Honda may have underreported the number of deaths and injuries related to a defective airbag problem.
With outside pressure mounting, Honda announced it hired an outside firm to determine if it has underreported fatality and injury claims to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The audit of the Japanese maker began last month after the Center for Auto Safety, a safety watchdog group, accused the company of failing to file Early Warning Reports (EWR) for one death and one injury with NHTSA and demanded an investigation by the U.S. Justice Department. The group suggests that those two incidents are indicative of a broader pattern.
“Examination of EWR reports filed by Honda versus GM and Toyota suggest that Honda is systematically under reporting Death and Injury claims against the company,” Clarence Ditlow, the group’s executive director, wrote in the letter to the agency earlier this week.
“In 2013 GM and Toyota respectively reported 1,716 and 1,774 EWR Death and Injury claims to NHTSA while Honda only reported 28. In the first Quarter of 2014, GM reported 505, Toyota 377 and Honda 6. Even Hyundai which sells less than half as many vehicles as Honda reported 110 EWR Death and Injury claims to NHTSA from 2013 thru the first Quarter of 2014 (three times as many reports as Honda).”
Automakers are required under a 2000 law to file quarterly reports to NHTSA about fatalities, injuries, lawsuits, warranty claims and customer complaints. The safety agency is supposed to analyze EWRs to spot trends suggestive of safety defects as soon as possible.
Honda said it has not included “verbal claims” of fatalities and injuries in its reports to NHTSA in the past. Most automakers do include those claims in their injury and death reports to the agency. The maker said it changed its policy and began doing so last month.
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The lack of verbal claims accounts for the substantive disparity in reported incidents compared with other automakers. The Center for Auto Safety said Honda’s failure to share the information hampered the U.S. government’s oversight and efforts to spot auto-defect patterns.
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In Ditlow’s letter to NHTSA he informed the agency about the two incidents – a death in Oklahoma in 2009 and a severe injury in August 2013.
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Ashley Parham died when the driver-side airbag in her 2001 Honda Accord exploded in a parking lot collision. The family sued Honda, but settled for $5,000. In the latter event, the driver of a 2005 Honda Civic was severely injured when the airbag exploded sending shrapnel into her face. In each case, Honda failed to file an Early Warning Report, according to the group.
Ditlow’s group has been calling for action against Honda for several years now related to its Takata-supplied airbags. Takata is a major supplier of airbags. NHTSA officials are investigating the failures of Takata’s airbags and recommended automakers using them recall those vehicles. Many, including Honda, have heeded that suggestion and recalled vehicles with those airbags in them.