Translator you know, who or when . Answer the question. Were the concerns about using Ammonium Nitrate as a propellant related to the execs that takata did it make it up the food chain . I dont know about that. You have a good team with you we will allow you to respond. My time is expired for i have five other questions and i will submit in writing and i would like to answer before the end of the year. I yield back. The gentleman from maryland your recognize five minutes. Mr. Shimizu takata has agreed to the recall at its expense with respect to the drivers side and passenger side air bags within the regions where there are high absolute humidity. Is that correct . Yes. And you said a moment ago that you do not yet know the root causes of the defect for the of problem with the deployment of those air bags with respect to that regional recall . Congressmen we have not identified the root cause yet. So what is contributing is the temperature and high committee. I am willing to take more
Correct . We did not see that before you change propellants. The cousin of this inflator so we focus but to look at this moment that is why we focus of that. To expand on mr. Sarbanes question, you filed a safety recall a month ago involving a a defect in the air bags produced in mexico. Correct . Yes. You still produce air bags that have defects in them i know the nature of that defect but it goes to the question if we can be confident that even the are replacements provided the are safe but how can you be confident those Replacement Parts if they are safe if you still buy them from takata . The specific issue happened in mexico it was many years ago. But as i said from previous issues so that process is taken care of. Is capable and i am confident it is there. Of late to submit the question to the manufacturers to respond how we could be confident the equipment they are using today is safe . I yield back. The chair recognizes the vice chair. Thank you. Are treated on the road today s
Supply to the demand. My time is about to expire. Are there other manufacturers that manufacture an equivalent airbag product that you could institute for your air bag and repair these cars that have already been recalled . Or is that just not technically an engineering wise feasible b . Its required some tests. I would suggest that you look at that. Because the sooner the cars that have already been identified are repaired, the better off youre going to be, in my opinion. With that, mr. Chairman, i yield back. Thank you very much. The chair recognizes the gentleman from kentucky. Thank you, mr. Chairman. And thank the witnesses for their testimonies today. I wish i could say i felt better about this situation now than i did when i walked into the room, but i think i feel a little bit more uncertain than i wish i did. I have a little bit of a personal his we with this issue. I was a young Senate Staffer on the Congress Committee in the early 07s when ralph nader came to the congress an
Action . Thank you. And i understand your involvement in the establishment of the act more than ten years ago, and i can understand the disappointment you feel by the shortcomings that have been evidenced by our company, and i want to explain to you what happened. The problem that we had with underreporting in the act is a systematic problem that began at the the outset. As you know, it went into effect in 2003. They did not properly Program Computers and set up systems that would at accurately let data flow and feed into treasury reports. It is difficult for me to say, sir, but that setup continued unchecked until 2011, 2012. You are right that an internal honda associate did mention a concern, as well as a discussion with nhtsa. They asked about the omission of certain incidents in our tread report. We did look into that, sir, in early 2012. We did not look at that effectively. We took action to address that one problem, but sir it did not complete our compliance requirements. Can i
The life, it creates an immense amount of insecurity among the driving public and obviously my view the burden has to be on the manufacturer and our governmental agencies to take the appropriate steps to revive and restore public confidence. Thank you. Thank you. Now, its the appropriate time to introduce the panel. Ill introduce the panel as a whole, and then well start with takata as the first speaking witness. So today our first panel representing takata, Hiroshi Shimizu. Shimizu, sorry. Yes. From honda, Rick Schostek. From bmw, chris westbrook. From toyota, abbas saadat. Appreciate all of you being here. We will go from right on my left, your right, and start with mr. Shimizu. But before i ask you to start, i want to recognize that youre appearing with a translator, because english is not mr. Shimizus first language, and while the committee will allow mr. Shimizu to confer with the translator for the purpose of clarification, he will be required to answer the committees question in