In 2021, Raïssa was the victim of a car accident which led to her airbag exploding. The young woman found herself disfigured, and she is not the only one. Faced with this, the Stellantis group has set up recall campaigns.
“With a mask, I feel better about how others look at me. People point at you, look at you askance as if you were an alien. It’s very hard.” Raïssa was disfigured by a defective airbag from the Stellantis group, as she explains in the show Seven to Eight broadcast on Sunday June 16 on TF1. Since then, she no longer dares to show her face in public.
On October 24, 2021, at an intersection near Point-à-Pitre, in Guadeloupe, Raïssa was the victim of a road accident. The young woman was hit at an intersection by a vehicle which ran a Stop sign.
“My car was thrown. I heard a loud bang. I felt that my face was burning a lot and I was screaming: ‘Ouch! My mouth, my mouth! I’m hot. I’m in pain'”, she says.
Naelia, his 8-year-old daughter at the time and who was in the back seat, continues: “I saw his face, it was torn to pieces. It looked like it was a gunshot to the face.”
Five facial reconstruction operations
Raïssa has emergency surgery. Part of his face was shattered. Lodged between his eye and his ear, the doctors found a piece of metal during the operation: a piece of the airbag mechanism which exploded when it was deployed. She subsequently underwent nearly five facial reconstruction operations with prostheses, bone and skin grafts.
For more than a year, Raïssa was only able to eat liquid foods. She was declared unfit to resume her position as municipal reception agent. A destiny that she was far from imagining.
“I was a very active person. I liked to go and do sports activities with my daughter, rollerblading, cycling. I was in a carnival group. I can no longer do that kind of thing,” laments- she said. An airbag that is supposed to protect you, but which kills you. Thank God I’m still here. Miraculous.”
The young woman will show her face for a few seconds in front of the TF1 cameras, as a cry of alarm on behalf of all the victims.
“An insufficient recall campaign”
In Overseas Territories (Reunion, Guadeloupe and Guyana), 7 injuries and 5 deaths were recorded between 2018 and 2023. According to the first elements of the investigation, the defective airbag model deteriorates following prolonged exposure of the car to heat and humidity. The airbag is supposed to inflate in the event of an impact; it is the gas generator which allows the cushion to inflate. But in this case, warm air and humidity seep in, altering this gas over time. When triggered, the gas burns faster than expected. Too much pressure then causes the steel casing to explode, transforming it into a potentially lethal projectile.
Following a death overseas in 2019, Stellantis management indicates that it has sent a reminder letter from 2020 to 19,000 Citroën and DS owners in five overseas departments. At the time, the recall campaign excluded the metropolis.
“It is possible that the metal debris could break off and injure passengers,” she wrote. However, no injunction to stop driving and no mention of a danger to life. “A completely exceptional measure,” according to Thierry Koskas, general director of Citroën. Tragic irony for Raïssa, she only learned of the letter ten months after her accident.
In Paris, his lawyer, Charles-Henri Coppet, who also represents six other seriously injured people and four bereaved families, denounces an insufficient recall campaign. “We acted like when there is a windshield wiper problem. Today, when a dealer wants to sell a vehicle, he does not send a registered letter. And if the customer does not come, he goes further He sends SMS, he puts flyers in mailboxes, they make television advertisements which are sometimes wonderful. There is none of that. Lives could have been saved, families could not have. not be torn,” he denounces.
Claim compensation
In the Hautes-Pyrénées, a 51-year-old man died for the same reasons. A few months later, Stellantis launched, this time, an unprecedented national recall campaign. On May 3, 2024, 246,000 cars were recalled with orders to stop driving immediately. This concerns the Citröen C3 and DS 3, manufactured between 2009 and 2019.
A month and a half after the start of the recall campaign, the Stellantis group claims to have replaced the airbags of 35,000 cars, or less than 15% of the recalled automobiles. Replacements that take time and block customers. The group says it has mobilized 25,000 additional courtesy vehicles. But it’s not enough for everyone.
Thousands of angry drivers have banded together on Facebook for collective action to demand compensation. For its part, Stellantis estimates that almost all replacements will be carried out by October 2024.
