Honda’s underreporting NHTSA fine raises questions of how many more will follow

Following recalls due to the use of Takata airbags in many of its vehicles, Honda has now admitted to failing to report more than 1,700 claims of injury or death involving its cars to US regulators, a violation that would be one of the biggest in history and could lead to a fine of US$35m.

The claims, which may have expanded over 11 years, were brought into the public domain via a synopsis of a review conducted by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

Rick Schostek, Executive Vice President of Honda North America, has publically blamed the missing reports on “inadvertent data entry and computer programming errors,” noting that injury and death claims entered without a date were omitted from incident reports.