More than 1 million Mercedes-Benz cars and SUVs around the world will be recalled to address potential problems caused by unintended deployments of airbags.
495,000 vehicles in the U.S. will be affected by the safety recall, as well as 400,000 in Britain, 76,000 in Canada, and a few hundred thousand in Germany, according to a Daimler spokesman.
The company has yet to provide a complete worldwide total.
The source of the problem is a faulty cable that can trigger an inadvertent deployment of the front airbag on the driver side because of an electronic discharge coupled with insufficient grounding of steering components and a broken clock spring.
The company said on Monday that part of the fix is to add new grounding to the steering components which dealers will handle.
The product recall will begin when the new component to fix the problem becomes available. It will cover some 2012-2018 A, B, C, and E-class models and GLA, CLA, and GLC vehicles.
A spokeswoman of Mercedes-Benz in the United States said there have been reports of “a handful of instances where drivers suffered minor abrasions or bruises” as a result of the air bag problem.
So far no deaths have been reported.
This problem is not related to the massive worldwide recall of the Takata airbag inflators that affected millions of vehicles in the U.S and more than 240,000 in China.
The U.S. NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) called it “the largest and most complex safety recall in U.S. history”. It covers car models from year 2002 through 2015.
The same agency uncovered the root of the problem – the lack of a chemical drying agent that should be used with the ammonium nitrate-based propellant. It is postulated that the airbags can improperly deflate due to age, high temperatures, and environmental moisture.
In the U.S. the Takata incident has caused a reported 11 deaths and an estimated 180 injuries.
Owners of affected Mercedes-Benz cars and SUVs should have their vehicles checked for faulty airbags before the zero deaths to date changes and the number of injuries increases.
Make sure to keep an eye out for more updates about the Daimler recall.
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