AIRBAG RECALL - Twenty-one years ago – on September 1st 1998 --- Federal legislation made airbags mandatory as a standard feature in all cars and light trucks in the United States. According to research -- air bags reduce the risk of dying in a head-on collision by 30 percent, and airbags have been credited for saving more than 10,000 lives since the late 1980s. But the National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration found that some airbags could deploy accidentally, causing severe injury and in some cases killed people from defective metal parts. So the NHTSA made the largest and most complex safety recall in U.S. history. While many people have taken their cars in to dealerships to have their airbags replaced…there are still many vehicles on the road today that have defective airbags.
Chris Freeman is the airbag recall campaign manager for Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles.. I spoke with him recently about September being designated as Airbag Recall Repair Month – a campaign to get people to check their vehicles for defective airbags.
"Louisiana is one of the higher risk states because of its climate," explained Freeman. "The concern is overtime, the defective airbags within the vehicles, parts of them degrade due to exposure to heat and humidity. And Louisiana has a lot of that. There are approximately 152,000 vehicles driving around the road in Louisiana that have unrepaired defective airbags."
The Airbag Recall Repair Month Campaign is hosted by the National Safety Council’s Check to Protect Program – and urges all drivers to check their vehicle to see if it is under any safety recall—especially for airbags – Freeman explains the process is simple and easy to do—it starts with checking your Vehicle Identification Number.
"CheckToProtect.org is the place that all users can take their 17 digit VIN (Vehicle Identification Number) number which you can find on insurance documents, or registration documents, or on the vehicle dashboard on the driver's side windshield," explained Freeman. " Take that number and put it in to CheckToProtect.org on the website and immediately a report will come up for your specific vehicle so that you know if your vehicle is affected or not."
Any safety recall repair is free and since defective airbags are highly susceptible to heat and humidity, all drivers living in southern states like Arkansas, Texas and Louisiana should check to see if their vehicle is under the airbag safety recall.
To Check Your Vehicle For Airbag Recall CLICK : CheckToProtect.org
