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News Release
For Immediate Release
Contact: Stacey Cohen, 310-379-0329

Certified Dangerous: Used Cars' Airbags

Flood of Doctored Salvage Titles Endangers Consumers

SEPTEMBER 25, 2006 -- A five-month ConsumerAffairs.com investigation finds that the problem of airbags not deploying in serious auto accidents involving "certified" used cars is much more common than most consumers realize.

In many cases, the cars have been involved in serious accidents or damaged in floods or other natural disasters, then put back together in a slipshod manner that often leaves the airbags disabled.

The cars' titles are put through a "scrubbing" process that removes the "salvage" designation that would alert buyers the vehicle had been seriously damaged.

The consumer news site examined more than 160 complaints from consumers nationwide who said their airbags failed to deploy and protect them in an accident. Most of the accidents were the type that drivers expect will cause their airbags to deploy: head-on collisions, rollovers, and broadside crashes. Few were minor fender-benders.

Many consumers suffered serious and life-changing injuries when their airbags failed to deploy. Others lost loved ones.

During the investigation, reporter Lisa Wade McCormick interviewed more than 60 consumers -- from Hawaii to New Jersey -- about their accidents.

Some accidents occurred in new vehicles, even though national car experts say airbags in new vehicles rarely fail to deploy when needed because of the systems' advanced technology. They also say airbags aren't designed to deploy in every accident. And only a crash scene investigator -- someone who has inspected the vehicle, the accident site, and all the data -- can determine if an airbag should have deployed in a particular wreck.

But the majority of the complaints about airbags failing to deploy involved used vehicles. Also, the accidents in which consumers suffered the most serious injuries -- or lost a loved one -- happened in used vehicles.

The investigation led to a seedy world where unscrupulous individuals haphazardly rebuild severely damaged vehicles and then sell them as safe and "certified" used cars, trucks, minivans, and SUV's.

These unsavory "rebuilders" often disable the airbags when they put the wrecks back together. And in some cases, they don't even bother to replace the deployed airbags. They conceal all signs of previous damage to the vehicles -- and their titles.

Unsuspecting consumers who buy them have no idea they're getting a rebuilt wreck -- until it's too late.

"I'm here to tell you there are a whole lot of these cases where the airbags aren't deploying in rebuilt wrecks," says nationally recognized consumer attorney Bernard Brown of Kansas City, Missouri. His specialty is car fraud and he's represented clients who've been duped by car dealers selling rebuilt wrecks and vehicles with rolled-back odometers.

"It starts with the insurance companies," said Rosemary Shahan, founder of Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety. "They take possession of the vehicles and they could oversee the repairs and make sure they're fixed properly. But that's not profitable. So they sell them to a salvage pool and get a cut of the profits when the car is sold to the highest bidder. You have to take some of the profit away from the insurance company."

Consumer experts say this often happens after a national disaster, like Hurricane Katrina that ripped through Louisiana and Mississippi in 2005 and severely damaged thousands of vehicles.

"We know there were 600,000 cars damaged by Hurricane Katrina," Shahan says. "And most of those cars were not destroyed. Everyone agrees those are ticking time bombs. That's 600,000 cars that have airbags that might not inflate, and the insurance industry is dumping them back on the market. Almost all of them are back on the market."

The investigative series also offers steps consumers can take to avoid buying a rebuilt wreck and provides airbag safety tips.

Los Angeles-based ConsumerAffairs.com, founded in 1998, is a Web-based consumer news site that covers automotive, financial, homeowners, health and travel news from the consumer's perspective. It also publishes consumer reviews about thousands of companies and safety recall notices.

The complete text of the series is available at /news04/2006/airbags/airbags_used_cars.html. ###

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