Lynette Loretto is a mother of three who lives in an Indian pueblo in Jemez, N.M. When she found out that the shiny yellow Chevy Cavalier she bought from a used-car dealer did not have working air bags she was frantic.
"I drove my daughters in that car a couple of times. ... If something were to have happened to us ... that would have been awful," Lorreto says.
An investigation by the Weekend Edition states that some unscrupulous auto repair shop have victimized customers by not replacing air bags that had deployed in a crash and that some used car dealers sell cars without working air bags at all.
In some cases, air bag compartments have been stuffed with beer cans, paper or packing peanuts. Sometimes the original, faulty air bag is just pushed back in. And sometimes the air bag isn't replaced at all, leaving the compartment empty.
In 2003, Laura Vega of Houston was badly injured and her mother killed when their Mercury Sable was hit head-on — and neither air bag worked. On the passenger side of their vehicle, the used air bag had been stuffed back in and the cover taped shut. On the driver's side, there was no air bag at all.
The same year, Damaris Gatihi, a 50-year-old nursing assistant who was going to school to become a nurse, died in a crash in Seattle. It turned out that the air bag in her used Toyota Corolla hadn't been replaced after a previous accident. Instead, the dealer who sold her the car had cut out the air bag and created a fake cover for the dashboard.Quoted from NPR, USA
The next time you buy a used car be sure to check that you car really has working air bags.
No comments:
Post a Comment