The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is requiring Japanese auto parts manufacturer Takata to preserve parts of defective airbags that were involved in a widespread recall last year.
{mosads}Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said Wednesday the agency is requiring Takata to keep the inflators that were used in its to defective airbags to preserve the possibility of them being used as evidence in the federal investigation and potential private lawsuits that are being filed by drivers whose cars contained the faulty parts.
“This department is focused on protecting the American public from these defective airbags and at getting to the bottom of how they came to be included in millions of vehicles on U.S. roads,” Foxx said in a statement. “This preservation order will help us get the answers we need to accomplish those goals.”
The defective Takata airbags were used in cars manufactured by companies like Toyota, Lexus and Chrysler.
The recall of the faulty airbags first began in 2008 and grew to include nearly 17 million vehicles, according to the Department of Transportation.
The highway safety agency has come under fire from lawmakers for its handling of both the faulty Takata airbags and widespread recalls at General Motors earlier this year.
NHTSA Administrator Mark Rosekind, who just recently took over the auto watchdog agency, said preserving the faulty airbag parts is essential to the agency’s investigation of the Japanese automaker.
“There is a strong public safety interest in ensuring that testing moves forward, and that NHTSA has access to all test data,” he said. “We have worked closely with attorneys for private plaintiffs to construct this order so that it protects plaintiffs’ legal rights while also supporting our efforts to protect public safety.”