A Texas teenager, Huma Hanif was killed when the Takata airbag in her Honda Civic exploded as a result of a crash.  Since 2011, the Honda Civic has been recalled multiple times.  According to the victim’s family, they have not received recall notices.

Bob Haenal, an officer at the Fort Bend County Sherriff’s Office, stated that Ms. Hanif was driving on a state road outside of Houston when she ran into the car in front of her.  “Almost like a shotgun blast penetrating and unfortunately this piece struck Huma in the back and took her life. Sad, tragic,” Fort Bend County Sheriff Troy Nehls said.  Huma, who wanted to be a nurse died on the scene.

Lead investigator, Danny Beckworth, stated, “She wasn’t speeding.  The car only had moderate damage.”  “We see crashes like this each and every day,” Nehls said. “She should have walked away from this with very few injuries.”

Please see the video here.

In a statement, Honda confirmed a death in Texas by a rupturing Takata airbag.  A spokesperson for Takata stated, “deeply sorry for all fatalities and injuries that have occurred in any case where a Takata airbag inflater has failed to deploy as intended.”

The real problem that Takata does not want to talk about is that their air bag does not fail “to deploy as intended”. Actually, it deploys much like a shotgun blast, complete with metal shards as bullets. Inferior materials and a poor design have resulted in this dangerous weapon in our cars.

Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat from Florida, said in a statement that the death showed that current recall efforts were falling short.  The Senator stated, “Takata and the automaker have to step up their efforts to locate, notify and fix every impacted car as soon as possible- before anyone else dies.”

It is unclear whether the car had already been recalled when the family acquired the car.  The United States does not require the repair of used vehicles that have been recalled for safety issues before they are sold.

Vehicle owners can go to www.safercar.gov and type in their vehicle identification number to check for recalls.