When I first caught sight of this amazing looking hunk on a sunny, clear blue sky day in the middle of spring, it was love at first sight! Dressed in a two-tone leather outfit, its sleek and delicate lines, its black bright color, and its unique fresh scent attracted me. I took it for a ride and asked pertinent questions. The ride was smooth. The many features it came with were state of the art.
I signed the paperwork and took it home with me, giving it the best treatment, love, and care that I felt I could give. The relationship was going well, until one night as I was driving back home from visiting my sister, a cancer patient, at the hospital, the car started to lose power and I had to pull to the right of a dimly lighted road and call my husband to pick me up. Luckily, my husband was able to drive the car home, but that was the first sign of what was to come.
During that summer, we drove to Key West to spend the weekend. The first night as we were driving back from dinner to the hotel, we were waiting for a light to change when the car suddenly turned off. My husband turned it back on and we drove back to the hotel without any problems. The day after that, as we drove on the Overseas Highway, heading back to Miami, the car would just shut off unexpectedly and my husband would continuously have to pull to the right side of the road and turn the car back on. We were lucky enough that this didn’t happen when we drove over a bridge where there was no room to pull to the right. For me, it was agonizing. Just the thought of having my car continuously stalling on the road and the thought of having someone slam into us was making me extremely nervous. Luckily, my husband kept his cool and dealt with the situation as best as he could. Instead of taking the Florida Turnpike and then the Palmetto Expressway, we drove on the streets to help minimize the possibility of having the car turn off when other cars were driving at 60 and 70 miles an hour. We made it to the dealer and later found out that there was a problem with the fuel pump. I’ve had a few cars in my life, but I had never had a car with this type of problem. The fuel pump was repaired, but the cost was very expensive.
A year later, my radio stopped working. Well, it seems like the radio is connected to a rear view camera, the blue tooth, the GPS, etc., so none of that worked. The cost to have it fixed – Very High! Again, this was the first time in my life in which THE RADIO in a car would be broken. I chose not to have the radio fixed. A J. D. Power (Dobrian, 2016) study found that “Problems with technology continue to cause declines in owner satisfaction with long-term vehicle dependability. The study shows that problems with vehicle audio, communication, entertainment, and navigation (ACEN) systems now account for 20% of all customer-reported problems” (¶ 1). If this is a consistent problem, why don’t they fix it instead of passing it on to the consumer?
The next blow came a year after the radio situation; I received a letter from the company headquarters, informing of a safety recall of the Takata SDI Frontal Airbag Inflator. Part of the letter read, “Takata has reported that the driver frontal airbag inflator could potentially rupture if the vehicle is involved in a crash where the frontal airbags are designed to deploy. In the event of an inflator rupture, metal fragments could pass through the airbag cushion material, which may result in serious injury or death to vehicle occupants” (personal communication, April 2016). When I called the dealer to make the appointment, I was told by the service rep that at the time, they did not have the required replacement parts to make the repairs. In this first letter, it was noted that they had no known incidents worldwide of the airbag being ruptured.
A year later, April 2017, I received another letter in which the tone was even more serious. It stated, “Make an appointment with your authorized dealer to have the recalled Takata airbag inflator in your vehicle replaced as soon as possible. If a vehicle with a recalled Takata airbag inflator is involved in a crash with airbag deployment, the inflator could rupture and send shrapnel toward everyone in the vehicle. People have been killed and seriously injured by this defect” (Personal communication, April 2017). As noted, unlike the first letter, this letter does confirm that people have been killed because of this problem. In fact, an article by the Associated Press (2016) regarding the Takata airbags stated that, “Up to five people also may have been killed by the air bags in Malaysia, bringing the number of deaths globally to as many as 16 (¶ 1). This is all very distressing.
My car is set to be taken in tomorrow to have this airbag problem fixed. In the meantime, as I was driving on the expressway to work this past Friday, I had to quickly pull over to the emergency lane because my car seemed as though it was losing power. Could it be the fuel pump again? I will certainly find out tomorrow.
Just like in an abusive relationship, sacrificing and giving it another chance to see if things improve, I have been faithfully clinging on. However, owning this car, with which I totally fell in love because of its looks, feel, and scent, has been a very dangerous ride, one that could have taken my life.
References
Associated Press (2016). U.S. Confirms 11th Death Linked to Faulty Takata Airbag Inflator.
NBC News. Retrieved from
Dobrian, J. (2016). 2015 U.S. Vehicle Dependability Study: Technology Woes Continue to
Drive Up Problems. J. D. Power Cars Rating and Research. Retrieved from