Ford has issued five safety recalls in North America covering over 202,000 trucks, vans and cars. According to the automaker, it has decided to recall so many vehicles together to fix a number of issues including problems like defective airbag sensors, gas leaks and stalling. The company has added that it is definitely aware of one accident caused by these problems, but doesn’t have information about any injuries resulting from the accident.
The recall, which was announced on Tuesday, will result in taking back of 135,000 units of the 2014 Ford Flex crossover utility vehicles and around 960 2014 F-150 pickups. These vehicles, according to reports, have defects in weight sensors of their passenger seats, which might prevent airbags from blowing up during crashes. Dealers will first be widening up the gap separating the seat track and frame and follow it up with recalibration of the sensors.
The other vehicles recalled by Ford include a few units of F-150s launched between 2009 and 2014. These are cars which underwent servicing for issues in seat tracks earlier this year.
Some other Ford cars that have been recalled include 38,600 units of Ford Lincoln Town Cars, Crown Victoria and Mercury Grand Marquis manufactured between 2005 and 2011, 27,600 units of 2014 Transit Connect, and 90 large Transit vans.
These recalls by Ford has once again proved how prompt automobile manufacturers have become in reporting and correcting safety issues in vehicles to avoid large penalties imposed on them by the US government.
Recently we saw the government imposing huge penalties on two of the most eminent automakers in the world, Toyota and General Motors. While the fine imposed on GM was of $35 million (GM was fined for offering slow response to ignition switch recalls), Toyota had to pay a whopping $1.2 billion as fine (Toyota was charged for hiding safety information from the NHTSA).
The year 2014 has really been a year of auto recalls; so, far we have seen automakers issuing more than 550 recalls this year. These recalls are covering over 52 million vehicles. The year is not yet over, but the previous annual record of recalling 30.8 million vehicles has already been shattered; this old record was set exactly ten years back, in 2004.
General Motors has made maximum number of recalls in 2014; it has issued a total of 75 recalls, which cover over 30 million vehicles.