NHTSA Director's Car Recalled For Deadly Airbags, And Was Informed None Were Available

A family car owned by the nation’s top auto safety regulator’s family has been recalled to fix a faulty Takata air bag, but like millions of others, he’s waiting for parts to make the repair.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration chief Mark Rosekind said Wednesday that a car normally driven by his wife was recalled to fix an air bag inflator. When she checked the vehicle identification number in a recall database, she found there were no replacement inflators available, Rosekind said after an autonomous-car conference in Dearborn, Michigan.

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TheSteve - 3/17/2016 11:26:54 AM

+1 Boost

Lawmakers and bureaucrats need to understand that in a capitalist society, it does not make sense to have a factory with idle capacity, because it makes a business uncompetitive paying for all that unused capacity. That's why it's actually HARD for a company to quickly fix a massive wrong, like expecting Takata to quickly replace millions upon millions or bad/suspect airbags with proven good ones, or to get VW to quickly remedy over 10 million cars whose emissions don't meet legal requirements.

It's one of the reasons why it's such a huge problem.

Vette71 - 3/17/2016 12:51:38 PM

+3 Boost

"Just in time" manufacturing means just that, inventory gets to the assembly line just as it is needed. There is no buffer. It is a key part of better quality, as any defective parts get spotted changes can be made upstream quickly and implemented so as not produce more bad products. The downside is that in a situation where a lot of bad product is already out in the field there isn't extra capacity to produce a lot of new replacement parts. In the Takata case it is even worse as the industry doesn't have another design in place and tested to replace the bad design that is out there.

The head of the NHTSA should know that statistically his family has a very very low risk of an incident. Indeed his agency makes those kinds of decisions every day about all of our lives. Society cannot pay for "zero risk" solutions, and his family has to take some risk along with the rest of us. Loaner cars for 24M effected vehicles? No way. He of all people should not get one. Let him lease a vehicle without Takada bags.

MDarringer - 3/17/2016 10:18:43 PM

+2 Boost

OMG! The DeMoncrats need to pass more laws and write more executive orders.