Toyota has issued a do-not-drive order for some older Corollas and RAV4s. It’s part of a years-long effort to persuade U.S. drivers to fix cars with defective Takata airbags.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
OK, to news that Toyota has issued a do-not-drive order for some older Corollas and RAV4s. The advisory has lots of words in all caps – words like urgent, serious injury and death. And there is good reason for these words, as NPR’s Camila Domonoske is here to explain. Hey, Camila.
CAMILA DOMONOSKE, BYLINE: Hi, Mary Louise.
KELLY: OK, tell me more. What is this do-not-drive order about?
DOMONOSKE: Well, it’s the latest in the Takata air bag saga. So starting decades ago, Takata, this company, manufactured air bag inflators that turned out to be extremely dangerous. These air bags didn’t just inflate. They would explode, sending metal shrapnel through the car, which is exactly as bad as it sounds and has caused injuries and deaths. And it sparked this enormous recall – tens of millions of vehicles, a whole bunch of brands. For years, regulators and companies have been trying to get all these vehicles fixed.
So this is not a new recall from Toyota. This is Toyota trying to draw attention to this existing recall. And it is not just one company. There are lots of vehicles where nobody’s brought them in for the fix yet, so folks are still driving around with these dangerous air bags.
KELLY: OK. And you said the existing recall was tens of millions of vehicles. Is that how many we’re talking about for this latest warning?
DOMONOSKE: Well, tens of millions of vehicles were recalled. A lot of them have been fixed. But millions still have not been fixed, right? So that’s a problem in itself. It’s a potentially deadly defect. The fix for it is totally free. Then, this do-not-drive order, it’s for a subset of those vehicles that are extra dangerous. So Toyota’s new order – it’s about 50,000 vehicles. But there are other vehicles that…
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