[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Pages 1372-1373]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             TAKATA AIRBAGS

  Mr. NELSON. Madam President, we have had quite a running story about 
the maker of inflatable airbags, which are usually in the steering 
wheel of an automobile and also over on the passenger side. These 
airbags have saved countless lives. Yet what we have found is that a 
manufacturer named Takata from Japan has consistently had different 
airbags under recall. Well, we just found out yesterday that another 
one of the automobile manufacturers that uses Takata airbags has now 
had a further recall just yesterday with 2.2 million of their vehicles. 
Why? Because of defective airbags.
  These bags are supposed to save lives, not harm and kill lives. Yet I 
remember the lady in Orlando who had a minor fender-bender collision in 
an intersection, and her air bag deployed. When the police got there, 
they thought there was a homicide. Her neck was lacerated, and she bled 
to death. There is a fireman, also near Orlando, who will never be a 
fireman again because he lost his right eye after the explosion of the 
air bag. The airbag is defectively manufactured and explodes with such 
force that the air bag becomes a hand grenade which explodes, and 
pieces of shrapnel fly into the face of the driver or the passenger.
  In the case of the lady in Orlando, her jugular was slashed and she 
was killed. We have seen a score of these deaths around the country. 
There was recently another one from a defective Takata airbag in South 
Carolina. There are now well over 20 million vehicles that have been 
recalled.
  I will be talking to the head of the National Highway Transportation 
Safety Administration and will be asking all of these questions about 
safety, such as this: Why are we having the drip, drip, drip of recalls 
here and recalls there? Why isn't this agency taking an aggressive 
approach and going after all of these inflaters?
  It is expected that it is the explosive compound ammonium nitrate 
that becomes extremely explosive when exposed to humidity and causes 
the metal to shred and, therefore, go right into the very driver or the 
passenger it was intended to save.
  This is a matter of grave concern, and now the latest news is that 
Honda has recalled over 2 million more vehicles nationwide. There have 
been over 20 million vehicles that have been recalled worldwide. We 
have to get to the bottom of this and get those defective airbags out 
of the steering wheels of those cars and replace them with safe 
airbags.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.

[[Page 1373]]



                          ____________________