It appears that airbags in some Hyundai and Kia cars have failed to inflate when involved in crashes and now four people are dead. The US government’s road safety agency wants to find out why this happened, Bloomberg reports.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said that it’s currently investigating problems that affect an estimated 425,000 cars made by Hyundai and Kia. In addition, the agency is looking into whether the same problem could happen in vehicles made by other companies.
Documents posted on NHTSA’s website say that the provide covers 2011 Hyundai Sonata midsize cars as well as 2012 and 2013 Kia Forte compact cars. The agency added that it has reports of six front-end crashes with massive damage to the cars. Due to this, four people died and six were injured.
The problem appears to have been traced to electrical circuit shorts in airbag control computers that were made by parts supplier ZF-TRW. Now, the NHTSA wants to know if there are other automakers that have used the same computer from the company.
