The expanded Takata recalls dominating the news on Friday reinforces the need for automakers to get more proactive in informing consumers, says a senior analyst with Kelley Blue Book.

In comments the company shared Friday with the media, KBB senior analyst Rebecca Lindland said automakers impacted by the Takata airbag crisis shouldn’t rely on consumers to do the legwork when it comes to figuring out if their cars are affected.

The car makers, she said, should be researching and “aggressively” contacting consumers. And assume nothing.

“Auto manufacturers can't expect consumers to proactively research whether their car has a Takata airbag. The manufacturers need to exhaustively research and aggressively reach out to owners to get the airbags fixed,” Lindland said.

“Every brand should not assume they are immune from this unless they know 100 percent they've never contracted with Takata at any level,” she added. “This is a widespread issue, and there could be many dangerous vehicles unwittingly on the road.” 

And while the Volkswagen emissions crisis has been front-and-center and somewhat pushed this issue to the back-burner, this latest turn of events puts the Takata crisis back on the forefront.

“The Takata airbag issue had fallen from the front page, overshadowed by the Volkswagen emissions scandal, but it is now regaining its top-of-mind status based on the expected expansion of the recall and a fatality that allegedly resulted from a faulty airbag,” said Jack Nerad, executive editorial director and analyst at Kelley Blue Book.

“Since Takata airbags were used so extensively by so many manufacturers it is difficult for consumers to determine if their vehicle might be covered by one of the airbag-related recalls and that could leave potentially dangerous vehicles on the road.”

Details of action

Gordon Trowbridge — the communications director for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration — said in an email that NHTSA, at this stage, estimates that 5 million vehicles are affected by the expansions in the airbag-related recalls. This is based on Takata data, he said.

NHTSA has received two filings from Takata —one regarding the SDI model inflator and one regarding the PSDI-5 model inflator — and expects to release them in coming days, Trowbridge said Monday.

“We cannot yet say with certainty how many new vehicles this will add to the recall total. That’s because the numbers generally change once the auto manufacturers comb through their record to identify affected vehicles, and in part because some number of these vehicles are already under recall for their passenger-side air bag inflator,” Trowbridge said in the email. “For instance, the 2004-05 Ford Ranger was already under recall for passenger-side replacements.”

The SDI filing resulted from a “field rupture” during a fatal crash of a 2006 Ford Ranger in late December in South Carolina.  Meanwhile, test data indicated ruptures in the PSDI-5 model.

“We believe Takata’s defect filing involving its PSDI-5 model inflator will affect Honda, Audi, BMW, Mercedes Benz, Saab and Volkswagen. The filing involving the SDI model we expect to affect Audi, Daimler Trucks, Ford, Mazda and Volkswagen,” Trowbridge said.