ATLANTA — For the last year, Channel 2 Action News Investigates has been reporting on airbags going off without any crash or accident in a popular minivan.
After that reporting, Honda announced a recall.
But Channel 2 Consumer Investigator Justin Gray has learned about another incident that the automaker says isn’t covered by the recall.
The recall was for the passenger side airbags on Honda Odyssey minivans. The Bowe family’s incident involved the passenger side airbag.
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They say they were driving their teenager and her friends back from prom at the Georgia Aquarium.
“All of a sudden, there was an explosion in the car,” Nichole Bowe said.
There was no crash, no accident, but the passenger airbag deployed on the downtown connector.
“You don’t expect the safety system to be the thing that goes wrong. You don’t expect the thing that’s there to protect you in an accident to be thing that almost causes an accident,” she said.
Last month, Honda recalled more than 440,000 Honda Odyssey minivans, saying a software programming error “contains incorrect deployment parameters for the side and side curtain airbags, which may cause inadvertent deployment.”
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But Honda told the Bowe family that their airbag deployment is not tied to that recall because only the passenger airbag deployed without cause or warning.
“They’re just really similar, even though the airbags that are deployed are different, so I just fail to believe this is a one-time thing that just happened to the Bowe family,” Nat Bowe said.
They say they are speaking out because, like with their family, it is normally a car load of children riding in a Honda Odyssey.
“I’m concerned about other families’ safety. I think that Honda does need to investigate this,” Nat Bowe said.
Gray reached out to Honda, who said they are still gathering information and have not provided a comment.
The Bowe family has a $6,000 repair bill, but are most concerned about safety.
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