Takata Airbag Recall

Floor Speech

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Mr. NELSON. Madam President, I rise today to speak about the Takata airbag recall and the continued need for urgency in this area.

Last week the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced that they currently had--this figure will blow your mind--19 million vehicles and 23 million airbags under recall. So far, the completion rates for this recall are not very good. There is a national completion rate of some 22 percent, and for States such as Florida where there is high heat and humidity--that is suspected as part of the reason the components break down--the completion rate is just under 30 percent, meaning that people are not taking their cars in to fix the problem that caused the recall in the first place.

Takata started running ads through the print media and social media, and Honda is running ads to get consumers to a dealer to replace their defective airbags. I am also aware that to boost replacement inflators, three other airbag manufacturers are helping to manufacture them.

So this Senator wants to take this opportunity to state that wherever this message can be delivered to consumers, you better take your car if it is under recall and get it in to the dealer in order to get a replacement airbag; otherwise, you are walking around with, in effect, a grenade in the middle of your steering wheel or dashboard.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to show a number of items in the Senate to illustrate what I am talking about with the airbags.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. NELSON. To Members of the Senate, this is a deflated airbag that has already exploded. If you can see, this part is the center of the steering wheel. In this case, this happens to be a Honda; here is the letter ``h.'' This would be sitting right in front of you in the steering wheel. When you have an accident, if it is of sufficient impact, it is going to cause the airbag to inflate. This is designed as a lifesaver. This explosive device inside the airbag, and the gas compound in there is ammonium nitrate. If it is defective, when the explosion occurs, the hot gases that are released from the compound come out through these little holes around the side, and that inflates the airbag. But what has happened and has caused almost 20 million cars to be recalled is that the hot gases are exploding in this device with such force that it is causing the metal to break and come out in the inflated bag with such force, tearing through the bag, as this particular bag shows--it has a big hole in it. Here is the hole where the metal came out. It is like a grenade exploding in front of you, in your steering wheel, with shrapnel going into the people who are driving or who are in the passenger seat with the dashboard airbag. We are finding out now that a few months ago there was the explosion of side airbags in some of the cars, in the doors. Lo and behold, that is throwing out shrapnel as well.

I want to show the Senate what it is like when these inflators explode. This is an inflator that was inside the device I just showed you. This photograph is a blowup by the Battelle Institute for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. This is a blown-up photograph of the inflator starting to inflate. What it is supposed to do is shoot the gases out here, which inflates the bag I showed you, but look what has happened. It is being ruptured in the side, throwing out metal. This is what it looks like under very fast photography. Metal fragments are coming out when it should have been just gas coming out to inflate the bag.

This is what one of those pieces of metal looks like. It is a shard of metal that is part of the inflator. Can you imagine that hitting you in the neck? Well, that is what happened to one of my citizens in Florida, in the Orlando area. She ran into a fender bender in an intersection at a traffic light. Lo and behold, when the police got there, they found her slumped over the wheel, and they thought it was a homicide because her neck was slashed. They found out that what happened was a piece of metal like this had lacerated her neck and cut her jugular vein.

Another one of my constituents, a fireman--a big, hulking guy, the kind who will pick you up, if you are disabled and in a house that is burning down, and carry you out safely to save you--well, he won't be a fireman anymore because one of those metal fragments hit him in the eye and he is blind in one eye.

Those are just two incidents of scores across the country, of which there have been a handful of deaths.

If a jagged piece of metal can cause severe injury because it is coming at you at high speed, don't you think that if you have one of these vehicles that are under recall, you had better get it to the dealer to have it replaced?

Check to see if your car is under recall because sometimes people don't get it in the mail or they don't open the mail. Go to www.safercar.gov and put in your car's vehicle identification number--the VIN number--and then you will see if your car is on a recall list.

Those that are on the recall list that I mentioned earlier unfortunately may not be the last to be recalled. The New York Times just reported that a study commissioned by Takata with Penn State University shows larger issues with the use of ammonium nitrate in the airbag inflators. In addition, there was another incident just this past June where a Takata side airbag ruptured in a relatively new 2015 Volkswagen. And just a week ago, General Motors recalled vehicles that also had defective Takata side airbags. It raises the question, are any of the Takata inflators safe?

Last week Senator Thune and I sent a letter to Takata asking for additional documents and information regarding these side airbags. We also asked more questions about the use of ammonium nitrate. Also, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced that it may expand its recall to all the model year vehicles with Takata airbags.

NHTSA must use all of its tools under the law to maximize consumer protection. These potential hand grenades, stored in the steering wheel or dashboard, must get off the road. The American driving public cannot afford any more wasted time.

Don't we think these corporations that are causing this outrageous situation that has killed seven people in the United States and severely injured dozens more--don't we think that they ought to be held accountable? If executives at Takata knew about their defective products, if they knew that and did nothing, or worse, if they covered it up, then they ought to go to jail. Not another fine, not another settlement, somebody ought to be going to jail. Lying about a danger of this magnitude is a criminal act.

We have a crisis of consumer confidence in the vehicle-safety area. Certainly that has been demonstrated with these Takata airbags.

What about General Motors' misinformation, lack of information, and outright deception about the defective ignition switches? And now what about Volkswagen's deliberate efforts to lie about--and to cover up--emissions from its diesel vehicles?

A few weeks ago I sent a letter to Chairwoman Edith Ramirez of the Federal Trade Commission, asking them to crack down on Volkswagen's unfair and deceptive practices in connection with its ``clean diesel'' vehicle claims, and today I received a response. The Chairwoman of that Commission told me they are investigating the claims against Volkswagen, along with the Department of Justice and the Environmental Protection Agency. In her response she said: ``No reasonable consumer would knowingly purchase a vehicle that he or she could not legally drive.''

I agree. Don't we all agree? So it is time to get tough and to hold these folks and these corporations accountable.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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