France orders extra 800,000 cars off the road over Takata airbag scandal
France is ordering an extra 800,000 cars with Takata airbags to be taken off the road, two weeks after a woman died in the northeastern town of Reims from injuries related to a faulty airbag.
The move is the latest twist in the auto industry's biggest-ever product recall, eight years after the company at the centre of the crisis — Japan's Takata Corp — filed for bankruptcy protection in the US and Japan.
After her 2014 Citroën C3 was hit by a truck, the woman in Reims died when she was struck by a metal piece expelled by an airbag ejected from her car, the Reims prosecutor's office said.
Citing the incident, French transport minister Philippe Tabarot said on Tuesday that all cars with the technology should be recalled, no matter how old they were.
He also ordered all manufacturers to tell drivers in Corsica and other overseas departments to stop driving vehicles with the Takata airbags, whatever their production year, until they are repaired, and issued the same order for all cars with such equipment produced until 2011 in mainland France.
The government had previously said vehicles built between 1998 and 2019, from 30 brands, could potentially be recalled.
According to a ministry estimate based on carmaker data, the expanded recall will bring the total to 2.5-million. Within that total, the ministry has doubled the number of compulsory recalls — so-called 'stop drive' orders — to 1.7-million.
French government spokesperson Sophie Primas said on Wednesday the expanded recall was being undertaken 'out of an abundance of caution'.
Takata, which was mainly acquired by a Chinese-owned, US-based company, said at the time of its bankruptcy filing that it had recalled or expected to recall about 125-million vehicles worldwide by 2019.
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