Airbag tragedies may drive calls for change

While recalls over potential faults in cars are headline news in western nations, drivers in Asia are more vulnerable as the controls are far less stringent, writes Shamim Adam

THE warning came seconds before impact — “Mummy — car!”

Welhelmo Rodriguez Caido Jr, 41, blurted out the warning as he was riding in the passenger seat of a Honda City driven by his wife, whom he endearingly called Mummy. A moment later, as they entered an intersection in the Malaysian town of Sibu on July 27, a collision with an oncoming car set off the airbag with such force it knocked Caido out.

On the driver’s side, the inflator inside the airbag, made by Takata, malfunctioned and ruptured, firing a 1in-wide shard of metal into the neck of his wife, Law Suk Leh.

Law, 43, who was eight-and-a-half months pregnant, died on the way to the hospital, becoming the first reported casualty outside the US in the deepening airbag crisis gripping the industry.

In the US, Takata airbags, used by carmakers including Toyota, Honda and General Motors, have been tied to four deaths and at least 139 injuries.

“Takata deeply regrets the injuries and fatalities that have occurred in accidents involving ruptured airbag inflators,” chairman Shigehisa Takada said. Hideyuki Matsumoto, a spokesman for Takata, declined to comment specifically on the Malaysian accident.

Unlike in western nations, drivers are at risk in Asian countries where car safety regulations lag and authorities wash their hands of any duty to alert drivers of potentially lethal defects.

“The incident is probably a wake-up call for Malaysia and other Asian countries,” said Jochen Siebert, managing director at JSC Automotive Consulting. “People in Malaysia and other Asian countries will now ask Honda about whether their cars are affected. This will force governments to speed to the process of formalisation of regulation of safety in cars.”

Caido’s second-hand 2003 Honda wasn’t among the more than 13m vehicles recalled worldwide because of defective Takata airbags. Honda called back another 170,000 vehicles last month after investigating the Malaysia death, Kosuke Kachi, a Tokyo-based spokesman, said.

In the US, the national highway traffic safety administration (NHTSA) has issued several warnings on the matter and pushed carmakers to hasten their recalls. Takata rejected its demand to expand the safety campaign nationwide, NHTSA said. The agency said it would review the airbag-maker’s response and determine the next steps.

Even so, NHTSA is still being accused by members of the US Congress for not doing enough. Politicians are questioning Tokyo-based Takata through hearings reminiscent of the scrutiny faced by GM this year over faulty ignition switches and Toyota for unintended acceleration in 2009-2010. The media reported on the issue as front-page news.

The Malaysian police are leaving it up to Honda and Takata to inform the public of their faulty airbags and aren’t planning any public service campaigns to spread the message wider, said Mohd Fuad Abdul Latiff, Malaysia’s federal traffic police chief. “Our responsibility ends there,” Mohd Fuad said. Prosecutors will now pick up the case. The transport ministry did not comment.

Honda didn’t disclose the Malaysia accident until November 13, though it learned in August of the incident that resulted in the deaths of Law and her unborn child. Honda, Japan’s third- largest carmaker, would disclose about two weeks later that it had underreported injuries and deaths from vehicle defects 1,729 times in the US over 11 years, eight of those cases involving ruptures of a Takata airbag inflator.

“We apologise to the people who died in Honda cars equipped with Takata-made airbags as well as their families, and we want to send our sincere condolence,” said Atsushi Ohara, a spokesman for Honda. “We will exert every effort to replace the parts for vehicles subjected to recalls.”

Most Asian vehicle-safety supervision lags behind the US. The United Nations estimates that more than 700,000 lives are lost each year through traffic accidents, costing 1%-3% of gross national product in economic losses. One key challenge is the availability of reliable and regular accident and fatality data, which is collected by different ministries and agencies. The lack of mechanisms to share information results in uncoordinated responses, the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific said.

The lack of widespread knowledge of the Takata airbag defect may be particularly dangerous in Asia. Takata has said that the airbags are most prone to malfunction in humid environments, which characterises most of Asia’s developing countries.

Asians also don’t have the same avenues to seek legal recourse against manufacturers. At least nine cases have been filed this year in US courts claiming deaths or personal injuries caused by exploding Takata airbags. Takata also faces at least 50 proposed class actions in the US brought by customers seeking payment for alleged losses in vehicle value connected to the recalls, with Honda named in all but two of these cases.

Most Asian countries, by contrast, have restrictions on group litigation.

July 27 began as a “wonderful Sunday” for Caido, his wife and their son, Welhelm, 7. Caido didn’t get to spend much time with his family after he joined Adinin Works & Engineering over a year ago as an electrician in an offshore rig, where he’d spend eight-week stretches with two-week breaks.

Even the heat — it was Sibu’s hottest day of the year, with temperatures of 37C — didn’t distract from the day.

The family had come there two days earlier from their home in Brunei to visit relatives before making their way to Kuching, the capital of the Malaysian state of Sarawak, where Law was due to deliver her second baby on August 16.

Caido had been with Law for 10 years and got married in 2009. The family was excited about their second child, who would be named Elsa after the snow queen featured in Walt Disney’s animated hit Frozen. Their son chose the name.

That evening, the couple went to church and left their son behind with his grandparents because he was hyperactive. They took their car, a Honda City that Law bought around 2005, with seats wrapped in plastic and still in good condition. During the drive home, they talked about the coming baby and how they would care for her.

Then at around 7.40pm came the intersection.

The car opposite Caido’s was a Toyota Corolla Altis. The driver was headed for the night market with his brother, their girlfriends and a couple of cousins.

As the driver began a right turn, his uncle, who was in a separate car behind him, honked at him to indicate he was going the wrong way. The driver said he tried to slow down when the collision occurred, though the impact wasn’t very hard.

Caido recalls the accident as more like a “bump” than a full-on collision. As he awoke from a few seconds of unconsciousness, he turned to his side and said, “Mummy, are you OK?” She didn’t respond. He quickly got out and rushed to open her door.

“I saw a lot of blood coming out from her neck,” Caido said late last month in his first media interview. “I started panicking.”

Caido tried to cover the wounds with his hands. He then shouted for assistance to remove her from the car and bring her to the hospital. Someone said they had called an ambulance.

“I said I could not wait for the ambulance and please, please if anyone could help us,’” Caido said.

Bystanders, including passengers in the Toyota, helped Caido move his wife onto the back of a Toyota Hilux pick-up truck. One witness at the scene said Law was still alive gasping for breath, though bleeding profusely.

As they rushed toward the hospital, Caido was holding his bleeding wife, uttering “don’t leave me, don’t leave me, don’t leave me”.

About 10 minutes later, they spotted an ambulance, and waved it down. As the paramedics transferred his blood-soaked wife and tried to save her, Caido sat down in the ambulance and began to pray.

At the Sibu Hospital, a doctor, after learning the length of the pregnancy, told Caido they would remove the 37-week-old foetus from the womb. While Caido didn’t yet know if his wife was alive, she had been pronounced dead on arrival.

An emergency caesarean section was performed on Law, and Elsa was rushed to the neonatal intensive care unit. Her heartbeat was weak as her mother’s death deprived her of oxygen.

A hospital staff member soon delivered the news that his wife was gone and that their baby was in critical condition.

“I was shaking,” Caido said, his voice breaking in anguish. “I could not believe it.”

That night, he returned from the hospital and went to bed with his son. In the coming days, he explained to Welhelm that his mother was in heaven, unable to tell him directly that she had died.

On July 29, two days after the accident, Caido was told Elsa wouldn’t make it because her heart was too weak. The hospital told Caido they’d detach the ventilator sustaining Elsa so he could hold his baby for the last time.

“I told her to take care of her Mummy wherever they go,” Caido said in tears. “She slowly died in my arms.”