Under pressure from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Ford Motor Co. said it will recall 144,000 F-150 pickup trucks from model years 2005-2006 for what the automaker, in a statement, characterized as "a relatively low risk of inadvertent air bag deployments."
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As first reported in The Detroit News, NHTSA's investigators found that the truck's driver-side air bag wires can potentially be chafed by a sharp metal edge of the horn plate during normal vehicle operations or as a result of road vibration. If the wire insulation is cut, a short circuit might cause the air bag to deploy, said the findings.
The recall affects 135,000 trucks in the U.S. and 9,000 in Canada, all assembled at Fords Norfolk, Virginia plant operation. The report said the automaker's move is smaller in scope than what NHTSA had originally requested. A November 2010 NHTSA memo had asked that 1.3 million F-150 trucks from the 2004-2006 model years be recalled after dozens of reports of injury due to inadvertent airbag deployments.
