A woman who died in a car crash last September has been named as the eighth victim killed by defective Takata airbags. The woman rented the Honda Civic with the defective airbag from Sunset Car Rental in San Diego.
by Staff
July 1, 2015
A screen shot of Rick Schostek, executive vice president of Honda North America, at the Senate committee hearing on the Takata air bag recall.
2 min to read
A screen shot of Rick Schostek, executive vice president of Honda North America, at the Senate committee hearing on the Takata air bag recall.
A woman who died in a Los Angeles-area car crash last September has been named as the eight victim killed by defective airbags made by Takata Corp. Honda and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced last week that shrapnel from the exploding airbag caused her death.
The woman, Jewel Brangman, rented a 2001 Civic from Sunset Car Rental in San Diego and was driving in Los Angeles County when the crash occurred. The driver’s airbag inflated with too much force and ejected metal fragments, causing serious injuries that resulted in her death.
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Brangman’s father filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Honda, Takata and Sunset Car Rental.
The lawsuit accuses Sunset Rental of renting the vehicle when it knew about the airbag recall but failed to make the repairs. In June 2014, the 2001 Civic was part of a recall issued by Honda and NHTSA for defects and problems in the Takata driver-side frontal airbag system. Sunset Rental never communicated the potentially dangerous condition of the vehicle to Brangman when she rented it, according to the lawsuit.
“Honda confirmed on Friday that the eighth death linked to a faulty airbag occurred last September in California,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) during a Senate committee hearing on the Takata airbag recall. “This was a rental car from Sunset Car Rental in San Diego that never made the repairs after the recall. I along with Sen. Schumer and others have legislation pending that would prohibit a car from being rented at a rental car agency until open safety recalls are remedied.”
Honda said that the 2001 Civic was purchased by Sunset Rental at an auction. According to Honda, it sent notices of the airbag recall to Sunset Rental, but the repair was never made.
“We notified the auto auction that owned the vehicle before the rental car agency bought it and we also notified the rental car agency,” said Rick Schostek, executive vice president for Honda North America, at the Senate committee hearing on the Takata airbag recall. “Neither of them took the repair. It’s to our everlasting regret that had an impact in this incident.”
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