Air bag recalls involve 1.3 million vehicles in U.S.

The Center for Auto Safety is the nation’s premier independent, member driven, non-profit consumer advocacy organization dedicated to improving vehicle safety, quality, and fuel economy on behalf of all drivers, passengers, and pedestrians.

In one of the biggest auto-safety moves of the year, automakers on Thursday recalled more than 1.3 million vehicles in the U.S., part of 3 million worldwide for faulty air bags that could deploy and injure passengers.

The recall urges owners of certain older Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Mazda, General Motors and BMW vehicles to take their cars to dealerships. There, mechanics may need to replace faulty canisters that contain the propellant that activates air bags.

The issue centers on “over aggressive” propellants in canisters that inflate air bags that could throw off shrapnel or cause bags to rip or tear, reducing their effectiveness in a crash, according to Takata, the Japanese company that manufactured them.

The recall, which has been traced back to a manufacturing defect, is the 11th air bag-related recall in the U.S. this year. For all of 2012, there were 22.

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