NHTSA Complaint #11495712 — 2011 VOLKSWAGEN JETTA

On February 2, 2017, My car was stop in an intersection. A car coming in my direction swerved into my lane and hit me head on. The air bag was deployed, it exploded so violently that both of my hands were severly injured. There was a fracture in my right wrist. There was a laceration to the base of the thumb and my thumb finger almost fell off and required several stiches for my forefinger to be attached. The bones in my right arm was shattered into pieces and it required major surgery. My left arm requires a total of 4 surgeries. I have to undergo an eighteen (18) months of Physical Therapy for both my left and right hand. There was so much pain in my left arm and the doctor had to perfom an operation called "Proximal row carpectomy (PRC)". Proximal row carpectomy (PRC) is a motion-preserving treatment for the degenerated wrist. Three (3) very important bones in Proximal row carpectomy (PRC)surgery was removed. This surgery is done to alleviate (reduced) the pain in my arm. I was still lucky, fortunate that the car hit me in front. If my car was hit from behind, my upper body especially my head will be thrown forward and the explosion of the air bag would explode in my face and the xplosion could have killed me or break my neck. The exlposion of the air bag was very similar to the beirut explosion that was caused by ammonium nitrate which was sometimes used in the defected airbag. Very explosive. The air bag was supposed to protect me but in this case it caused tremedous damage to my both my left and right arm. After more than 5 years both of my hands have not fully recovered. It still hurts lifting some heavy object which I could easily lifted before the accident. I trully believe that the airbag is my car has a problem and it could be a Takata air bag that also need to be recalled. My neighbor’s teenage daughter is also driving the same year and model of my car and it always worry me to think what if the air bag is defected.