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Counterfeit Air Bag Racket Blows Up
Hugh Pickens writes "According to Joan Lowy of the Associated Press, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has alerted the auto repair industry that tens of thousands of car owners may be driving vehicles with counterfeit air bags, which fail to inflate properly or don't inflate at all. Although no deaths or injuries have been tied to the counterfeit bags, it's unclear whether police accident investigators would be able to identify a counterfeit bag from a genuine one. The counterfeit bags typically have been made to look like air bags from automakers, and usually include a manufacturer's logo, but government investigators believe many of the bags come from China. Auto dealerships that operate their own body shops are usually required by their franchise agreements to buy their parts, including air bags, directly from automakers and therefore are unlikely to have installed counterfeit bags. But only 37 percent of auto dealers have their own body shops, so many consumers whose vehicles have been damaged are referred by their insurance companies to auto body shops that aren't affiliated with an automaker. Safety officials will warn millions of Americans that the air bags in over 100 vehicle models could be dangerous counterfeits, telling them to have their cars and trucks inspected as soon as possible. Dai Zhensong, a Chinese citizen, had the counterfeit air bags manufactured by purchasing genuine auto air bags that were torn down and used to produce molds to manufacture the counterfeit bags. Trademark emblems were purchased through dealerships located in China and affixed to the counterfeit air bags, which were then advertised on the Guangzhou Auto Parts website and sold for approximately $50 to $70 each, far below the value of an authentic air bag. The NHTSA has made a list of automobiles available that may be at risk for having counterfeit air bags."
Considering this device performs a controlled explosion right in front of your face I would rather like my airbag to have had some form of assurance that their manufacturing techniques are sound and that they go though a rigorous QA process.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Since Japan, you mean? And Germany before that? It's a pretty well-established way of getting to an industrialized economy. The only question is if they will be able to make the leap from cheap imitation crap to cheap imitation quality.
tens of thousands of car owners may be driving vehicles with counterfeit air bags, which fail to inflate properly or don't inflate at all. ... Dai Zhensong, a Chinese citizen, had the counterfeit air bags manufactured
Given how hard we've been trying to extradite Kim Dotcom for facilitating copyright infringement, I assume we will be getting at least as heavy handed with China over this guy's tens of thousands of cases of attempted fraudulent homicide (or whatever it is called).
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What are our officials thinking!?!?
"Money. Power. Money. Power. Money. Fucking. Money. Power. Money. Power. Money. Fucking. Money. Power. Money. Power. Money. Booze."
And so on.
You people have *got* to stop thinking of politicians as sane, reasonable human beings. Honestly, much of the noise in the world starts to make complete sense when you just accept that.