FCAI Website For Takata Airbag Recalls Sees Over 1.2 Million Responses In First Week

Following a recall that affected Takata airbags in millions of BMW, Honda, Lexus, Mazda, Nissan, and Toyota vehicles sold between 2001 and 2004, the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI) announced that the www.IsMyAirbagSafe.com.au website received over 1.2 million responses in its first week of operation. The website, which launched on July 29, prompts you to enter your state and vehicle registration number to determine whether your vehicle’s airbag falls under the recall.

Getting The Word Out

The website is part of a nationwide campaign that spans digital media, newspapers, television, and radio, and is the largest ad campaign ever created by the FCAI for its members. There were 769,841 unique visitors to the website, with more than half of them coming from mobile devices. The FCAI says that approximately one in nine of the people performing the checks had airbags affected by the recall and continued through the process to get more information for their specific brand of vehicle.

More Work To Do

In addition to those who visited the website directly, the “Don’t Die Wondering” campaign also led to 5,000 people texting TAKATA to the phone number 0487-247-224 to see if their airbags were under recall.  The FCAI is happy with these initial results, but will launch another radio campaign later in August to try to reach as many people as possible. 

“We’re pleased how the public has responded to this important safety message and it is interesting to note that a large proportion of the website visitors are checking more than one vehicle,” says Tony Weber, chief executive of the FCAI. “The campaign was specifically designed to both raise public awareness of this issue and to motivate vehicle owners to use our web tool to deliver a quick and easy answer. There are just over 3 million vehicles across Australia affected by the Takata recall and the industry is now about halfway through that task.”