Exploding Air Bag Kills Driver Leading to Recall

Sadly, there has been another air bag explosion leading to a fatality. We have grown to feel safe with air bags in our cars, but it seems to be a mix of good news and bad news in the air bag world. The good news is they save lives. The bad news is they take lives.

Metal fragments from an exploding air bag inflator killed the driver of an older Volvo, touching off a U.S. recall of up to 54,000 cars, regulators said Saturday.

The inflator in question was made by auto parts supplier ZF/TRW. However, government documents show the devices performed closely to deadly inflators made by Takata. If you remember, a few years ago that problem caused the largest series of auto recalls in U.S. history, with at least 63 million inflators recalled.

Fox 17 reported NHTSA said the ZF/TRW inflator rupture that caused the death is the only known incident worldwide.

But, for safety sake the recall covers the older model Volvo S60 and S80 cars from the 2001 through 2003 model years. Volvo said it will replace the driver’s air bag at no cost to customers.

Over the course of time, at least 26 people have been killed worldwide by the inflators, including 17 in the United States.

NHTSA said Saturday that the ZF/TRW inflators did not use ammonium nitrate to inflate the air bags as the Takata air bags did.

Volvo lovers love their cars, and Volvo says in documents posted by NHTSA that registration data found about 13,800 of the recalled cars are still in use.

If you are an owner, you'll be hearing from Volvo very soon!