Car Manufacturers’ Lemons are Ripe: Safety Problems and Recalls Hit Records

62.9 million vehicles were recalled in 2014, involving more than 800 recall campaigns. There were 22 million in 2013. 2014 more than doubled NHTSAs previous record of 30.8 million in 2004, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Thursday.
General Motors Co announced the recall of nearly 27 million vehicles for more than 60 defects. NHTSA pushed automakers to recall vehicles equipped with allegedly defective airbags made by Takata Corp.
About 2.6 million GM vehicles were recalled for a potentially fatal ignition switch defect affecting a variety of older-model cars that can cause the ignition switch to jostle out of position, stall the vehicle and disable its airbags. So far, GM has acknowledged 13 deaths related to the defect.
The compensation fund has accepted 52 eligible death claims, and received more than 4,200 death and injury claims the deadline
General Motors Co. so far has paid out about $93 million through the uncapped fund, the automaker has said.
GM’s boss, Mr. Millikin, testified he was unaware of GM’s outside counsel’s warnings related to the defect because of the failure of other in-house attorneys to report those warnings to him.The automaker terminated 15 employees, some of them attorneys, over the course of its internal investigation.
Allegedly defective airbags made by Takata also caused Ford Motor Co, Nissan Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co., among other automakers, to issue recalls of affected vehicles. The allegedly defective air bags, said to be most problematic in areas of high humidity, can explode on deployment, spraying the inside of a car with shrapnel, according to the NHTSA.
BMW of North America LLC and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles expanded their recalls late last year under pressure from the agency, shortly after Ford, Nissan and Honda announced similar expansions.
On Jan. 30, Honda confirmed that a car accident in Houston that killed a Texas man driving a 2002 Honda Accord involved the rupture of the driver’s side Takata. air bag inflator.