PUTRAJAYA: The Road Transport Department (RTD) will issue notices to 358,233 owners of 49 models of vehicles of various makes to change their Takata airbags beginning next week.
Transport Minister Anthony Loke said the notice would make it mandatory for the owners of the vehicles to change the airbags within 14 days.
He said a second 14-day notice would be issued should the owners ignore the first one and if these owners were still failed to do so, they would be taken to court where they would face fines of between RM300 and RM2,000.
“If they still refuse to change the airbags after being fined, then these owners will be blacklisted and will not be able to renew their road tax.
But the fines are something that I view as a last resort... it is not my intention to go around issuing fines to anyone, but to emphasise that this is an issue that involves their own safety.
“This is not something that we are doing just to make things difficult for people... changing these problematic airbags at the proper service centres is free of charge as costs are borne by the manufacturers and it only takes around two hours.
“Airbags are meant to protect us, but now these airbags not only do not protect but can kill. We want everyone to love their lives... this has to do with your own lives,” he told reporters.
Loke was clarifying his statement on Saturday that the owners of 71,315 vehicles of various makes, mostly Honda vehicles, would not be able to renew their road tax if they did not have the Takata airbags changed.
This followed statistics which showed there have been at least eight incidences of deaths caused by the airbags since 2014.
Earlier, Loke had met with representatives of Toyota, Nissan, Honda, BMW, Mitsubishi, Subaru, Mazda and Lexus which were recalling certain vehicles which were using Takata airbags.
On the meeting, he said it was made known to him that the actual number of vehicles which used Takata airbags was much higher than initial data had revealed.
He said 799,963 vehicles had been issued recall notices since 2014, but the owners of only 441,730, or 55 per cent of these vehicles had complied. Hence, the number of notices to be issued by RTD.
“My targer is for the remainder of the Honda vehicles to have their airbags changed by Dec 31, and vehicles of other makes in 12 months from now,” said Loke.
He said the meeting had also decided each manufacturer would contribute to a fund which would be used by the ministry to conduct awareness campaigns to emphasise the need to have the airbags changed.