(Bloomberg) — From 2010 to 2012, Honda Motor Co. said it mademultiple attempts to notify the owner of a 2001 Accord that thecar’s air bag was faulty and needed replacing.

Last July, with the car sold to another person and repairs stilluncompleted, the vehicle was in an accident in Pennsylvania and theTakata Corp. air bag shattered, fatally injuring the driver,according to a U.S. auto-safety agency and Honda. The day beforethe accident, Honda had mailed the new owner yet another recallnotice.

The latest fatality linked to a Takata air bag — eight haveoccurred in the U.S. and one outside the country, with about 100people injured — highlights a flawed recall system thatall-too-often fails to lead to critical repairs and can take yearsto complete, according to lawmakers and auto-safety advocates.Meanwhile, cars can be legally sold and registered without recallfixes having to be performed.

“The identification of yet another preventable death — this timea young boy and well after when this safety defect was first madeknown — reiterates the urgent need for swift recall of all carswith these potentially defective airbags,” said a joint statementissued by Senators Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, andEdward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced onWednesday the latest death suspected of resulting from air bagsthat can spray drivers and passengers with shrapnel. The agencyalso said the pace of recalls had picked up to about 2 million permonth.

Seven months

With almost three-quarters of the 19 million vehicles under therecall still unrepaired, the fixes could still take seven moremonths to complete at that pace. And that may be optimistic, basedon the rate of repairs in previous recalls.

On average, only about 70 percent of vehicles covered underrecalls are repaired, said Clarence Ditlow, executive director ofthe Center for Auto Safety, a Washington-based advocacy group. Therate for older vehicles such as those involved in the Takata recallis much lower, about 50 to 60 percent, Ditlow said.

“Not every single owner shows up the first day to get it fixed,”he said. “Some people will fit it in with their next trip forservice or when they have time in their schedule. You have to get asense of urgency in the consumer.”

Expanded recall

NHTSA has expanded its recall to include additional models madeby Subaru Co., Mazda Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co., and appointedan independent monitor to oversee Takata’s response, spokesmanGordon Trowbridge said Wednesday.

“This young person’s death is tragic and it underscores why weare continuing to work so hard to get these defective deflators offthe road,” Trowbridge said. “Despite the unprecedented publicitysurrounding these recalls, there are still vehicles under recallwith parts available for repairs that have not been fixed.”

Honda, in a statement, said it was investigating the crash inPennsylvania and urged car owners to get their recalled vehiclesrepaired as soon as possible. “Our thoughts and sincere sympathiesare with the family,” the company said. Neither NHTSA nor Hondaidentified the victim.

Consent decree

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers said in an e-mail itwas closed for the holidays and couldn’t respond to questions aboutthe recall process.

Takata reached a consent decree spanning five years with NHTSAon Nov. 3, agreeing to pay fines of $70 million, fire someemployees and phase out the chemical explosive linked to thefailures. If the company doesn’t meet its terms, it will be subjectto additional fines of as much as $130 million, which would totalthe largest civil penalty in NHTSA’s history.

The consent decree included installing an independent monitor,to be paid for by Takata. John D. Buretta, a partner with the lawfirm Cravath, Swaine & Moore and former principal deputyassistant attorney general in the Department of Justice CriminalDivision, has been selected for the job, Trowbridge said.

BP spill

Burretta previously served as the chief of the organized crimeand racketeering section of the U.S. Attorney’s office for theEastern District of New York, and on its national security unit. In10 years with the Department of Justice he held a number of roles,including chief of staff and director of the agency’s DeepwaterHorizon Task Force, which handled BP Plc’s 2010 oil spill in theGulf of Mexico.

“The independent monitor has a steep uphill climb to figure thisout,” Ditlow said. “People are dying.”

The senators said the pace of the Takata recall “is completelyunacceptable and a massive disappointment.”

Automakers dragged their feet and didn’t report the extent ofthe risks swiftly enough, and NHTSA moved too slowly after it beganreceiving reports, they said.

A ‘mess’

NHTSA agrees that movement on the Takata case took too long andthat’s why it included deadlines for action in its consent orderwith the company, Trowbridge said. For example, manufacturers instates with high humidity, which has been linked to the air bagfailures, must have enough parts on hand by March to complete allrepairs, he said.

“We’ve got kind of a mess on our hands here and everybodyacknowledges this,” he said. “This is not going to get done fastenough to satisfy us or, frankly, we think the manufactures thatare involved.”

Law changes that would make recall completion rates higher haveconsistently been fought by the industry, Ditlow said.

A measure contained in transportation legislation earlier thisyear would have required used car dealers to perform alloutstanding recalls before selling vehicles. It was taken out ofthe bill before it passed.

NHTSA also could push suppliers harder to make replacement partsavailable, Ditlow said. Some auto manufacturers have told customersthey won’t be able to repair air bags on some vehicles until themiddle of next year, Ditlow said.

“Are parts available for every single Takata recall? The answerto that clearly is no,” he said.

Motorists can check to see if their vehicles are on the recalllist at a NHTSA-run website, safercar.gov. Repairs under the recall arefree.

Related: Honda at top of list of high-risk vehicles inrecall of Takata air bags

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