The Obama administration is currently reviewing "safety culture" of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) amidst reports of defective airbags in some major vehicle brands that resulted to several fatal accidents.

On Friday, the Obama administration revealed that the NHTSA's aggressiveness in dealing with reports of faulty Takata airbags is being reviewed to determine if the agency overseeing traffic and automobile safety has properly done its job toward the reports.

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A senior Obama administration official told the Associated Press that a team has been ordered to examine NHTSA's risk management and general safety position in order to determine its efficacy in handling the automobile recalls.

Some of the marquee cases being considered include that of General Motors' delayed recall of about 2.19 million small cars in the U.S., which has allegedly resulted in 29 deaths, according to lawyer Kenneth Feinberg.

Because of this, the NHTSA fined GM $35 million after the agency found out that the automobile company knew of the defective airbags since 2001.

According to experts, the defective airbags manufactured by the Tokyo-based company were installed in automobiles manufactured dating back to 2000 until 2008 by major companies including BMW, Ford, General Motors, Chrysler, Honda, Nissan, Subaru, Mazda, Mitsubishi and Toyota.

Chemicals in the airbags were reportedly mishandled and tended to degrade particularly during humid conditions, making the car safety bags to inflate much too forcefully that it tears loose from its mountings and bursting small metal particles resulting to a shrapnel effect.

Honda has already reported to deaths connected to the faulty airbags and had begun recalling vehicles since 2008.

Toyota and General Motors have also sent a special advisory to their customers not to sit at the front passenger seat and told dealers who do not have the necessary parts to fix the faulty airbags were advised to disable the airbags until they do.

A recent NHTSA report revealed that a total of about 7.8 million vehicles have been retracted since 2008.

TagsHonda, Toyota, Takata, airbags, Mazda, NHTSA, Obama