German automobile manufacturer, Mercedes Benz has recalled about one million older vehicles of theirs which have already been released into the market.
This decision was taken due to the fact that it was discovered that there is a potential problem with the brake system of these vehicles.
The manufacturer stated that they will have to contact those who already own the vehicle as the brakes of their vehicles may have advanced corrosion.
This recall will affect a total of 993,407 cars and 70,000 of these cars will be from Germany. The vehicles which will be recalled are the ones which were built between 2004 – 2015, particularly the ML and GL series of SUVs and the R-Class luxury minivans.
Mercedes said in a statement on Saturday that ‘We found out that in some of these vehicles, the function of the brake booster can be affected by advanced corrosion in the joint area of the housing’.
‘It is also possible that hard braking can cause mechanical damage to the brake booster’. They also added that ‘in such rare cases, it wouldn’t be possible to slow down the vehicle with the service brake. This will increase the risk of crash or injury.’
They will start the recall immediately and it will involve inspecting the potentially faulty vehicles and where necessary, the parts will be replaced.
So far, no injuries or deaths have been recorded due to this issue.
This is to say that those who own any of the affected vehicles will have to stop driving them immediately especially if you have been hearing any hissing-type noises when you use the brakes or if you’ve noticed anything unusual about the brakes recently.
This problem was first detected based on one customer’s car and investigations started in July 2021 which led to a field study in September 2021. Eventually, after more tests were conducted in November and December, a case was found in the US where poor brake performance was caused by a corroded brake booster. In early May 2022, it was decided by the German manufacturers that the safety risks were high enough to issue a recall.
It is recorded that last year, almost the same number of vehicles were recalled by Mercedes on account of a safety issue. Last February, the company called back over one million cars because there was a problem with their ‘eCall’ feature which calls for emergency services in case of an accident and the feature also reports the location of the accident. The problem was the fact that the e-Call feature could send the wrong location. However, since it was a software fault, it was fixed over the air through a wireless download with the car mobile data connection.
So far, there is no concrete plan in place concerning how this recall will take place, especially for Mercedes owners in Africa but we will update this article as soon as we receive more information.
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