Report: Airbag maker saw and hid risk in 2004

Alarmed by a report a decade ago that one of its airbags had ruptured and spewed metal debris at a driver in Alabama, the Japanese manufacturer Takata secretly conducted tests on 50 airbags it retrieved from scrapyards, according to two former employees involved in the tests, one of whom was a senior member of its testing lab.

The New York Times reports two of the airbags cracked during the tests, leading to the company to begin designing possible fixes in preparation for a recall.

However, according to the Times, Takata engineers were ordered to delete the testing data and dispose of the airbag inflaters. That was four years before Takata first said it tested the problematic airbags.

Today, 11 automakers have recalled more than 14 million vehicles worldwide because of the rupture risks.

Read more from the New York Times.