Carmakers struggle to solve air bag explosions despite mass recalls

Short of replacement parts from Takata, Toyota has decided to turn off air bags in Japan as customers come to dealerships with recalled vehicles, judging an inoperable passenger-side air bag to be safer than a potentially defective one.

That's total crap, Toyota should give the customers a loan car, turning off airbags is a damned if you do and damned if you don't solution. If they get into a crash and someone dies because the airbags were turned off I would hate to read that headline.

Great response - turn it off - but preferable to shrapnel in your eye! Authorities did the same with emergency locator beacons on boats that accidentally switched on a few years ago...

This is a very serious situation, the passenger/driver most likely will result wounded (in addition to the crash wounds) by the defective airbags, whether it is by the shrapnel itself or due to a fire.

From what I read here, I understand that the problem are not the plants themselves or their workers, as it happened in both US and Mexico, I believe Takata had no adequate guidelines on how to properly manipulate, handle and store the components that present the defect, not because they deliberately had done so, but rather because they hadn't experienced the problem before.

I've been in a Takata plant and I can tell you that the rules are very strict, everything is in order, clean, on time, very tidy, I don't think this is a problem of negligence.

As for the deactivated airbag, well I rather drive a car without the safety device than risking my eyes or my life.

An airbag is an extremely complex piece of equipment. I suppose their are days the Takada family wishes it had simply stuck to seat belts.

Warning: Passenger Air Bag Inoperative, the warning reads. “We recommend you sit in the back seat. If you must sit in the front seat, push it all the way back and use a seatbelt.

Now there's a legal disclaimer if ever there was one.

Turning off the airbags has nothing to do with protecting passengers. It's a cynical effort to protect the manfacturers from being sued.

Personally, I'd take my chances on the airbag being a good one and have it replaced when the manufacturer gets the parts in.

This will probably boost Hyundai and Kia's sales.

Honestly I think Hyundai/Kia are making better cars these days. My brother just bought a 2015 Hyundai Genesis and it really is a quality car with all the newest advanced technology. I drive a BMW 328i and will probably replace it with a Hyundai Genesis in the future. Or maybe a BMW 535i.

Hyundai and Kia just topped the US IQS quality study out of all mainstream car brands. Nearly all the Japanese brands (except Toyota) ranked low. Mitsubishi, Subaru and Mazda all ranked rock bottom.

Porsche topped the quality study.

Korean car makers are already excellent quality when it comes to reliability, along with German cars and Toyota.

I'd prefer if airbags were optional to begin with.

Every time I hear about these recalls about airbags I laugh. Why you ask? Well, I'm sure you don't care but before airbags, people used to drive with a little more care and before seatbelts, well, even more so although cars were crap back then at stopping so that's no really fair but I digress.

Imagine if we put a 15cm knife blade on EVERY car's steering wheel pointed right at the driver. EVERY driver would have the same death staring them if the chest. How much do you want to bet that people would drive a lot better than they do now? People are so stupid that when seatbelt came out, the US forced all US sold cars for a time to have the shoulder belt portion be attached to the door so when you got in the front seats you'd be where the belt but still couldn't force people to where the lap portion so the added these stupid 'knee bars' to add the cars so your knees would travel very little. Yeah, short sighted that was but hey so are air bags and we will be laughing about that in 30 years too.

The sad part is that they are freaking out about 13 people being killed by these airbags and a while back some were killed with that Ford and Firestone tire roll over issue yet 1000's and 1000's of people die every year from another product legal sold and those people didn't even buy the product or use it. No they just died from some one else using it. Still smoking is legal, I know mods, it off topic but it puts things into perspective that death is not okay with some products but acceptable with others and both can be mass consumer products that kill non consumers.

FYI, I keep my airbags off by informed choice. Just wish others would drive with more care by informed choice but as they say, "you can't fix stupid" and stupid texts while they drive.

Just ask yourself- which would you rather sit behind on a long winding trip through the countryside? A TRW airbag (they made the Apollo Lunar module descent engines and have satellites orbiting Jupiter, an AutoLiv airbag from Sweden renown for it's stellar safety, or a Takata......25 years of criminal investigations and deaths from defective seatbelt latches and now other products? No wonder all Takata airbags are being disabled in Japan. And to falsely blame it on AMERICAN sourced products when the airbags are Japanese made and now are being disconnected in Japan. Racial bias by the mods here in selectively removing posts?

@David Lombardo. You should write again in 6 months. As former Hyundai owner, I won't drive Hyundai never again.