NEW YORK — Federal safety regulators warned owners of more than 300,000 Hondas and Acuras that they should not drive their cars until their Takata airbags are replaced.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said new tests show these airbags have a much higher risk of exploding and killing a driver or passenger. The risk for these particular cars is now greater than 50%, according to the agency. Other Takata airbags have less than a 1% chance of exploding.
“The risk posed by the airbag inflators in these vehicles is grave, and it is critical they be repaired now to avoid more deaths and serious injuries,” said the agency’s statement.
There have been 10 U.S. deaths tied to exploding Takata airbags. Eight of those deaths were in cars that had this specific airbag.
This group of cars is a small subset of cars with Takata airbags that have been already recalled. Nearly 70 million airbags in U.S. cars alone have been or will be recalled, according to the agency. It will take until 2019 to replace these airbags because not all of the replacement parts are immediately available.
But NHTSA said Honda has the replacement parts to fix all of the 300,000 high-risk cars covered by this alert.
The models identified by NHTSA include: 2001-2002 Honda Civic, 2001-2002 Honda Accord, 2002-2003 Acura TL, 2002 Honda CR-V, 2002 Honda Odyssey, 2003 Acura CL, 2003 Honda Pilot.
