By Jeff Sanford
Toronto, Ontario — October 29, 2015 — In a briefing on the Takata airbag recall an official from the US-based National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said that the services of independent collision repair shops may be sought to deal with a recall that is the largest in history.
Stephen Ridella, the NHTSA’s Director of Vehicle Crashworthiness Research, made the comments. According to Ridella, the number of vehicles that need to be serviced is now 19 million, or 10 percent of the cars on the road in the US. Never before have so many vehicles been involved in a recall. To avoid bottlenecks, the services of collision repair facilities may be needed.
“If dealers for a vehicle manufacturer are unable to keep up with the demand for replacements even though plenty of parts are available, we may consider allowing repair shops or other facilities to complete recall repairs,” Ridella was quoted as saying.
This would be an unprecedented move. Recall repairs have always been carried out only by franchised new-car dealers. That the NHTSA is even considering this is a clue to the size of the issue.
American media sources quoted officials from the National Automotive Dealers Association as suggesting the contracts with Takata preclude anyone but dealers aligned with OEMs from doing this work. So there seems to be some debate about the legal ins-and-outs of expanding the recall work to collision repair centres in the US.
In a conversation with Collision Repair magazine, Jared Allen, Senior Director of Media Relations with the National Automobile Dealers Association, said that, “As far as I know, NHTSA is the only entity that has put this out there, so they are considering it in the context of it being their idea. It would certainly be unprecedented, and to my knowledge, they have not shared any additional insight into the question they themselves raised about whether or not it’s within their authority to take such a step. NADA shares the goal of getting all vehicles with potentially defective Takata airbags repaired as quickly and as safely as possible. But the obstacle to getting more vehicles fixed is the shortage of replacements parts, not a lack of access to servicing. Every dealer of the affected brands has the expertise, tools, training, and capacity necessary to fix impacted vehicles, and they are expeditiously doing so as soon as they take delivery of replacement parts.”
Ridella noted the issue of supply in his briefing. NHTSA is now prioritizing the replacements. Vehicles in areas with both high humidity and older cars are going to be serviced first, as the airbags in question seem susceptible to humidity. The agency also assigns a higher priority to a vehicle where the passenger’s side airbag has been recalled. Not all passenger-side airbags have the recalled part. In the briefing Ridella said enough replacement kits exist for the 6 million highest-risk vehicles. Another 11 million are available in a moderate-risk group.
“The remedy kits are flowing,” said Ridella. Almost 3 million replacement kits are to be shipped in October. So, arguably, the bottleneck is going to be around the number of places where replacements can take place.
Could Canadian collision repair shops get in on this business? In response to an enquiry from Collision Repair magazine, Mélany Gauvin, a Senior Communications Advisor for Transport Canada had this to say: “The Motor Vehicle Safety Act does not restrict manufacturers to rely solely on their dealer network to have recall repairs completed. Should manufacturers require additional servicing capacity, they would be free to seek out the services of other repair establishments, such as collision repair facilities. While Transport Canada does not have the authority to require manufacturers to use alternate repair facilities, we support any initiative that can improve the number of vehicles repaired and can reduce the timelines for airbag replacement.”
So perhaps there is an opening here. At least one operator of a collision repair centre here in Canada indicated they would be more than happy to be a part of the solution to the Takata airbag debacle.
“As a small business we are always delighted to participate in properly compensated endeavours. So yes, we would participate in the mandatory airbag replacement process,” said Bernie De Schutter, owner of Bullock’s Auto Body in Lethbridge, Alberta.
Keep watching collisionrepairmag.com for further developments on the Takata airbag recall.
