In what is a truly scary development, Nissan Motor Co has admitted that an airbag made by Takata Corp, installed in one of its cars, deployed with so much force that it caused a fire in a light crash in Japan. This is the automaker’s first such case in the country.
This latest incident involved a passenger-side inflator in an X-Trail SUV that was made in August 2001. The model had been recalled in April 2013, but shockingly, the recall notice did not reach the driver, according to a Nissan spokesman.
Amazingly, the car, carrying only the driver, was hit on the driver’s side, and the inflator on the passenger-side airbag exploded, smashing the passenger-side window. This also propelled high-temperature fragments into the dashboard, setting off a fire. The driver’s left cheek was slightly burnt as a result of this.
This is the first abnormal deployment of a Takata inflator involving a Nissan in Japan, and the fifth confirmed case in the country across automakers. Nissan confirmed that there had been nine similar cases involving its cars in the US. So far, Nissan has recalled 4.4 million cars globally, and only 85% of the 813,000 recalled in Japan have been serviced.
In Malaysia, four units if the CBU T30-generation X-Trail was recalled in 2013, plus another 12,420 units of the locally-assembled models, announced just last month.
