Honda Motor Co. asked a third party to determine whether the automaker underreported fatality and injury claims to the U.S. government, which is investigating air-bag failures with potentially deadly defects.
The third-party audit began in September and Honda will soon share its findings with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Tokyo-based company said in an e-mailed statement. Honda disclosed the audit after The Center for Auto Safety, a watchdog group, said the company didn’t report at least two injury-and-death incidents to NHTSA and called for the U.S. Justice Department to conduct a criminal investigation.
Honda said it excluded verbal claims of fatalities and injuries in reports to NHTSA until last month, a practice it says accounted substantially for the fewer reported incidents compared with other automakers. The Center for Auto Safety said Honda’s failure to share the information hampered the U.S. government’s oversight and efforts to spot auto-defect patterns.
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