Honda Australia has urged the remaining affected owners of the Takata airbag crisis to have their vehicles repaired immediately.
Despite having a Takata airbag repair rate of 81 percent across the country, Honda Australia director Stephen Collins is still pleading with owners to ensure their driver safety is up to standard.
“This is one of our biggest hurdles; making sure we have these customers in our database,” he said. “As of late last week, there are still 94,325 Honda vehicles in need of repair.
“99% of affected vehicles serviced throughout the Honda dealer network have now been repaired, so we are urging customers of vehicles who service outside the Honda network to have their vehicle repaired, free of charge, as soon as possible.
Many Honda customers have already received at least two, and some cases, up to eight, official recall letters.
To date, Honda Australia has sent out well in excess of 1 million forms of communication to affected Honda customers, including letters and text messages.
“Unfortunately there are still some customers of affected vehicles who are simply not responding to repeated attempts by the company to contact them and have their airbag inflators replaced. We need to change this behaviour,” Collins said.
Currently, 527,408 inflator repairs have been completed and there are 122,971 inflators still to be replaced. This represents a completion rate of 81 per cent overall.
Honda dealers are completing up to 7,000 airbag inflator repairs a week, with a peak recently of 9,000 repairs in one week.
To further highlight the seriousness of the Takata recall, Honda Australia is now issuing an even more graphic recall letter with the headline 'Choosing Not to Act Could Be Deadly'.
The letter features three confronting images of the horrific damage caused by an abnormal deployment, showing a puncture hole through a front headrest and car’s roof where metal fragments have deployed out of the airbag.
It follows a previous recall letter that included an illustration of an abnormal deployment.
All airbag inflator rectification work is free of charge and takes between two and four hours to complete.