An extensive 60 Minutes investigation into Takata airbags has uncovered one of the worst corporate scandals the world has ever seen.

60 Minutes reporter Liam Bartlett spoke exclusively to three former Takata employees who blew the whistle about the dangers twenty years ago.

Each of them warned management about the airbags’ potential for death but the company ignored them.

The whistle-blowers told Bartlett that in the late 1990’s, the Japanese owned corporation made the fateful decision to use a chemical in the airbag called ammonium nitrate – a decision made largely because the chemical is cheap and Takata planned to take control of the airbag market.

One of the whistle-blowers, chemical engineer, Mark Lillie, explained to 60 Minutes that the unpredictability of ammonium nitrate means that in an accident it can cause an airbag to explode, in what engineers describe as, aggressive over-deployment.

The end result is that instead of saving the driver’s life, the airbag explosion can end up severely injuring or killing them.

Read more (source): https://www.9news.com.au/2018/10/29/06/15/takata-airbag-recall-whistleblowers-knew-about-deadly-scandal-decades-ago