Martina, who died at the age of 24 from a faulty airbag: first Italian victim of the infamous "Takata"

The defective airbag that kills, causing injuries similar to those of a gunshot .

The so-called "buckshot effect" of the device produced by the Japanese company Takata , which went bankrupt in 2018 due to faulty airbags that caused deaths and injuries all over the world.

Unfortunately, among these is also Martina Guzzi, 24 years old, who died last May 28th in a road accident in Catanzaro . According to the report of the technicians appointed by the Public Prosecutor's Office, she died precisely because of the airbag which, following the impact, «projected a metal body with high kinetic energy with impact patterns and damage similar to a gunshot wound (buckshot effect) ».

The airbag was produced by the Japanese company Takata and the Undersecretary of the Interior Wanda Ferro intervened in the case. «The preliminary report filed by the prosecutor's consultants - he stated - further supports what emerged from the investigations conducted by the Catanzaro Traffic Police Section on the death of a 24-year-old girl following a road accident. The cause of death was in fact the faulty functioning of the airbag detonation system installed on the car driven by the victim. The young Martina would be the first victim in Italy of the infamous Takata airbag, installed on millions of cars , which caused dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries all over the world."

«I applaud the Catanzaro Traffic Police - added Wanda Ferro - who, through the coordinated investigation activity of the Prosecutor's Office, shed light on this terrible tragedy, and above all solicited the attention of the owners of the cars involved, whose use can be extremely dangerous, so pay maximum attention to recall campaigns."

The victim was driving a Citroen C3. Among the brands that used Takata were also Honda, Volkswagen, Audi, Stellantis, Skoda, BMW, Ds, Toyota. To save money and space, sodium azide had been replaced with ammonium nitrate in the Japanese company's airbags, which however due to its chemical characteristics causes the release of metal fragments and in some cases the uncontrolled activation of the airbag .

(Unioneonline/L)