Nissan to Replace Altima Air Bags
Nissan North America Inc. will recall as many as 198,000 older-model Altima sedans to replace passenger air bags blamed for an unusually high rate of serious eye injuries, the government said Thursday.
The voluntary recall is expected to cost the Gardena-based importer of Nissan vehicles $80 million to $100 million, sources said, to replace passenger-side air bags in 1994 and 1995 Altima models.
The action caps nearly two years of controversy, with Nissan defending the air bags in the face of consumer lawsuits and demands for a replacement program by powerful safety groups such as Public Citizen and the Center for Auto Safety.
Complaints about the Altima air bags prompted more than a dozen lawsuits and an investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. NHTSA will close its probe without issuing a conclusion about whether the air bags are defective.
The air bags were blamed for causing face or eye injuries to 79 people, federal records show. In 37 cases, passengers suffered significant injuries, and 15 people lost some vision or were blinded. No deaths were reported.
Joan Claybrook, president of the Public Citizen advocacy group, said Nissan’s decision was a vindication for consumer groups that have been complaining about the problem for years.
The recall “will prevent passengers from being blinded when these poorly designed air bags literally punch them in the eye,” Claybrook said. “But we cannot lavish much praise on the automaker, because it should have taken this action a long time ago.”
Nissan agreed to replace the air bags at no charge with ones that are less powerful but meet federal safety standards. However, the company continued to insist that its original air bags were not defective.
“The early Altima passenger air bag is not aggressive and ... there is no manufacturing, design or other defect that may result in facial [or] eye injury to the front passenger,” Robert Yakushi, Nissan’s director of product safety, wrote in an April 11 letter to the government.
Instead, he blamed “substantial and sensationalized publicity” by trial lawyers and safety groups for stirring consumer concerns.
The company is acting to “maintain customer confidence” and forestall “adverse consumer reaction to sensationalized publicity,” Yakushi wrote.
Nissan spokesman Scott Vazin said Thursday that NHTSA closed its probe without issuing a finding that there is a safety defect in the 1994-95 Altima air bags, and repeated the company’s position that the voluntary recall “is offered to help maintain owner satisfaction and confidence in their vehicle and the Nissan brand.”
But NHTSA pointedly refused to give the air bags a clean bill of health. The agency said closing the investigation is not an endorsement of Nissan’s assertions that the air bags are problem-free.
“We would not have closed this investigation in the absence of an action that addresses our safety concerns,” NHTSA investigators said, in reference to Nissan’s agreement to replace the air bags.
NHTSA found a higher level of eye-injury complaints from the 1994-95 Altima air bags than from air bags in similar sedans built by other makers and from air bags in later-model Altimas.
Nissan switched to a different type of air bag in the middle of the 1995 model year.
