Americans love their cars, but they also love being safe in those cars. Therefore, numerous safety features, such as seat belts and airbags, are installed to help protect us in the event of an auto accident or collision. Recently, the news has been awash with stories about exploding or defective airbags. While the majority of the stories focus on Takata, another manufacturer, Autoliv, is experiencing similar problems itself – and that spells big trouble for Toyota, which ended up recalling 1.4 million Prius and Lexus models.

The Toyota vehicles were parked when the Autoliv-made airbags suddenly activated and fractured, and metal shards of the airbag inflators flew into the cars’ cabins. This sudden deployment resulted from poor welding done on the inflators. Between 2010 and 2012, Autoliv hired a subcontractor who welded some parts of the inflators improperly and strayed from the normal welding process. Like with Takata’s airbags, high temperatures played a role in the sudden deployment as the summer heat caused the compressed gas, used to help inflate Autoliv-made airbags, to pressurize too fast and the inflators to break in two.

What are Autoliv and Toyota doing to address the problem?

Toyota issued a worldwide recall of its vehicles for repair, and Autoliv agreed and started fixing or replacing the problematic airbags. Recalling vehicles and repairing them is the best option; it is smart business move to ask owners of vehicles with problematic airbags to bring their vehicles in for repair. We are worried, however, whether or not the problem might occur when a car is moving as opposed to only when it is parked. Thankfully, no one has been injured so far, but we have no way of telling whether or not that was a happy accident, or if more trouble is brewing.

We hope these manufactures are doing the right thing and assuring the safety of their products; however, in the meantime, we must continue drive safely and do our own checks on our cars. You never know what is going to happen.

If you sustained injuries in an auto accident due to defective parts, the Sevierville auto accident attorneys at Delius & McKenzie can help. We have represented car crash victims throughout Sevier County and the state of Tennessee. For more information, please call us at (865) 428-8780 or fill out our contact form. We proudly serve Sevierville, Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge and Seymour.