“It went up in flames inside minutes, and with the automobile being off and with me having the keys,” mentioned Lina Ricchio.
Ricchio and her daughter had simply gotten out of their BMW on the household’s faculty in River Forest in September when it burst into flames. They mentioned the automobile wasn’t even operating on the time.
“Thank God me and my daughter weren’t within the car,” she mentioned. “I simply could not consider it. I imply, I used to be in shock.”
Ricchio’s 2009 BMW X5 by no means had a fire-related recall for her particular automobile, nevertheless, there have been fire-related remembers for different automobiles like hers with the identical make, mannequin and yr.
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“Eighteen complete remembers involving this car and 5 of which have really been not directly associated to danger of fireplace, so there’s fairly a quantity for one make and mannequin of a car,” mentioned Jason Levine with the Heart for Auto Security.
So why wasn’t Ricchio’s on that listing? Levine defined that producers can recall a small portion of a big group of automobiles by pinpointing particular points.
“If you happen to can slender down the place that drawback occurred within the course of, for instance it was a given manufacturing facility or a given set of dates, you needn’t recall each single car that occurs to be made in that given yr with that very same mannequin,” he mentioned.
Levine and Ricchio had been glad to listen to that BMW North America will examine her automobile fireplace, significantly due to the excessive variety of remembers for this mannequin. Nevertheless, fire-related remembers have occurred with many automakers.
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“We have now been in contact with the Ricchios and can take part in a coordinated inspection with their insurance coverage firm in an try to find out the trigger and origin of the hearth. Car fires can happen for any variety of causes so we can not speculate as to the trigger,” BMW informed the I-Group.
“They need to know why it is taking place so possibly they will uncover this as a brand new drawback, or possibly they will uncover that this car ought to have been topic to one among these earlier remembers,” Levine mentioned.
In 2017, the I-Group collaborated with ABC Information in an investigation into BMW fires throughout the nation concerning automobiles that had not been topic to recall. It was discovered that greater than 40 circumstances across the nation the place BMW homeowners mentioned their parked automobiles burst into flames. Months after the report aired, BMW of North America issued two remembers protecting about a million autos that contained components implicated in automobile fires.
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“I referred to as BMW, they ran my VIN — there is not any remembers on my car,” Ricchio mentioned. “I appeared it up [and] I did see that previously this did occur to different BMW X5s, so I simply do not perceive why my automobile wasn’t one of many automobiles that had a recall.”
A few of the points in previous BMW fire-related remembers concerned valve heaters, blower motor system connectors, and wiring and electrical connectors within the system that controls airflow for heating and air con.
Ricchio is keen to listen to the outcomes of BMW’s inspection into her automobile fireplace.
“It might have occurred whereas I used to be on the freeway and it might occur to different individuals whereas they’re within the car, so I simply assume they want to determine why that is taking place in order that it would not occur to anyone else and nobody else will get harm,” she mentioned.
It doesn’t matter what sort of automobile you drive, you possibly can search its VIN to search for open remembers by going to the Nationwide Freeway Site visitors Security Administration’s web site. You also needs to report incidents, like fires, to NHTSA, the producer and organizations just like the Heart for Auto Security.
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