The death of a new motorist on a road in Guadalupe at the end of March is “linked to the beginning” with a defective air bag of the Japanese manufacturer Takata, said the office of the prosecutor of Pointe-à-Pitre on Monday. The Takata Airbags scandal has been shaking the automotive sector since 2014, forcing in recent months to the immobilization of hundreds of thousands of vehicles by many manufacturers to change this equipment at the origin of more than a dozen deaths in France.
“The autopsy confirmed that death is directly linked to the airbag explosion” in an accident on the town of the mold, in Guadalupe, on March 25, the AFP confirmed to the Pointe-à-Pitre prosecutor, Caroline Calbo.
“We seize the investigating judge of involuntary homicide” and she “is closing her instruction on the Takata air bags for the divestment for the benefit of the investigation judge of Jirs (specialized interregional jurisdiction) of Paris,” he added.
The Foreign Ministry requested the regrouping of the Jirs in Paris of all the surveys carried out on the consequences of the failures of these air bags, in particular those related to the homicide. Until Monday’s announcement of a new victim linked to these Takata air bags, the Ministry of Transportation listed 29 accidents that caused 11 deaths abroad and one in Continental France.
A “worried” vehicle for the recovery campaign
The victim in Guadalupe, at the wheel of a Toyota Hilux, directed a “not very recent” vehicle and “worried” about the retirement campaign -Toyota and Mercedes said in April that he had to remove twenty models marketed between 2001 and 2018 -, Charles -Henri Coppet, a lawyer who took care of “11 families of deceased and 12 wounds, said AFP and 12 lesures. If the victim had received or not a letter that notified such a reminder, said the Council, which became a civil party.
The accident between the victim’s vehicle and a truck had occurred in an area considered dangerous, firefighters said on the night of the events. The man, “caught in his vehicle”, had been “extracted upon the arrival of firefighters” while he was in cardiovpiratory arrest, according to the same source.
Due to a poorly aged gas, Takata Airbags is likely to fail exploiting pieces on the faces of the drivers. Its degradation accelerates under warm and humid climates.
Source: BFM TV
