Mazda Expands Recall For Cars With Passenger Takata Air Bags

Dec 05, 2014 12:08 PM EST | Matt Mercuro

Mazda said on Thursday that it will expand to additional states its recall of vehicles with Takata Corp passenger-side air bags at U.S. safety regulators request.

The automaker was among 10 different companies that started conducting regional recalls of vehicles with passenger-side front-seat air bags supplied by Takata, at the request of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, back in June.

NHTSA previously requested that Mazda recall vehicles in select locations like Florida, Puerto Rico, Hawaii and U.S. Virgin Islands. The automaker's recall area now includes Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia as well as Guam, Saipan, and American Samoa.

Mazda will reach out to owners of nearly 87,000 vehicles with Takata passenger-side air bags to bring them to dealerships to be repaired.

More than 16 million cars have been recalled globally over the last six years.

In November, Takata announced that the passenger-side air bags may be defective in the wider area. The Japan-based company says that manufacturing issues could cause defects if inflators are in high-humidity locations for a long period of time.

Mazda said in a statement this week that it has agreed to join an initiative proposed by Toyota Motor Corp for independent, industrywide joint tests of Takata air bag inflators, according to Reuters.

Takata's inflators have been linked to five deaths, in the United States and Malaysia. The inflators have been exploding too "forcefully" and spraying metal shards inside vehicles, according to safety regulators. 

Toyota said on Thursday that it was calling back nearly 190,000 more cars to replace potentially defective air bags made by Takata Corp. Japan's regulator said it could change its recall system to respond better to an "unprecedented" crisis.

Ford and Chrysler have expanded their recalls for vehicles equipped with dangerous exploding air bags.

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