 It was a Wednesday morning in the summer of the mid-2010s, and a letter came through my letterbox. It had Honda written on it. Strange, I thought why would my car's manufacturer be writing to me. Most likely some kind of advertising trying to convince me to trade in my trusty, singer-sowing machine-sounding car in for five years of high-interest financial burden. Not something I'd be interested in, as my car had passed its MOT with no advisories, and being serviced by myself for the most time I've owned it, I knew it was relatively reliable. I placed a letter on the side to be opened later on. The letter sat for a couple of days, forgotten about. After rediscovering it, I thought it was time to read and recycle. Well, it wasn't some leaflet for a brand new shiny Honda Civic or Jazz, but instead information regarding a potentially lethal quirk with my car. You see, my 2011 Honda Insights when it was manufactured in Japan received a type of airbag. That had proven to be a little shrapnely. One of the things that drew me to the Insights was its five-star in-cap rating. Something quite important to me, especially if you see what happened to my first car. Well, this rather sobering letter informing me that my car was a potential death trap was my first taste of one of the world's biggest product recalls, the Takata Airbag Scandal. Welcome to Scandal, a new, plainly difficult series. Takata, Takata Airbags. Takata, Takata, Takata, Takata, Takata Airbags. During the 2010s, this word dominated the headlines, becoming a household name and a definition of corporate mismanagement. Although before the scandal, Takata was relatively unknown to the wider public. The company's history with airbags spans nearly 40 years. So how did it go so wrong? It is 1976 and Japanese auto safety equipment manufacturer, Takata Corporation, is looking to expand its product lineup. The company, which was now over 40 years old, had made a name for itself as the forerunner in automotive safety systems. Originally, when the company started up in the 1930s, it was in the textiles industry, manufacturing parachute lifelines. This would develop post-war in the 1950s into concepts for using these lifelines as methods to hold vehicle occupants in their car seats. Being a Japanese company, Takata sought to equip the soon-to-be juggernaut Japanese auto industry. In 1952, roughly 40,000 cars per year were being made domestically, but this, as we all will know, will change. One such company that will become entwined with our scandal was Honda. And 1958 would be the year they would release a vehicle which would catapult them to the forefront of Japanese industry. But it wasn't a car, but a motorbike. Okay, calling it that is a little bit generous. It was the Super Cub Step Through Scooter. It was cheap, reliable and reportedly had the uniquely Japanese feature of being able to be ridden with one hand holding a box of ramen. Sorry, I went a little bit off script there. Anyway, as the Japanese auto industry grew, so did Takata and its innovations in safety products. In 1960, it began to offer two-point seat belts to car manufacturers. In 1962, the company made public that it was conducting Japan's first seat belt crash tests in cooperation with the Ministry of Transport's Technical Research Institute and the National Research Institute of Police Science. By 1963, the company had built a real-world dynamic test facility in Hikone. And later on in the same year, Takata was now offering seat belts as a standard option for many Japanese vehicle manufacturers. Again, the company would make more strides in car safety when in 1965, they began to use crash test dummies. The 1970s would continue to push the company to the forefront of automotive safety. When its seat belts passed, the only to do so in the 32-mile-an-hour test performed by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. But the company would begin to research into a new active restraint system, the Airbag in 1976. The Airbag seemed like a perfect fit for Takata, mixing both their fabric background and their car safety-focused products. But Takata weren't the first to look into Airbags. That honour goes way back to just after the First World War. You see, there's always been a problem for car manufacturers to keep their customers alive in the event of an accident. As you know, it's much more difficult to sell a new Cadillac to a corpse. At your Cadillac dealers now. One main issue was holding occupants in place. This was achieved by the seat belt, but although it marked a night and day-like change on crash survivability, it wasn't perfect. Airbags were initially conceived and developed in parallel as a kind of alternative to, or even in some manufacturers' minds, a replacement to the restrictive seat belt. The first patents for early air-based restraint systems went back to as early as 1919. Early versions used compressors or springs set off by a switch on the car's bumper or in some cases by the driver themselves. But it proved not to be able to react fast enough. In 1964, Japanese automobile engineer Jezu Baru Kobori began to develop an explosive-initiated system. This would mean that deployment of the bag was now fast enough to react when incorporated with the addition of sensors to an accident. GM started to offer their explosive airbag system called the air-cushion restraint system in the 1970s. It was seen as a seat belt replacement, but not many cars were sold with this option, and as such it seemed like the airbag was a bit of a lame duck. Eventually the concept would come back to the fore and advertised as a supplemental system which was due to the thinking developing throughout the 1970s and 80s. Again, these were offered as options, but as the 1980s gave way to the 90s, gradually more and more cars were offered, at least for the driver as standard. And this is where we come back to Takata and their entry into the airbag market. Takata throughout the 1980s had experienced gradual growth with multiple factories across the world. The company began installing airbags in vehicles as early as 1988, and this would mark a lucrative milestone in the company's history. But the road to success was not without a few stumbles along the way. One such was when the company would experience a financially injuring event in the early 1990s. Now, when you think of Takata and Recall, airbags may spring to mind, but it was the company's mainstay product at the time that would cause such a financial injury. In 1995, Dr. Ricardo Martinez of the United States Department of Transport issued NHTSA Recall number 95V-103. This would affect roughly 8.5 million mainly Japanese vehicles built between 1986 and 1991 with seat belts from the Takata Corporation of Japan. At the time, it was the second largest Recall in DOT history. Reports had been made of seat belt buckles either failing to latch, latching and releasing automatically, or releasing in accidents. The conclusion of multiple investigations was that the plastic buckle of the seat belt system became degraded by ultraviolet light over time, causing it to become brittle and thus fail. The NHTSA find both Honda and Takata for their attempt to cover up the seat belt issues by not informing official bodies of incoming reports of premature failures. But this would not be the last time Takata would be linked with potentially deadly product malfunctions. By the early 2000s, Takata had grown to hold 20% of the world's market for airbag systems, but this wasn't enough for the company. Because in Business 101, I'm guessing, I haven't read the book, when you make a product that's popular, the next step is to try and cut down costs as much as possible to maximize that sweet tasty profit. Just like squeezing jam out of a donut. Now the tasty jam in this story's case is the airbag's propellant. If you can make it cheaper, the sweeter the jam will taste. Okay, my analogy is a little bit rubbish. Basically, Takata could save money by changing propellants. Ah, the pressure of capitalism. And this leads us onto a really quick explanation of how an airbag system works. An airbag system, in simple terms, uses four things. A crash sensor, airbag control unit, an inflator, and a bag itself. If the sensor is triggered by a traumatic event, it sends a signal to the ACU. This processes the data and sends a signal to the inflator. An igniter starts a rapid chemical reaction generating nitrogen gas, which rapidly fills the airbag and in most cars, will blast through the module cover. This is why you should never cross your arms when driving, because if your airbags go off, you're going to punch yourself in the face. Well, the standard for airbag propellant in the pre-2000s era was sodium azide. A volatile and worryingly toxic compound that can give chemical burns to a vehicle's occupants post-deployment. Okay, pretty concerning, not only that, it can cause breathing issues. All things that you don't want, especially if you're trying to escape a smashed up car quickly, if say it's on fire. Being blind and choking aren't conductive to surviving. So being the ever advancing company to Carter was, his engineers looked to find a less deadly chemical. And this would come with a new product called EnviroShore. The chemical compound was really called Tetrazol. And when promoted for the 1998 model year, promised to be a safer, cleaner way to have your face punched in by an inflatable woven fabric bladder. Great, but one problem. And it's always the problem it gets in the way of tasty profit. Cost. Tetrazol is hard to find and thus more expensive. Quickly the company looked for a cheap alternative and oh boy, they scraped the barrel. The replacement compound for the replacement compound is as cheap as it can get. Ammonium Nitrate. Ammonium Nitrate is brilliant for say demolition products. But not so for car inflators. As it can break down and perform with a regular ballistic qualities if stored in varying environmental conditions. Like say, heat, snow, rain, sleet and windy conditions. All of which cars are expected to endure, especially as they're used to travel distances and a car maybe in different climates at different times. Not like in the UK where you drive from one wet place to another. In 1999, Takata researchers in Michigan were pressured by executives to develop a cheap propellant based on ammonium nitrate. The engineers offered some resistance but the company shall we say insisted. Rather than dropping the idea the company looked at ways to try and stabilise the very unstable chemical. But the chemicals crystal structure is really good at absorbing moisture. Which can alter the chemicals burn rate and to make things worse the company didn't add a drying agent. Nevertheless Takata started using the chemical in its inflators which made their way into newly built cars of 2001. It is 2004 and a 2002 Honda Accord is involved in a car crash in Alabama. The driver is injured but not in the way you'd expect from a relatively minor accident. They had experienced severe cuts to their face. So strange was the injury that the car's manufacturer was involved in investigating the accident. It looked as if the propellant canister had completely exploded sending out debris into the car compartment. Honda put the event down to an anomaly but a number of other similar events were starting to raise questions between the manufacturer and Takata. Although a concern both companies decided not to report the incidents to the US transport officials. But the strange occurrences around 2003 and 2004 would not be the anomalies the manufacturers had hoped. As the 2001, 2002 model year Honda's age a number of serious injuries were reported from very minor accidents. The injuries seen in some of the photos they are horrific, I wouldn't recommend looking them up are life changing wounds with some even losing their sight. You see the face is the intended target of an airbag. So imagine what happens if metal fragments are involved. Many of the accidents were settled out of court with no admission of liability from Honda or Takata. Honda began investigating inflators on various cars and on September 11th 2008 a vehicle was inspected which had an unusual driver airbag deployment. Eventually they couldn't ignore the mounting concerns and first issued a recall involving Takata airbags in 2008. 4 years after the first reports of injuries caused by defective units. The NHTSA Safety Recall 08V-593 initially was only for some 4000 cars covering 2001 model years Honda Civics & Accords in November 2008 but this wouldn't be enough and reports of over pressured inflator incidents would continue to come in. It was starting to look like just the tip of the iceberg as Honda inspected and recalled units to find rust and signs of degradation of the inflators. Two more crashes just a few days apart in May and June of 2009 were reported one of which resulted in the death of Ashley Parnham an 18 year old student whose airbag deployed in a relatively low speed car park shunt sending metal fragments into her neck killing her in minutes. Honda and Takata settled out of court without having to admit liability. Another investigation was launched and determined that Recall 08V-593 should be expanded to cover 2001 Civics 2001 to 2002 Accords and 2002 Acura 3.2L TL vehicles This encompassed the best part of 500,000 cars. In December another death in a 2001 Accord would be recorded in Richmond, Virginia. The Honda's Recall would continue to expand for another three years eventually covering around 2.5 million cars. All whilst injuries still kept mounting up. It was looking like the issue wasn't just limited to Honda's and thus a Recall for many more manufacturers looked likely. The NHTSA called Takata in for a meeting in January 2012 the company deliberately tried to evade and misrepresent accusations of inflated defects and that it may be a wider issue. In a 2015 report the NHTSA would even say about Takata. In several instances Takata produced testing reports that contained selective, incomplete or inaccurate data and Takata failed to provide notice to the NHTSA of the safety related defect that may arise in some of the inflators that are the subjects of Recalls within five working days when Takata determined or in good faith should have determined the existence of that defect. This avoidance would come back to haunt Takata later on. Well Takata took over the required five days to inform anyone to say the least. Reportedly back in 2004 when the first reports of failed inflators started to come about company officials in secret recovered around 40 airbags from 2001 Honda's which had been scrapped. Out of these 40 a reported three had shown signs of failure and tested. Don't forget these cars were only three years old and ammonium nitrate can become even more unpredictable over time. So by 2012 the numbers of potentially deadly units could have run into the tens of thousands. But it didn't end there. On 11th April 2013 the Recalls would expand to Honda with Toyota motor Nissan motor and Mazda motor recalling 3.4 million vehicles globally due to potentially defective Takata airbags. This would be a financial blow to all concerned as the Recall entitled owners to a free new driver's side airbag. Takata was predicting to lose $307 million in 2013 due to the scandal. Just one month later manufacturer BMW joined the Recalls further tumbling Takata's losses. Takata and the auto manufacturers had an ever mounting disaster of replacing old inflators as well as attempting to keep on making new cars. But the Recalls so far had only affected certain priority areas such as Florida and Hawaii and other regions like Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. This was due to being more humid and thus more likely for failure. This story was the same worldwide with more humid regions only being covered by the Recall. Even though the first recorded incidents happened in the non-humid classified states Takata officially were blaming their subsidiary TK Holdings Incorporated and its Monclova plant in El Hila Mexico and almost at the same time they're blaming high humidity and excessive moisture making its way into the propellant. GM car dealerships were told not to sell any Chevrolet Cruze saloons. Probably not a bad thing regardless of the airbags. Such a terrible car and I know I owned a silver hatch it made my daches build quality look opulent. Pregnant La Sukh Le 43 died in Malaysia in July after being hit by shrapnel from a Takata airbag in a Honda city marking the first such fatality outside the US. Her child was delivered but sadly died a few days later. In November 2014 the NHTSA pushed for a nationwide US Recall and 7 automakers including Honda complied. Some manufacturers even issued statements to not drive their vehicles at all instead getting it towed to a dealership for repair. Seemingly on a monthly basis millions more cars were added to the Recall. In May 2015 the Takata airbag Recall officially became the largest auto-recall in history at 40 million vehicles but we all know that this wasn't the end of the Recalls. Today it is thought to be over 100 million airbags that have been recalled. Independent tests gave a figure of around a 50% chance of an affected inflator exploding. But the issue is you don't know if it's affected until it goes off. When my car went in for its driver side airbag replacement the car was gone for a day. I was offered a courtesy car as well. All of which costed money. Imagine that over millions of vehicles. Afterwards I felt relatively safe knowing my car was now not a hand grenade waiting to blarp in my face until yep my passenger side was also defective but I had to wait a few months. As Takata increasingly felt the strain from Recalls unsurprisingly it would also have to answer a criminal case. Because if they knew about the issues then well wouldn't that be corporate manslaughter? Well the US Department of Justice started collecting evidence on the company and planned to indict in 2018. The accusations were that the company had known about the defects as early as 2000 but had actively hidden and falsified test data. Pretty hard to disprove Takata had lied after all in that 2012 meeting with the NHTSA. Thus fraudulently misrepresenting their products to their customers, the vehicle manufacturers. In addition it was also alleged that the company had put pressure on production lines and storage facilities to keep on pumping out units and refuse returns on any damaged parts. The airbag inflators dropped here were reportedly sent to car factories even though they should have been binned. Takata had shown his propensity to try and dodge responsibility. As such it's rather surprising that they pled guilty to wire fraud. I mean the evidence against them must have been pretty strong. Just read the indictment. A settlement was ordered of $1 billion in 2017 crippling the company. If fraud, lying and creating dangerous products was an attempt to enrich the company it must certainly backfired. On the 25th of June 2017 Takata filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States and filed for bankruptcy protection in Japan. The 1 billion was more than enough for the company to sink. The remaining assets were sold off to key safety systems for $1.6 billion. I'd love to say that this scandal is over but no it's still going on with millions of cars still requiring airbag replacements. If we look at the NHTSA figures around 20% are still driving around with deadly airbags. In all seriousness get your car checked and if you're planning on buying a used car check to see if it's being repaired. In the UK you can find this out by checking the MIT history of a vehicle online and go down to the recall section. This thought that around 30 people had been killed by the airbags worldwide with many hundreds more injured and at least 42 million cars were recalled in the US alone. It's sad that the scandal went on for so long as these people were relying on their car safety systems to be able to go home after a car crash but sadly these were the exact things that prevented them from seeing their families again. I'm thinking of a scandal scale. Let me know on your thoughts in the comments of how it should take shape. And all that's left to say is Mr Music Man. Play us out please.