If you have owned a Honda car in the past few years and have been asked by the company to send your car in to replace its airbags, this is because it is due to the faulty airbags installed in Honda cars (amongst others) by Takata, which we reported about earlier this year in which the company was forced to recall tens of millions of defective units.
While nothing has been confirmed yet, a report from The Wall Street Journal has revealed that the company is expected to settle the scandal by paying as much as $1 billion in financial penalties, as well as pleading guilty to criminal misconduct. This is due to the fact that because of these defective airbags, it has resulted in at least 11 deaths and over 100 injuries around the world in vehicles where its airbags are installed.
For those hearing about this for the first time, basically these defective airbags were at risk of exploding in which shards of glass and metal shrapnel would be hurled into passengers in the car, which we have to say kind of defeats the purpose of an airbag in the first place that is meant to protect the occupants in the event of an accident.
The defective airbags has affected quite a few carmakers who were forced to either recall or replace the airbags in their vehicles, such as Honda and Toyota, with the former recalling more than 2.2 million cars as a result.