Honda Motor Co. admitted on Monday that it failed to report 1,729 deaths and injuries involving its vehicles to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) since 2003.
The Japanese automaker found out about the underreporting during its internal investigation. The company hired third-party auditors in September to resolve allegations of inaccuracies in its internal tracking system for deaths and injuries. As a result, Honda might be fined by U.S. regulators as much as $35 million for failing to produce the accurate number of accidents at the time of their occurences, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Honda submitted the results of the internal investigation to the NHTSA on Monday. The company explained that the underreporting was caused by a programming error in its tracking system and a misinterpretation of the law. Honda attempted to make amends by correcting the programming error and retraining its employees.
"The audit identifies difficult facts about where we did not meet our obligations," said Rick Schostek, an executive vice president at Honda North America. "At Honda, we acknowledge this problem as our management's responsibility."
The NHTSA has not released the documents yet to the public as they are still reviewing it as part of their investigation for the faulty airbags. Honda said that only eight of the underreported cases were related to the airbag issue.
"We received Honda's response to our Special Order and will immediately begin reviewing the documents as part of our ongoing investigation," NHTSA counsel Kevin Vincent said to Bloomberg.
The underreporting issue was first identified by a Honda employee in 2011, who noticed discrepancies in the entry dates. The company admitted that it failed to follow up until the U.S. regulators questioned the accuracy of the reports, according to USA Today.
"It strains credulity that a sophisticated company like Honda could make so many data entry errors, coding errors and narrow interpretations of what's a written claim," Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety, said in a statement.
