Have you ever been involved in a serious car accident that caused the air bag to deploy in your vehicle? Maybe the air bag even saved your life. Imagine what could have happened if the air bag failed to deploy. This is exactly the problem that Kia identified in 507,000 of its vehicles in the United States. According to the automaker, hundreds of thousands of its U.S. vehicles have air bags that could fail to deploy in the event of a serious collision.
Although there haven’t been reports of these air bags exploding and shooting hot metal shrapnel into the passenger compartments – like other defective Takata air bags – the failure of these air bags to deploy has already resulted in four deaths and six injuries. These injuries and deaths involved both Kia and Hyundai vehicles that were equipped with these faulty air bags.
The defects in the air bags were caused by faulty controller devices contained inside the air bags. The controllers were built by the German auto parts maker, ZF Friedreichshafen AG. However, Kia, Takata and ZF Friedreichshafen AG haven’t found a fix for this problem. Even though the affected Kia automobiles have been recalled – as of yet – no one knows how to fix them, leaving vehicle owners in the lurch.
If you own a 2010 to 2013 Kia Sorento, Kia Optima, Kia Optima Hybrid or Kia Sedona, you should contact your local Kia dealer immediately to ascertain whether this massive recall has affected your particular car. If it has, you may want to consider avoiding the use of your vehicle until you can get it repaired. Also, if you suffered a serious injury in an accident in which your air bag failed, it would be wise to investigate which parties may be at fault and liable for your injuries.
Source: NBC News, “Kia recalls over 500,000 vehicles over airbags amid probe into four deaths,” June 11, 2018
