Safety recall

That is an awful situation - and I've seen some articles in the newspapers on this, which is affecting several brands of car all over the world.

It is presumably possible to get the current air-bag removed - as this will have to be done when a new one is eventually fitted. But that would mean that those in the front seats would no longer be protected, but that is a risk that all of us over a certain age put up with in the days before air-bags were routinely fitted. It's presumably not a d-i-y job to remove them though - as they obviously contain enough explosives to kill someone, in the worst case.

But I have no idea how to balance the risk of driving with a dodgy air-bag against the risk of driving without air-bag protection at all.

It's not that difficult - you disconnect the battery and wait some minutes so everything is dead. Then you unplug the airbags. However I couldn't say on this particular vehicle how hard it is to get at them - some dash dismantling is likely. There are probably videos out there.

Also you may wish to be careful in case they go off while dismantling - I'm not sure if the explosive may go off even if unpowered. There are likely to be precautions to take to reduce the risk of that happening.

Then you can likely drive with the airbag light on. But you'll fail an MOT in that state, and you'd fail an MOT with the vehicle being under airbag recall anyway. So if your MOT is due before the replacement they you are stuck.

Probably depends on your driving situation too - if it's once a week at

On car hire, I put into Skyscanner to hire from Heathrow (a popular rental location) at 8 September to 8 October aged 84 and it suggested various vehicles at Turo, eg a 2023 Aygo X for £364 for the month. Turo is peer-to-peer rental a bit like AirBNB for cars - ie you're renting from individuals not a giant rental firm, with the Turo platform handling payments, insurance, disputes etc. Availability is national but many of the vehicles are in the London area - that particular Aygo will pickup from Heathrow but is actually based in Thamesmead.

I think insurance is extra - worth checking if third party car hire insurance is cheaper than theirs (I know some will cover P2P rentals as an addon; I think mine is about £40-50 a year with the addon).

Theo

The greatest reduction in in-car deaths came about from the requirement to wear seat-belts. I doubt that the coming of air bags has made anything like the difference that came about from using seat belts, BICBW and haven’t researched the numbers. IOW, driving a car with disabled air-bags only changes one’s risk level to that of the pre-airbag era, keeping in mind the improvements made meanwhile in passive safety in motor vehicle construction.

Air bags were developed for Americans who refused to wear seat belts.

I'd be perfectly happy with no airbags.

But as you say, a lot of these campaigns were the same, they started with no stock of replacement items. And it looks like a Takata issue (shrapnel), and the recall involves more than one country (which doesn't make parts availability all that easy). There were something like 35 million of these things that needed swapping, and the replacement campaign started a long time ago. Yours is on the order of a hundred thousand or so.

"un gaz propulseur, du nitrate d'amomnium, qui peut se dégrader avec le temps"

One reason some of us did not panic when it was our turn, was because the failures depend on the weather and conditions in each country. Temperature and humidity play a role in destabilizing the propellant. The propellant is supposed to act as an "inflator" and if the reaction velocity is too high, it behaves like a bomb instead. I think Florida had more of these failures than cooler places.

"The situation is improving although replacement airbags are a slightly different spec to those replaced, as we found with our own car."

It sounds like you should be phoning around, like maybe two towns over might have the parts. It could be, if you're rural there would be no rush.

I believe one of mine was done as a "while you wait", meant sitting in a chair for two or three hours. Going home and coming back to pick up the car, wasn't an option for me, so I stayed there after I brought it in, and it took a while.

Maybe it's only going to take you two weeks to get this done.

Paul

Jim the Geordie snipped-for-privacy@geordieland.com wrote in news:108k4ff$d4r$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

If you have been advised not to drive your vehicle on a safety recall then the offered compensatation is of no import. You are entitled to make a claim against the issuer of the recall for the use of a replacement vehicle until a suitable repair remedy is resolved. If you are denied hire replacement due to age then look at taxis and be prepared to force the issue. Make a claim early to push the issue.

Seek further advice at UKLM.

This recall has been in the news for a while now, so whoever sold you the car knew about it. Indeed, they'd probably already had a letter from Citroen very similar to yours.

Was this a private purchase, or a trader? You may have a legal case against a private seller, depending what the advert said, but you definitely ought to have an excellent case against a trader.

And, how did you pay? Bank transfer? Credit?

When I got my first car in the mid 1960s the ones I could afford were all made before seat belts were fitted. Driving is just a continuous assessment of risk, which is why allowance is made for longer braking distances and slower cornering in the wet than on a dry road and if the driver knew that in the event of an accident he (or she) would be head first through the windscreen, the road further ahead was watched more carefully and a greater distance left between one's car and the car in front.

Fitting seat belts made a huge difference to a driver's risk, and the Citroen recall doesn't prevent the safety provided by a seat belt from still being in place. As there are many older cars on the road that aren't considered particularly dangerous without air bags, it just gets down to the details of the advice from Citroen (does it ban the disabling of the air bags for instance) and the restrictions in the insurance policy (does it require all safety devices to be functioning). These are the things that ultimately will decide whether you can or can't put your Citroen into a condition where it remains usable until the recall repair can be made.

Unless you are using your car every day, then some of the £22 a day payments can be put aside and that allows more taxis to be used on the days where you do need to ride in a car.

I thought there were some cars which were originally thought to not be affected by the airbag issue, but were subsequently found to be susceptible (risk related to ambient temperature in different parts of the world?) hence the recent batch of letters ...

I agree with the theory that the greatest boon to road safety would be a f****ng big sharp spike coming out of the steering wheel boss and point at your chest.

In the case of a friend of mine's C3 it was less than a week between the don't-drive letter and the dealer coming out to his home to fix it. That was back in July.

nib

I doubt your insurer could weasel out of paying for anything *other* than “death by airbag”. The likelihood of your airbag killing you has no effect on your other risks.

Working on the basis that the chance having a serious accident AND being killed by your airbag is incredibly small, I’d just carry on using the car.

Tim

Many years ago (late 1960s?) there was a spoof article in one of the national broadsheets. It was headlined "The safest car on the road".

It featured cardboard bodywork, a sharp spike in the middle of the steering column, bald tyres, no speedometer, no seat belts and a windscreen made of ordinary window glass. The article argued that if all cars were designed like that there would be far fewer accidents.

Seat belts happened before 1979 MANY other things other than airbags were fitted in the 80s and 90s. Crumple zones, side impact bars...

But ... apart from the spike (although non-collapsing steering columns may have come close) ... most of those were features of old cars, and there were many more accidents per mile then than there are now!

nib

Of course. If there is one thing progressive Lefties always get wrong, it's human nature.

Yes, and wearing front seat belts was common by the requirement in 1983.

... with nothing like a 50% fall in fatalities over 6 years.

The risk is that the airbag goes off, causing a serious accident.