NAIROBI, Kenya, July 22 – The COMESA Competition Commission has alerted car importers in the region over the ongoing recall of vehicles from more than 20 major car brands equipped with faulty Takata airbag inflators.
In a statement, the commission’s registrar, Meti Demissie Disasa, said that car manufacturers worldwide have already recalled over 100 million defective Takata airbags that were equipped in their vehicles as of January this year.
These car brands include Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Mazda, Ford, Pontiac, Acura, BMW, Chrysler, Infiniti, and Dodge, among others, particularly from the model years 2002–2015.
According to COMESA, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has already issued a ‘Do Not Drive’ warning to owners of these car brands.
“The commission therefore wishes to alert consumers in the COMESA region on the ongoing developments regarding the Takata airbags, for their information, since there is a high importation of used cars in the region,” it stated.
The Takata PSDI-5 inflator propellant may, over time, create excessive internal pressure, which may in turn result in the rapture of the body of the inflator upon deployment, thereby causing metal fragments to pass through the airbag cushion material and resulting in injury or death to the occupants of the vehicles.
COMESA has alerted that the faulty airbags have been linked to 22 deaths and more than 180 known injuries across the world.
“The raptures may occur in some of the Inflators after several years of exposure to persistent conditions of high absolute humidity, high temperatures, and high temperature cycling among other factor,” it stated.
