The Japanese automaker giant, Honda has been fined $ 70 million in the U.S. by the Obama administration in one of the largest civil penalty ever levied against an automaker for failing to report almost 1,729 warranty claims along with injury and death complaints that the manufacturer’s vehicles caused.
Honda acknowledged in November that the company had failed to report many death and injury complaints to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration NHTSA over an 11 year period that started way back in 2003. The company said in its defense that it had learnt of these omissions in 2011 but had waited three years in order to take action.
The federal safety administration released that Honda has been imposed with twin $35 million fines, one for not reporting the death and injury complaints, while the other for not reporting the warranty and customer satisfaction claims. Both these fines are the maximum that the agency is legally allowed to impose.
Most of the complaints against Honda are related to the defective airbags made by the Japanese auto supplier Takata Corp. along with other defective parts. Honda had previously recalled more than 5 million vehicles in the U.S. alone since 2008 in order to fix the fatal defect in the air bags. The air bag inflators can rupture after an accident and can cause severe injuries to occupants with shards of metal flying in all directions.
Honda has agreed to its shortcomings and is willing to pay the fines under the consent order the company signed on 29th December.
