Recall woes: Why are there still 12,700 cars with defective airbags on Singapore’s roads?

SINGAPORE – Have you ever wondered if your car’s airbag is in good condition? Unlike the headlights, there is no way for a driver to tell if an airbag is in working order, short of driving headlong into a tree.

After that, it is likely you will need new headlights, and possibly a new tree.

On Feb 2, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) said there are around

12,700 vehicles in Singapore with defective Takata airbags that have yet to be fixed.

This comes 11 years after news broke that more than 75,000 vehicles in Singapore were affected by the global recall. While Takata is a Japanese company, all major carmakers use its airbags.

If not for the 10-year lifespan of the certificate of entitlement (COE), which forces cars to be scrapped, there would be even more unrectified cars out there. And the risk is real.

Since news of the defect surfaced in 2013, 35 people globally have been killed by the faulty airbags. This includes a 2022 case in Singapore where a metal fragment released by

a Takata airbag in a traffic accident killed the driver.

The defective airbag in the Singapore case was not replaced because the owner, who had bought the car used, was not informed about the recall. The dealer who sold the car to the first owner was a parallel importer that has since folded, so the critical communication link was broken.

Parallel importers tend to be less capable in handling recalls than authorised distributors. This is because these importers, who source their cars from resellers overseas, do not have direct contact with the carmakers, so they may not be as well informed about recall details.

If a parallel importer has gone out of business, the authorised distributor of the brand can possibly step in to help, even though it may not be obligated to.

For a fee, Toyota’s agent, Borneo Motors, “adopts” parallel imported cars, bridging the link with the carmaker. Given that Toyotas make up a good chunk of the parallel-imported car population, this is certainly a responsible move by the dealer.

The Takata recall has been well publicised because of the scale and severity. But recalls are quite common overall.

BMW is in the midst of a global recall affecting hundreds of thousands of cars, because of an engine starter that can spark a fire. Singapore is said to have just over 2,000 cars that are affected, including the current 3-series, 5-series and the Z4. Hopefully, it does not take a decade to fix all of them.

There is a real need to get the defects fixed – not just for the sake of the driver and the occupants of the affected vehicles, but also for everyone and everything around the affected cars.

In the past six months, 33 recall notices have been posted on the LTA’s Electronic Vehicle Recall System. These include some Hyundai Ioniq 6 electric cars with charging port doors that can fall off and Toyota Prius cars with rear doors that do not close properly. Some Nissan Qashqais need a fix to the fuel pipe mounting.

Motor dealers are required to report recalls to LTA, which seems straightforward enough.

They also have to inform the affected owners and rectify the fault. This is not so easy if the car has been sold or the owner has changed his contact details. To find out, the dealers have to check with the LTA for the latest information.

On their part, vehicle owners can log on to the LTA’s OneMotoring website to see if there is an ongoing recall for their cars. They need to log in with their Singpass and the portal will pull out the information. But realistically, it is hard to imagine people doing so frequently or regularly, if at all.

In an age when everything seems to be loaded into a digital database somewhere, surely the process can be improved.

Communication channels to inform affected car owners already exist. With other vehicle-related matters, such as periodic inspections, the LTA notifies the owner with a message to the registered mobile phone number. Perhaps when a vehicle is affected by a recall, the owner can be told in the same way?

And let us not forget the on-board unit that has been making its way into every registered vehicle on the road. Scheduled to be mandatory by Jan 1, 2027, the gadget, which is part of Singapore’s transition to the next-generation Electronic Road Pricing system, could go beyond pushing out information such as road conditions and bus lane warnings to also alert motorists that their car has a safety risk and needs attention.

And to ensure the owners take the vehicles in for rectification, it could be made a requirement for road tax renewal. After all, if there is an unresolved safety recall, why should the vehicle be allowed on the road?