Honda Recalls Nearly 1 Million Vehicles

TOKYO – A recall over air bags that started with a few thousand vehicles 15 months ago has ballooned to include nearly 1 million Hondas.

The Japanese automaker says it has taken more than a year to expand the recall because the company “had to do many tests.”

Honda will replace the driver’s side air bag inflator in the cars because they can deploy with too much pressure, causing the inflator to rupture and injure or kill the driver.

The automaker says it’s aware of 12 incidents linked to the problem, including one death.

The recall began in late 2008 and was expanded last July to 440,000 cars.

The latest expansion of the recall includes 378,000 cars in the U.S., some 41,000 in Canada and 17,000 cars in Japan, Australia and elsewhere in Asia.