dicer

New cars are still being made with the bad bags. And many of the recalled replacements will need to be re replaced.
http://asq.org/qualitynews/qnt/execu...p?newsID=21826

When you see the pictures of a persons eye with a piece of metal imbedded in it, that does make you think about the danger of the device in your steering wheel.
And takata or not, if a person is short and over weight and has their stomach with in 2 inches of the steering wheel and also has their pet poodle near by, bad things could happen. People with medical conditions and that have to sit so close can have the airbag disabled at the dealer, they can tell you how.
Also here is more information.
http://www.autonews.com/article/2014...called-airbags

Personally I would like to know what the fix is for the bad inflaters? I know what one of the main problems is, the material is not strong enough for the pressures it has to hold. So not only should it be much thicker and stronger material maybe it needs a safety valve as well. If I remember right when air bags first came out they were inflated by a high pressure gas canister of sorts.

Some more info, and how come just passenger side? Most all the accident reports I had seen showed a problem with the driver side.
https://techinfo.toyota.com/techInfo...2gg2hlofaq.pdf

alexulan

I received my notice a few days ago. Subscribed. LOL at "don't use the front passenger seat" in the advisory. Ah OK.. It's only been in use for last seven years! DOH!

PoorES

You can request a car from Lexus if you need to use the passenger seat.

alexulan

Say What? How does that work? They give you a loaner indefintely until they fix the airbags?

hw10

My wife and I planning a road trip in September so I called Lexus dealer because of air bag problem. They want to rent us a Ford Focus from Enterprise!!!! Just got off phone with local Lexus dealer and told them this is unacceptable. Need comparable size vehicle and both my wife and I have back problems. Just wondering if anyone has had any success with a better rental from Lexus.

ESh

Guys, just drive those cars and don't panic.

dicer

No rental car is going to have a better airbag. Read the links above even new cars as we write here are being sold with the same defective airbags. All air bags should be disabled until they can prove they are being engineered correctly and aren't going to spew metal into your body. Now even another manufacture has had problems ARC.
They need to design the pressure vessels properly and have a relief valve that lets it exhaust the pressure if it approaches the burst point as well as making them strong enough, sorry using something a little thicker than a tin can packed with an explosive just does not seem very smart.

Blue Moose Engineering

This is a scary problem but when you break down the statistical aggregation that would have to happen for something to actually go wrong, it becomes a lot less scary. Feel free to comment if you think my analysis is wrong:

1. You would need to get in a car accident - I'm having a hard time finding a digestible statistic for this but its either going to be less likely or more likely than you imagine, but still fairly unlikely that it is more than a minor fender bender
2. That accident would need to be the type in which the airbag is deployed - this would basically need to be a fairly severe 11, 12, or 1 oclock angle collision (unlikely). In something like 12% of these, airbags don't even deploy anyway. http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/esv/esv21/09-0199.pdf
3. Your Takata airbag would need to be one of the dangerous ones. We know this problem MAY affect all Takata airbags of a certain lineage, but that it does not actually affect all of them.
4. The potentially dangerous airbag would need to deploy in a way that injures you
5. That injury would then be serious or fatal and not superficial

Seems like a lot of things would have to go wrong in just the right way for you to be one of the unlucky few. Every person has to decide what their own risk tolerance is. For most people, it will be zero.

We had a Fit that was affected by this. I was taking the rational stance that I outlined above but my wife just wasn't having it, so we traded it in and bought a 2006 Pilot...four weeks later the announcement comes out that the Pilot AND my 2006 TL are both on the list, as well as my father-in-law's 2007 ES350...we just can't escape it. Apparently it's only the passenger side airbag on the Pilot.

recalled35

I have been a Lexus/Toyota customer for decades, but this will be my last one. My ES350 has a wait of 18-24 months for repair of airbag; I've been offered a rental car that is not acceptable AND I have no means to store two cars (required by the dealer). While I agree the odds of a passenger being injured, the problem for me is one of liability. If I allow a passenger to sit in the front seat and if there is an "event", Lexus is attempting to pass the liability to me.
So because I must have front seat passengers, I now have to sell the car. Based on the best information I have, it is worth approximately $2,000 less than it was before the recall. It is Lexus' responsibility to repair defective cars - and if they cannot, they should make the owners whole in a situation where the owner is forced to sell. Of course, they don't see it that way.
I've been a happy Lexus owner; soon to be a former Lexus owner. I will, however, monitor the 'landscape'; I'm sure there will be a class action lawsuit v. Toyota for "diminished value" - they have had to settle them before.. (and Yes, my car is "high risk" - nearly ten years old and i live in a southern coastal area with very high humidity. Yet still, the wait is 18-24 months.

Blue Moose Engineering

You are absolutely right regarding liability and remedy. We were able to convince a local dealership to buy out the last $1000 of the lease on our Fit, but they did it because they wanted to sell us the Pilot and not because they felt they owed us anything for the airbag problem.

Honda's response was just as miserable...actually it was worse because they were all out of rental cars.

ragent

What they did with me is send me to Enterprise Rent-A-Car where I had to rent a car with my own credit card and then at the end of the month submit the receipt to the dealership.
The problem is that this was done a month ago and I have the charge on my credit card waiting for reimbursement and the second month coming to a close without being reimbursed for the 2nd month. When that charges, there will need to be availability to do another month hold for the next month's rental and I was notified that this could go on for 6 months to a year.
My only other option would be to turn in the rental, drive my car and accept liability for the danger from the airbags. I'm totally frustrated at this point. The monthly charge is $1350 with Enterprise.

recalled35

Well, I can't do the Enterprise option at all because I have no means to keep two cars (and Lexus insisted I had to keep both). For up to TWO YEARS. So i have no choice but to sell my Lexus as their "accommodations" are not reasonable, at least for me. The best I can determine is that the current "Diminished Value" of my car from the day before their recall letter to the day after is somewhere around $2,000-$3,000. And I believe Lexus owes me that. Which I am pursuing. They will say "oh, there are so many manufacturers impacted", which is true. But i know of NO other manufacturer who thinks it is reasonable to tell their customers to drive without a passenger for two years. Or drive a rental that is not comparable. It is enormously frustrating. I have decided on the car I will be buying, and it most certainly is neither a Lexus nor a Toyota. More to come as I purse my claim for "Diminished Value" due to their handling of this.

Blue Moose Engineering

This is tough. I don't know if the industry has ever seen a recall of this scale. There are a lot of things happening here. The failure itself is particularly scary, just from an imaginative fear standpoint. I think we all picture getting in a head-on collision and receiving a shotgun blast to the chest. Reality is one thing and our imagination is another.

We tried to get the rental car in exchange for the Fit and all the local rental shops were all out and the dealers were out of loaners. There just aren't enough rental cars and airbags to go around.

recalled35

I am concerned about safety of passengers, of course. But I am also very concerned about the liability of putting someone in that seat after I have been warned not to. If Lexus sent me a letter saying that it was safe to put a passenger up there (and therefor accepting the liability they SHOULD be accepting instead of passing it on to customers), I'd feel a little better about it all.
But they are not doing that and won't do that.

ragent

I don't blame you. Now I wish I had just gone ahead and traded my car. Enterprise is giving me luxury cars to drive but putting up my money in advance is hard. My husband thought the same as others that I shouldn't worry about the risk, but I consulted both my auto insurance agent and a personal injury attorney. My insurance agent said that since I was put on notice by Lexus, if a passenger were injured in my car it would not be covered and would be my responsibility. The attorney said that it would be a fight to hold Lexus liable since they warned me of the issue and offered the solution that I was forced to accept.