9-Jan-2012 - Wheels Blog: With 39 Million Vehicles, Honda Leads All Manufacturers in Recalls for 2011, Safety Agency Reports

Visted 1 times

2:51 p.m. | Updated Automakers recalled about 15.5 million vehicles last year compared with 20 million in 2010, according to figures released on Friday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The figure was the fourth lowest in the last decade.Honda and its Acura division led all manufacturers with 3.9 million vehicles recalled in 17 actions. The company has had several expansions of a recall for a driver’s side air bag that can inflate too powerfully. Honda has linked the defect to two deaths.Toyota ranked second, with 3.5 million vehicles in 13 recalls, followed by the Ford Motor Company, with 3.3 million vehicles in 13 recalls. General Motors performed the best of the Detroit companies, recalling only 500,000 vehicles compared with 773,000 from Chrysler, despite being involved in an industry-high 22 actions.Chris Martin, a Honda NHL jerseys spokesman, said in a telephone interview Friday afternoon that the numbers released by N.H.T.S.A. did not offer a fair comparison among automakers. Honda’s figure included about 131,000 recalled motorcycles, he said. Meanwhile, the automaker estimated its total passenger-car recalls to be 3.5 million vehicles, which would have put Honda and Toyota at roughly the same level.The safety agency began requiring automakers to recall vehicles in 1966 and has presided over 502 million recalled vehicles to date. The nadir came in 2004, when automakers recalled 30.8 million vehicles.According cheap nba jerseys to Friday’s report, 8.6 million vehicles were recalled last year by automakers after they discovered a safety problem. The remaining 6.8 million vehicles were recalled after N.H.T.S.A. began a defect investigation. In all, the agency began 144 such investigations, the fourth highest number in its history, up from 120 in 2010, when 5.4 million vehicles were recalled after the agency learned of or discovered a problem.Typically, the agency begins a defect investigation after receiving a number of consumer complaints at its Web site. Such complaints may ultimately lead to the automaker acknowledging a problem and carrying out a recall.While many automakers tend to describe these as voluntary recalls, federal regulations require them to inform the agency within five business days of their plans for a recall after becoming aware of a safety problems or face civil penalties.In addition to the vehicles, the agency reported that there were about 794,000 child safety seats recalled in one action resulting from an agency investigation, in addition to almost 447,000 tires in three separate actions.The NFL jerseys chart below indicates how many recalls were conducted by each major automaker, as well as the total number of vehicles for each company.

Comments (0)Post Comment View Whole Blog