Juanjo was a neighbor of Benazacón (Seville). He was 44 years old when on August 5, 2023 he suffered an accident on the A-4 road at the height of Dos Hermanas (Seville). The driver died after hitting his Mercedes Vito with a Peugeot 308 who was stopped by a breakdown. But what should be an accident without mortal consequences thanks to the airbag became the opposite.
In fact, it was precisely The airbag that ended his lifesince its explosion was uncontrolled, causing “a penetrating wound in the right hemithorax with internal hemorrhage” caused by the expulsion of metal parts that acted as shrapnel when the airbag inflated. That is the conclusion reached by the Forensic Report.
Juanjo’s name is fictional but the rest of the story is completely true, as reflected ABC. The newspaper explains that this Sevillian driver circulated exceeding the maximum permitted blood alcohol limits when the clash occurred but that it was a Takata airbag that really ended his life.
This person was, in fact, the first deadly victim registered in our country as a direct consequence of these airbags. The airbags of this company should serve to protect the lives of drivers but for years it is known that they are, in fact, a weapon against the passenger itself in case of accident.
Now, the driver’s family ensures that a complaint Against Mercedes-Benz, who claims economic compensation for death, after keeping a negotiation route that has not fruitful.
Although after this fact Another deceased has also been counted In our country with these Takata airbags involved, that of this Sevillian driver was the first case and the future of the possible complaint can be the case of a new fatal accident.
The Takata case
In Xataka We have contacted Mercedes to learn about the company’s position before this case but, when writing these lines, we have not obtained an answer.
What we do know is that in 2020 The world He collected a review call of up to nine models of Mercedes (each of them with different generations). In the list detailed by the company was not the Mercedes Vito But in the newspaper it was detailed that the company had called for review to the predecessors of class V and this van.
The company also has a Web page in which the VIN number can be introduced to check if a concrete unit is affected by a revision call by the defective Airbags of Takata.
And it is that the damage that the company did is difficult to calculate. In Spain, tens of thousands of affected cars have been called to review but it is believed that there are more than 12,000 of them who have ignored the passage through the workshop. In France it is estimated that there are 1.7 million cars affected and In the United States It was said that since 2008 almost 30 million of these airbags have been withdrawn in constant call calls.
The big problem is that the Takata scandal inluó a good part of the automotive industry. Mercedes is not the only one affected, to mention some there are Japanese companies (Honda, Mazda or Toyota), American (Fod, Chrysler or General Motors) and European (Audi, BMW, Citroën or Volkswagen).
To give an example, In 2023 Seat called 300,000 cars to review on the occasion of these defective airbags. These security systems had the problem that, with the passage of time, the gases inside were degraded causing violent explosions that generate shrapnel when exploiting and can seriously damage the driver to the point that he can cause death as in the Sevillian case.
This ruling is present in millions of cars that mounted the airbags of this company Between 2008 and 2019 Therefore, it is still common for manufacturers to make review calls with airbag substitutions if necessary. The company, in fact, ended up hosting bankruptcy in the United States in 2017 as a result of the fines and compensation imposed.
Photo | Rahul Pugazhendi and Mercedes
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