(New York) Automaker Stellantis on Thursday called on owners of 276,000 vehicles in the United States to immediately stop driving them if they have not yet participated in broad recalls related to Takata’s faulty airbags, after three crashes deaths in recent months.
Posted at 3:07 p.m.
“The longer these vehicles remain unrepaired, the greater the risk of rupture of the airbag in the event of an accident”, explains the Franco-Italian-American group Stellantis, in a message published on its site, stressing that the replacement is free. .
The affected vehicles, 2005-2010 Dodge Magnum station wagons, Dodge Challenger coupes, and Dodge Charger and Chrysler 300 sedans, were recalled twice after Takata-manufactured airbag defects were discovered.
But about 20% of owners have not yet made the necessary repairs.
A 2017 survey by the University of Michigan cited three main reasons consumers ignore recalls: fear that a dealership is trying to sell more repairs, difficulty giving up their vehicle for a repair, and the idea the wait for it to be repaired is too long.
Airbag replacement takes less than an hour, says Stellantis.
Its subsidiary in the United States, FCA, sent the owners of the affected cars letters, emails, text messages, called them and sometimes even went to their homes.
Stellantis says it has been made aware in the past seven months of two fatal crashes where the air bag was confirmed to have torn and a potential air bag rupture in a third fatal crash.
The defect found on the Takata airbags, which could explode by projecting metal fragments, was uncovered by the American authorities in 2014, causing major recall campaigns. The Japanese group has since gone bankrupt.