NHTSA Orders Recall of 5.9 Million General Motors Vehicles with Takata Airbags

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is ordering the recall of nearly six million General Motors vehicles in the United States due to faulty Takata airbags airbag inflators. The action impacts an array of trucks and SUVs produced by the automaker from 2007 through 2014.

Paul Eisenstein is the producer of the automotive website, The Detroit Bureau. He says the automaker now has 30 days to submit a recall plan to federal regulators.

“My guess is that GM will initially target older vehicles.” — Paul Eisenstein, The Detroit Bureau

“One of the big concerns that safety advocates have,” says Eisenstein, “is whether or not GM will be able to get everybody with these potentially dangerous airbags to in fact come back to dealers and get the repairs made.”

Eisenstein says the process could cost the automaker more than a billion dollars and take years to carry out. He says the effort could be complicated by the availability of replacement parts.

“My guess is that GM will initially target older vehicles. The ones whose airbags are most likely to go defective, be defective first and then they will phase it in.”

Eisenstein says General Motors could prioritize parts of the country with high humidity in its recall plan, as that environment can exacerbate the problem that makes the airbags fail.