Posted on 08/29/2016 12:07:38 PM PDT by Olog-hai
A truck carrying Takata air bag inflators and a load of volatile ammonium nitrate crashed, caught fire and exploded in southern Texas last week, killing a woman and injuring four others.
Takata says Monday that the truck operated by a subcontractor crashed in the small town of Quemado, near the Mexican border about 140 miles from San Antonio. The company says it sent people to the site and is helping authorities investigate the crash. …
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
Ironically “quemado” means “burned” in English-having driven through that town on the way to someplace else in the past, we joked that it didn’t look burned...
the death of the 69-year-old lady was confirmed after a two-day search, while she was considered missing. Dental pieces found at the scene of the explosion were discovered during the search, which concluded that the sole resident of the house died in the blast.
http://www.autoevolution.com/news/truck-carrying-takata-parts-crashes-and-explodes-en-route-to-plant-one-casualty-110699.html#ixzz4IksKspkI
“The force of the explosion damaged about 10 nearby homes, breaking windows and dislodging doors from their hinges, local media reports said, with rubble and truck parts found almost a mile away from the site of the blast near Quemado, Texas.”
Who puts explosives in with explosives?
I guess everyone who hauls explosives.
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As long as he had an explosives sign on the back of the truck, everything should have been okey dokey.
“I keep on getting those Takata airbag recall notices from Honda that say it’s dangerous to keep driving my car, but every time I contact the dealer they say the replacement parts aren’t available yet. I’m now on a wait list.”
Have fun.
I waited over a year,they finally came in,I dropped my car off,and the shuttle drove me home.
I was home about 1/2 an hour when the dealership called and told me that the airbag wasn’t programmed properly for my car so they would have to place another order.
I will not type my reaction-—it wasn’t pretty. :-)
.
I’m wondering if we can just have the bags taken out until a proper replacement is done - or would that be permitted?
I went through that with my last car, a Honda Civic in the mid-Nineties. This was when my kids were little, they fought all the time so we couldn’t put them together in the back seat when I was driving them to school. One had to sit in the front and one in the back.
So when I bought my Civic and was getting ready to drive them to school, my neighbor, a pediatric surgeon, came running out of his house and told me it was dangerous to put children in the front passenger seat because they could be hurt or killed if the airbag went off.
So I went to my mechanic and asked whether the airbags could be disconnected. He said first it was illegal to tamper with an airbag and it could cause all the safety systems to malfunction. He said second that no mechanic would do it, because if there was a subsequent injury (because of no airbag deployment) they would be sued as being responsible. So he said he couldn’t do it.
I kept on driving with my kids separated in the front and back seats. Fortunately they both grew up without incident. . . .
Idiots. Sodium Azide is much more stable in its environment and costs maybe a dollar more to use.
Those are the magic words for “punitive damages.”
I was home about 1/2 an hour when the dealership called and told me that the airbag wasn’t programmed properly for my car so they would have to place another order.
Yes, that is exactly what happened to me as well. They brought me in the first time to replace the bags, but at the end of the day they called me and told me they were mistaken, the new bags wouldn’t fit. Then they put me on the “wait list” and said I would hear “in a couple of weeks.” We’ll see.
Was watching a TV show last night, Boston EMS.
One of the stories was a car that the airbags had deployed, no dents, no scratches in bumpers.
The driver had severe burns on her face, including an eye.
The bag must have caught fire. Part on the steering wheel center was melted.
IIRC the original problem was the metal container coming apart and blowing shrapnel into the cabin.
Are they made in China? Sounds like something they would pull, cheapening the product.
I worry about them going off while I’m wearing glasses.
Kinda makes you want to drive a 1950s Buick Roadmaster or some other highway tank.
Takata’s airbag detonators *are* ammonium nitrate.
Another public school "journalist"
Takata is a Japanese company but they might have these defective systems built in China.
When buying a car look for one with Autoliv airbags.
The Takata bags were not built in China, they were built in Japan and the US. The problem isn’t the build quality per se but the design and the QC - especially the fact that the substance used to inflate the airbags is a known generally unstable (when exposed to heat and humidity as in a car interior) explosive material, ammonium nitrate. The New York Times (for once) had a good overview of this. Unsurprisingly, it was GM that enabled Takata to start making and selling these things.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/27/business/takata-airbag-recall-crisis.html?_r=0
See my immediately prior post for more info.
Also - why would you assume that a journalist gets any details correct on anything these days? :P
Well, I’m just hoping we get through to the recall repair.
We have a Honda Fit that we bought a few years ago. We were rear-ended last year, powerfully enough to cause $6,000 worth of damage to the back of our car (I’ve always felt sorry for the young lady who had to suck that up). But, the airbags didn’t deploy.
I was thinking that there would probably be issues with insurance, as well, if we just had them taken out; and I guess we’re just stuck.
Thanks for your response - we’ll call the dealer tomorrow, and hope we have good luck until they get us in for the repair ;-)
-JT
LOL. My first car was a hand me down from my mother, a1953 Buick Special. Straight 8, dynaflow xmission. A comfortable beast.
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