According to reports on Wednesday, up to 84,000 cars in Cyprus could be affected by the upcoming recalls announced by the government due to defective airbags.

The reports, which first appeared on the news website Reporter and were then shared by other media outlets, said the Department of Transportation has determined that around 84,000 cars will be affected by the recalls. The reports came after the House Transportation Committee held a closed-door meeting on Tuesday.

After this meeting, Dipa MP Marinos Mousiouttas said that the originally planned recall procedure "did not go as planned because the reaction of the importers did not meet our expectations".

He later added that import companies had " failed to respond adequately " when asked to alert drivers of cars with defective airbags to the potential danger.

The reporter had also said that the Ministry of Transport was "waiting for two responses" from the legal service regarding the decrees it had announced, which provide for a recall of cars with defective airbags.

The editorial team attempted to contact the Ministry of Transport to clarify the nature and status of these requests, but received no response.

The problem of defective airbags concerns products from the company Takata.
Takata airbags have a defect related to exposure to high heat or humidity , which means they are prone to exploding when deployed under such conditions .
This explosion causes the metal airbag inflator to be ejected outward toward the person it is designed to protect, which can cause further injury or, in some cases, death.
The problem of faulty Takata airbags has been around for over two years, and the death of 24-year-old Kyriakos Oxynos in January 2023 is believed to have been partly caused by a faulty airbag .

It is now believed that the death of 19-year-old Styliani Giorgalli in October may have been caused by a defective Takata airbag.

Transport Minister Alexis Vafeades said earlier this month that he was preparing decrees to order the recall of vehicles with defective airbags. He said the decrees would be published "pending the opinion of the Legal Service" and would "concern the management of the entire situation."
According to him, this will involve “among other things, determining which vehicles are affected by recalls, how the recall will be carried out, what the risk assessment will be and what measures need to be taken on the basis of the risk assessment”.

"With the regulations, we want to cover all the issues that arise from the situation and that we will deal with, not just how we will deal with the legislation. The approach will be comprehensive ," he said.

When asked by the Cyprus Mail earlier this month to explain the situation regarding current and future recalls and the possibility of vehicles being excluded from MOT, he said there would be "no hard and fast rule" on how these decisions would be made.

"Decisions on whether certain models will be taken out of service, whether they will not be allowed to undergo MOT or whether they will be recalled cannot be made with a one-size-fits-all policy. The regulations will be specific and depend on the circumstances of the particular vehicle ," he said.

He referred to a similar situation in Australia, where "they looked at the data, did risk assessments and ultimately decided to recall vehicles equipped with only one type of Takata airbag."

To this end, his ministry will issue specific decrees on an ad hoc basis and will not carry out blanket recalls, he said.

Parliament passed a law in December allowing Vafeades to issue decrees recalling faulty vehicles in light of recent problems with defective airbags .
The law also allows the authority to unilaterally set the deadline for carrying out repairs on defective vehicles and for suspending the MOT certificate for vehicles containing defective or unsuitable components.
Vafeades was originally expected to issue the first such decree next month, but with questions reportedly pending with the legal service, it is still unclear whether this will happen.

Reporter Tom Cleaver wrote Wednesday that Vafeades will meet again with the House Transportation Committee next Tuesday before ordering any vehicle recall.

On the topic of road safety, Vafeadis addressed the ongoing issue of speed bump removal that is a concern for local communities. He clarified that speed bumps can only be removed upon request from local communities or the municipalities that manage the roads. "The Ministry of Transport does not oversee the entire road network, so we cannot just go out and start removing speed bumps," he said.

He reiterated that municipalities and communities must submit formal requests, which will then be examined by the relevant authorities. If deemed necessary and safe, measures can be taken to either eliminate the bumps or implement alternative safety solutions.

So far, 180 requests for dent removal have been processed, with over 2,500 dents across Cyprus. "It is a long process, but we do not have it entirely under control," Vafeadis noted. "As soon as the requests come in, we will act as quickly as possible."


Source:CyprusMail.com
Author: Tom Cleaver

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The Takata company was already in the international headlines in 2015:
Ten deaths from Takata airbag at the end of 2015

There is reason enough for this. At the end of December last year, the tenth death worldwide occurred which, according to the US traffic safety authority NHTSA, was due to defects in Takata airbags . A person died in South Carolina in an accident involving his pickup truck, a 2006 Ford Ranger.

Here, too, the cause was a crack in the inflator, which is designed to inflate the airbag in a flash in the event of a collision. This can cause metal parts to come loose without any external influence, which can seriously injure passengers. For example, a woman was hit in the head and lost sight in one eye. In the USA alone, including the most recent case, ten people have died due to these technical problems, the authorities said.

New recall also affects VW, Audi and BMW

In January, the NHTSA announced that there would be further recalls, which would probably affect around five million vehicles in total. Among many others, these would include models from the German manufacturers Volkswagen, Audi and BMW. The fact that Daimler alone is now recalling 840,000 cars and vans could be an indication that the number is even higher.