, buuuut, it breaks down with age, heat, and humidity (“eh, don’t we all!?”) and forms regions of differing chemical consistency called Ostwald ripening, and that (in turn) causes an even faster reaction and yes, shrapnel. These should be recalled/replaced (particularly in localities where there’s a lot of heat and humidity). Then they went with Guanidinium nitrate reaction. Most recently it’s back to an original idea of compressed air cartridges (which may have their own shelf life problems) whee/-sigh-. (one reference)
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I don’t think there’s a difference under GAAP. In both cases they’d accrue the recall and incur an expense.
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“You need to sue us before we will remove the landmines from the cars.”
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Sounds like a strong argument for easily replaceable polka-yoke cartridges (with sensors that determine when they need replacement that notify the driver).
If it was a medical device, going the mandated recall route vs. voluntary recall could get your whole operation shut down. As in, Feds showing up, escorting everyone out of the building and putting a padlock on the doors. It’s happened.
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When I lived in Japan, the Japanese would joke:
When Washington changes regulations, Toyota hires a hundred engineers. Ford hires a hundred lawyers.
It was their way of explaining why Japanese automakers were eating Detroit’s lunch.
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you spelled “gained my attention” in such an unusual way. 
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Sounds like a strong argument for easily replaceable polka-yoke cartridges (with sensors that determine when they need replacement that notify the driver).
For something this safety-critical, it somewhat needs to be out of the owner/keeper’s hands - a sizeable minority of US drivers will run their tyres right down to the cords, for instance, and that’s wildly dangerous. People simply don’t do essential safety work; and they especially don’t do it if there’s a maintenance price associated. A nice modular airbag with a five year shelf life will probably invite a $50 “airbag life extender” chipping service, and a $30 sensor defeat plug to fake the presence of an airbag.
With airbags specifically, there’s still a remarkably large cohort of people who haven’t availed themselves of the (free, quick, potentially lifesaving-in-that-the-faulty-part-might-kill-you) Takata recall; infamously, Ford made more than a hundred genuine, good-faith attempts to get one airbag replaced, without success, before one owner was killed by their airbag.
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Oh yeah. You only have to look at how GM squandered the lessons they’d learned with Saturn or at how I can’t even remember who owns whatever is left of Chrysler* now. And those are only two examples out of many, many more.
*Stellantis, but I always have to look it up.
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Also, it has to sit inactive for 10+ years through Minnesota or left in a sunny parking lot in the Phoenix summer, and then properly inflate within milliseconds 100% of the time, and it has to do it whether its 20 below or boil an egg temperatures outside. It’s a totally crazy usage profile. Airbags, even despite things like the Takata recall catastrophe are a true modern miracle.
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I think a lot of people simply forgot, when replacing the Takata airbags stretched out over years due to supply chain problems. I know it took 4 months to get in my replacements, even when I scheduled an appointment to do it with my local dealer. The longer the time between notification of a problem and being able to get it worked on, the more people forget (or say “Eh, it must not be serious”) without reminders.
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Yeah, I agree the Takata airbag thing was mishandled (or, perhaps, the failure of the supplier of about a third of the market was too big to be seamlessly absorbed) - but so far as I can tell, the car manufacturers and the safety authorities worldwide are taking things seriously and going down the “try to find every owner, and don’t stop chasing them until they get the fix” with reminders - up to and including that Ford story where they sent actual boots-on-the-ground reps to the owner’s house to try to explain the situation!
The supply chain and scheduling problems are now much less acute because the gross population left to fix is much smaller; but there are still people who see it and go “I can’t afford to be without my car for two days, plus I don’t really understand this risk” or whatever. And of course some of them are correct in that they’re in a very parlous situation and really can’t forego their transport for a few days, and some of them are not. If we consider the similar hypothetical “user replaceable airbag gas generator, lifetime five years, does something between an annoying warning and forcing the car into limp mode if life-expired” scenario, those forget-or-refuse owners are exactly the ones who either won’t have the $200 for a replacement and will ignore the warnings, or if it’s a more severe “gotta fix or the car doesn’t drive” problem they’ll absolutely buy the $50 fake airbag plug to get the car going again and never spend the money.
And, of course, being BB - we would all defend their right to do that. Their car, their choice, no DRM on my airbag installation please and thankyou. BMW would doubtless want $1800 for a $200 gas generator and a $1600 DRM chip to prove it was put in by a dealer. But this is why I’m a “the airbag and other critical safety equipment should last the life of the car unless technically impossible” person; it fixes that right-to-repair and right-to-use issue by simply mandating the lifespan of those parts, and obliging zero-cost repair of that sort of defect, so manufacturers can’t punish the poor for not handing over their wallets enough.
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When it was made mandatory to wear seatbelts, manufacturers started putting warning notifications on cars, so they’d make an irritating sound if the belt wasn’t plugged in. Many people get around that by keeping the belt plugged in, but they just sit on the belt; in Greece, though, you can apparently buy a little metal ‘T’-shaped device from filling stations that you can just stick in the belt fitting and just leave the belt hanging down the door post.
Enterprising folks will always find a way to make a buck!
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yeah, i mean nothing’s perfect. the question is i think how can things be improved. that chime sound is a great simple example
we could also - at yearly inspection, or through insurance companies - communicate issues to drivers that need attention, plus or minus financial incentives
if your airbag thingy is filled, get 50 dollars knocked off renewal would work wonders. ( payment tends to be more motivating than fines even if the total cost is the same )
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I mean, your second paragraph kinda contradicts the first. If a free recall replacement with a hundred attempts doesn’t persuade someone to make a safety replacement, nothing will. But as someone who had Takata airbag replacements for three cars, it wasn’t a fun process. If the propellant module was user replaceable, it would have been a lot less of a hassle.
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