Warning: This Air Bag May Contain Shrapnel

In 2010 the front seat air bags in Kristy Williams’s 2001 Honda Civic deployed while the Atlanta-area woman was stopped at a light. Shrapnel allegedly flew from one of the safety devices during the blast that inflated them. The metal hit Williams in the neck, severing her carotid artery, according to a suit she filed in Georgia state court against Honda and Tokyo-based Takata, maker of the air bag inflator. Williams stuck two fingers in the wound to stop the bleeding as she waited for an ambulance. Her loss of blood led to several strokes, a seizure, and a speech disorder, according to the suit.

Honda and Takata settled with Williams in 2011. Joel Wooten, her attorney, says the terms are confidential and declines to discuss the case. Takata, which accounts for about a quarter of all air bag inflators produced globally, is finding it far more difficult to silence safety questions now that horrific details of shrapnel-induced injuries involving its products have made headlines in recent months. One Florida crash left a young driver with a metal shard in her eye socket. Another incident in that state resulted in gashes on a dead woman’s throat so similar to stab wounds that police thought she’d been murdered. And a Puerto Rico fender bender left a woman with her jaw sliced open. Takata declined to answer specific questions about deaths and injuries involving its air bags.