New internal Takata emails suggest widespread manipulation of airbag testing data

According to a recent article in the New York Times, internal Takata emails that were recently unsealed as a part of a personal injury lawsuit against the Japanese airbag manufacturer suggest that data from airbag testing may have been “misrepresented and manipulated.” So far, more than 20 million vehicles equipped with defective Takata airbags have been recalled and, unless the company can prove that the ammonium nitrate they use as a propellant in many of their airbags is safe, these numbers could increase.

The newly unsealed emails contain communications between Takata employees specifically regarding inflater testing in airbags that made use of the ammonium nitrate propellant. One email from a Takata airbag engineer contained the text “Happy Manipulating!!!” in addition to the results of airbag testing. Other emails include comments about changing the appearance of lines and colors in a graphic of testing results in an attempt to “dress it up” and “divert attention” from the results themselves.

In response to this new information, Takata has argued that these comments do not indicate data manipulation, but rather, are specifically regarding the formatting of data, and that they are not related to the airbags included in the current recall.