Is your family safe from a defective automobile air bag?

With so many cars being recalled over defective air bags during the last several years, how do you know for sure that your automobile doesn’t have one of these problematic safety devices installed? The problem is, you don’t know. Every other week, it seems like a new carmaker is announcing the recall of hundreds of thousands — or millions — of vehicles because the air bags inside them could cause more harm than good.

The latest automaker to announce a recall was Kia. According to Kia, 507,000 of its Kia Sorentos, Kia Fortes, Kia Optimas and Kia Optima Hybrids have been affected by this recall. If you own one of these cars — especially if they’re from the years 2010 to 2013 — call your local dealership immediately to determine if you’re driving a defective and potentially deadly Kia. However, don’t expect to get your car fixed. At this time, Kia says it doesn’t have a recall repair that applies to this problem. Kia, the German automotive parts maker that built the defective part in the air bags and Takata, the maker of the air bag, have yet to determine a workable solution.

Fortunately, this Takata air bag problem is not as severe as others, which have caused air bags to literally blow up like grenades inside passenger compartments throughout the world. In this latest Takata recall from Kia, the air bags simply fail to deploy as a result of short-circuited controllers in the devices. Nevertheless, deployment failures are not an insignificant issue. Kias affected by this recall — and Hyundais equipped with the same air bags — have caused four fatalities and six injuries so far.

While vehicle owners are waiting for a fix to this problem, they might consider keeping their Kias in the garage. In addition, people who have been catastrophically hurt by these air bags — and family members of fatally injured victims — may want to learn more about their legal rights and options under Georgia personal injury law.

Source: Digital Trends, “Kia recalls half a million vehicles in the U.S. due to airbag problem,” Trevor Mogg, June 11, 2018