Honda said on Thursday that it would more than double the size of its customer service staff to handle calls from car owners. PhotoIn an urgent plea to car owners, federal safety regulators on Thursday warned that airbags in more than 300,000 older Honda and Acura vehicles were at an unacceptably high risk of exploding, and needed to be replaced immediately. Over all, Honda has mailed almost 18 million recall notices and sent almost six million emails to urge car owners to have their vehicles repaired, the automaker said. Laboratory tests underway on airbags collected from recalled vehicles indicate that Takata airbags in certain 2001-3 Honda and Acura vehicles had “as high as a 50 percent chance of a dangerous airbag inflater rupture in a crash,” the transportation secretary, Anthony Foxx, said in a bulletin. Car owners can check whether a car has been recalled at SaferCar.gov, and those affected should contact the nearest dealer to schedule a repair, the agency said.

Source: New York Times June 30, 2016 18:33 UTC