Automotive News: Mazda recalls
German green group to pursue diesel bans as agreed steps inadequate
German efforts to overcome a diesel scandal were dealt a blow on Tuesday after prosecutors widened a Volkswagen probe and a key environmental group said steps proposed by automakers to cut pollution remained inadequate.
Germany's car industry, which employs some 800,000 people and is the country's biggest exporter, is under intense pressure to cut diesel fumes almost two years after Volkswagen admitted to deliberately cheating U.S. pollution tests.
The Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH), a lobby group which has advocated banning polluting cars from roads, said proposals to cut diesel fumes, which were agreed at a high-profile summit this month, remain inadequate.
Mazda recalls nearly 80,000 vehicles to replace faulty air bags
Mazda is recalling nearly 80,000 cars and SUVs, some for a second time, to replace dangerous Takata air bag inflators.
The recall covers front passenger inflators on certain 2007 through 2009 and 2012 CX-7, CX-9 and Mazda 6 vehicles. The recalls vary by state and age of the vehicles.
Takata inflators can explode with too much force and hurl shrapnel into drivers and passengers. As many as 19 people have been killed and more than 180 hurt due to the problem.
Who Will Pay for Takata’s Future Victims?
Millions of the company’s dangerous air bags are still out there—and carmakers are using its bankruptcy to limit their liability.
So far, exploding air bags made by the Japanese auto supplier Takata have been linked to 18 deaths and 180 injuries worldwide. For its failures, the company has been besieged by lawsuits, a global recall, and finally bankruptcy. But odds are there will be more harm. A lot more.
For now, those future victims are potentiality burrowed away in one figure: 69 million. That’s Takata’s own estimate of how many flawed or questionable air bags are still in cars on the road, or on the market, as of July. Somewhere within that best guess are the lives that will be changed, or ended, because of malfunctioning air bags that use the same chemical compound the Taliban uses to make some of its roadside bombs.
But Takata and the carmakers that used the bags have structured the company’s bankruptcy to fend off liability for their actions—arguing that it’s necessary to salvage the disaster. In the end, it may leave future victims with no one to hold liable. read more »
