French carmaker Citroën has told drivers to immediately stop using C3 and DS3 cars across Europe after a second person in mainland France was killed by a faulty Takata airbag.
On Tuesday, Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot called for the immediate immobilisation of all C3 and DS3 models with Takata airbags still in circulation. He said the company’s response had been “unacceptable and scandalous” and had “not matched the scale of the risk”.
Shortly after, Citroën announced it was placing all affected vehicles under a stop-drive order across Europe.
“We have decided to move to a ‘stop drive’ to speed up repairs,” Citroën’s new director Xavier Chardon told the French news agency AFP.
The company said 441,000 affected cars are still on the road in Europe, including 82,000 in France.
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Fatal crash in Reims
The latest incident happened on 11 June in Reims. A 37-year-old woman died after the airbag in her 2014 Citroën C3 exploded when the car scraped a motorway barrier.
She had been trying to avoid a lorry. Metal fragments from the airbag struck her in the face. A teenage passenger was also injured.
Stellantis, Citroën’s parent company, said it sent the woman a registered letter on 20 May warning her about the airbag, but the address was incorrect and the letter was returned.
Some models had already been subject to earlier action.
In 2024, Citroën told owners in southern France with C3s built between 2008 and 2013 not to drive them until the airbags were replaced. That stop-drive order was extended to northern France in February 2025.
For later models, including those made from 2014, Stellantis launched a standard recall in May 2025, but without telling drivers to stop using their cars. The company said its analysis had not shown a risk of degradation beyond 2013.
In total, around 690,000 C3 and DS3 vehicles in France were fitted with the faulty airbags. Stellantis said 69.7 percent had been repaired by mid-June.
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Takata linked to global deaths
Takata airbags can explode when exposed to heat and humidity, sending metal fragments into the car. The defect has been linked to dozens of deaths around the world.
In France’s overseas territories, at least 17 people have been killed in incidents involving the airbags since 2016. One person also died in March in Guadeloupe. The Reims crash was the second fatal incident in mainland France.
Consumer group UFC-Que Choisir said the latest death “could have been avoided” if Stellantis had acted sooner.
The organisation has filed a legal complaint and called for a parliamentary inquiry. “Failures must be identified and those responsible held accountable,” it told French news agency AFP.
A criminal investigation for involuntary manslaughter has been opened. The case is now being handled by a specialised court in Paris.
Takata filed for bankruptcy in 2017. At the time, it had recalled or was expected to recall around 125 million vehicles worldwide by 2019.
