Five Million Faulty Continental Airbags Trigger Massive Recall

Honda says it has two reports of people being hurt because the air bags didn’t deploy in a crash.

The cars involved include many popular nameplates, from the Fit subcompact to the CR-V SUV. At this stage the list of vehicles is unknown, but it’s believed the Honda Accord, Dodge Journey and some Mercedes-Benz C-Class models could be affected.

The NHTSA has always been investigating issues related with air bag inflators. As a result, owners of affected vehicles will be informed of the recall in an initial mailed notification letter in mid-March 2016.

Continental Automotive Systems said it supplied potentially defective air bag control units to 5 million vehicles used by Honda, Fiat Chrysler, Mercedes-Benz, and three other automakers built over a five-year period worldwide, widening an air bag safety crisis.

It recalled another 269,000 similar models in Canada on Monday for the same issue.

The company said on Wednesday no PSDI-5 ruptures had been reported in its vehicles. In the case of an accident, the airbags may not deploy, or the faulty control unit could activate the airbags without the need to do so. However, Reuters reported the campaign affects models from Daimler, Fiat Chrysler and Honda, according to a spokesman at Continental’s Chassis & Safety division. The Accord and Civic are Honda’s best-selling models in the United States, placed at fifth and sixth, respectively, in sales in 2015. That number left out more than 500,000 vehicles sold by Honda’s luxury subsidiary, Acura. Of the ten deaths conclusively linked to Takata’s fatally flawed inflators, nine took place in Honda vehicles.

The latest action, for 2.23 million vehicles, reveals just how much Honda, a longtime partner of Takata and the automaker most affected by the defective air bags, continues to be haunted by them.

The company plans to replace the recalled inflators with new parts from an alternative supplier free of charge to Honda and Acura vehicle owners.

While unrelated, the Continental and Takata recalls deepen air-bag woes for auto makers.

Based on investigations under way at Takata, NHTSA and a consortium of automakers all searching for the root cause of the defect, ruptures are most likely to occur after several years of exposure to persistent high humidity. The whereabouts of the remaining three million or so vehicles were not known.