An executive with the manufacturer of the defective air bags that have been linked to eight deaths told lawmakers Tuesday that the company still has not found the root cause of the problem.
“We do not have a definitive root cause,” said Kevin Kennedy, Takata Corp.’s executive vice president of North America. The faulty air bags, which led to the largest auto recall in history, included ruptured inflators that released metal shrapnel, injuring more than 100 people in addition to killing eight.
Kennedy said the Japanese auto parts maker has teamed up with American engineers and experts at the German Fraunhofer Institute to conduct tests into the defective air bags. While unable to discover a root cause, Kennedy said the tests have helped the company “understand a number of factors that caused the issue.”
Currently, he said Takata’s believes long-term exposure to high heat and humidity caused the air bags to rupture. In addition, he said a type of propellant wafer known as the “batwing” that was placed in the air bags has been linked to each death.
Kennedy said the company will be removing air bags with that wafer from all vehicles. “We will go out and get every batwing we ever made.”
Kennedy’s testimony before the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee came one day after the committee’s Democratic staff issued a scathing report on the air bags. The report said the company may have put its profits ahead of safety, and highlighted emails to corroborate the point. One email from an executive stated the company ceased “global safety audits” because of financial reasons.
Kennedy pushed back at the report, saying it misrepresented the situation. He said Takata performed its routine quality and safety audits and only ceased its global audit, which invites participants from across the globe.
“It is unacceptable to us and incompatible with our safety mission for even one of our products to fail to perform as intended and to put people at risk,” he said in his prepared remarks. “We deeply regret regret each instance in which a Takata airbag inflator has ruptured, especially in those cases where someone has been injured or killed.”
The agency that is in charge of auto safety, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, shouldn’t receive more congressional funding until it fixes its own internal problems, the Department of Transportation’s inspector general testified.
The Commerce Committee’s report released Monday blamed the agency for not investigating Takata’s defective air bags sooner. The report says the company was aware of the defects in 2001, but a recall was not issued until 2008.
A government audit by inspector general Calvin Scovel’s office found deep flaws with NHTSA that ranged from poor staff training and data failure to an inability to review safety procedures and hold automakers accountable. The audit issued 17 recommendations for the agency.
NHTSA administrator Mark Rosekind said his agency is taking on “tough, self-examination.” Rosekind took over the agency in December 2014.
“We continue to look at every place possible that we can make changes,” he said. NHTSA has drafted 44 action proposals and is addressing 10 of the 17 recommendation the inspector general’s audit suggests, he said.
Lawmakers at Tuesday’s hearing were split on whether the struggling agency needs more money. Florida Democrat Bill Nelson, the committee’s top Democrat, and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., called for more funding, while Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., blasted the agency.
“I was shocked how bad [the audit] was. I am not about to give you more money until I see meaningful progress and reforming your internal processes,” she said. “You can’t start throwing money until you have a system in place to make this agency function like it’s supposed to.”
McCaskill called the recent audit “one of the worst” she’s ever seen for a federal agency.
“This isn’t about resources. This about blatant, incompetent mismanagement.”
