WCA July 2016

From the Americas

propellant burns too rapidly, creating excessive pressure within the device. Several years of driving in regions of the USA that experience high heat and humidity could, it is now believed, produce that breakdown effect. Even the design of the car could contribute to it. Poor quality control in manufacture of the inflator could, of course, be implicated. Equally might it not be.  In a passage headed “Putting the Dangers in Perspective,” Consumer Reports observed that, “as awful as they are,” ruptured-inflator incidents are very rare. In June of 2015, Takata stated that it was aware of 88 ruptures (67 driver-side and 21 passenger-side) out of over 1.2 million airbag deployments spread over 15 years. Thus the conclusion drawn by Consumer Reports that airbags in general are not dangerous. As it noted, “The [US] Department of Transportation estimates that, between 1987 and 2012, frontal airbags have saved 37,000 lives.” A United Steelworkers trade case in the USA draws “a line in the sand” against aluminium imports, mainly from China China, which already accounts for more than half the world’s aluminium production, is expanding capacity even as its economy decelerates. The result has been a surge in aluminium exports and falling prices for other producers. Claiming that the Chinese export surge has seriously injured the American industry and threatens additional job and capacity losses, the United Steelworkers (USW) on 18 th April filed a petition with the USA International Trade Commission (ITC) that seeks to stem the flow of primary unwrought aluminium imports. (Primary unwrought aluminium typically undergoes further processing by the original producer or other manufacturer.) The petition invokes Section 201 of the 1974 Trade Act, last resorted to by President George W Bush in 2001 in a successful push for American tariffs on steel imports. While China is clearly the major focus of the USW, any action taken by the ITC would affect imports from other countries, as well. Most of the aluminium currently flooding the American market comes from Canada, the Middle East, Russia and Venezuela, and the union’s Section 201 case addresses imports from around the world. It requests four years of increased tariffs, capped at a price “allowing domestic producers to effectively operate and, hopefully, restore production.” The petition also calls for USA negotiations with trading partners, mainly China, centred on the scaling-back of over-production. Declaring that world markets are being destroyed by China’s policies and practices, Tom Conway, USW international vice president, said at the union’s Pittsburgh headquarters, “This vital case draws a line in the sand. We will not cede primary unwrought aluminium production.” Aluminium

The airbag recalls A 17-year-old girl is the tenth USA victim of faulty Takata airbag inflators. How great is the danger to the driving public? Attributed to shrapnel from an exploding airbag, the 31 st March death in Texas of the teenaged driver of a 2002 Honda Civic has refocused attention on airbag inflators made by Japanese auto parts maker Takata Corp, now the subject of several industry investigations. At least 11 people – ten in the USA and one in Thailand – have died in incidents linked to Takata inflators: metal cartridges loaded with propellant wafers which in some cases have ignited with explosive force. More than 50 million autos equipped with the devices have been recalled worldwide. In the USA, Takata inflators have figured in 28.8 million recalls, mainly of cars from model years 2002 to 2015. In what the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said is the “largest and most complex safety recall in [the nation’s] history,” vehicles made by 14 different automakers have been recalled for replacement of frontal airbags on the driver’s side or passenger’s side, or both. In the first public government accounting of Takata airbag inflators in unrecalled vehicles on USA roads, the auto safety regulators on 13 th April put the number of such devices at some 85 million. Under an agreement concluded last year, Takata has until 2019 to prove the soundness of the inflators. Meanwhile, together with Toyota Motor Corp and other automakers, Honda Motor Co (which so far has recalled the greatest number of vehicles over the airbag issue) has said it will not install Takata inflators in new models. As observed drily by Andrew Krok in Roadshow (15 th April), any additional recalls “would likely leave a strong financial impression [on Takata].” The company has posited a worst-case scenario in which the recalls cost it about $24 billion, well in excess of revenues from its last fiscal year. If a recall of those 85 million inflators should be launched, wrote Mr Krok, “That’s about as worst-case as it gets.” Worse still, of course, would be further deaths and injuries: “a potentially disastrous outcome from a supposedly life-saving device,” as noted by Consumer Reports (“Takata Airbag Recall - Everything You Need to Know,” 14 th April) ‘Putting the dangers in perspective’ Consumer Reports (Yonkers, New York) was established in 1936 to provide unbiased product testing and ratings. In its Takata coverage the independent, non-profit organisation pointed out that establishing the root cause of the incidents and determining which of the company’s several inflator designs is involved have posed difficulties for investigators. It now appears that there are multiple possible causes and contributing factors. It has been established that if high humidity or something else causes the wafers inside the inflator to break down, the

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Wire & Cable ASIA – July/August 2016