Safety regulators probe airbag deployments in Honda Odyssey vans
Federal safety regulators have opened a probe, looking at whether airbags are deploying without warning in about 320,000 Honda Odyssey vans from the 2003 and 2004 model years.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it has received six driver complaints saying that the front air bags suddenly deployed in their vans, even though they had not been in crashes.
The same problem sparked big recalls by Toyota and Chrysler.
Three of the drivers said they were injured by the unexpected airbag deployment and all six said the airbags went off while they were driving on the road.
NHTSA said it had an additional 41 consumer complaints contending that the vehicle’s air bag warning light illuminated.
Safety regulators are concerned because Chrysler had a similar problem in Jeep Liberty vehicles. Honda purchased the same electronic air bag module for the Odyssey from the same supplier, TRW Automotive Inc., according to NHTSA.
The agency said that it knows of 131 sudden airbag deployments in 2002 and 2003 model year Jeep Liberty SUVs, resulting in 62 injuries consisting of burns, cuts and bruises to the upper body region in people using the vehicle. The problem also affected Jeep Cherokee SUVs and Dodge Vipers, sparking a Chrysler recall of more than 900,000 vehicles.
Toyota also used the part and recalled about 900,000 Toyota Corolla and Matrix compact cars.
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