A Tennessee company may be heading into a legal battle with US auto safety regulators after a request to recall millions of potentially dangerous air bag inflators was denied.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is calling on ARC Automotive Inc of Knoxville to recall 67 million blowers in the US because they can explode and throw shrapnel. The agency said that at least two people were killed in the United States and Canada, and seven others were injured as a result of a malfunction in the air inflators.
The recall would cover a significant portion of the 284 million vehicles now on American roads, but it’s hard to say what percentage. Some have ARC bellows for both the driver and front passenger.
And in a letter published on Friday, the agency told ARC it had tentatively finished After an eight-year investigation The ARC’s driver and passenger front inflators had a safety flaw.
“Airbag inflators that shoot metal fragments at vehicle occupants, rather than properly inflate an attached airbag, create an unreasonable risk of death and injury,” said Stephen Redella, director of NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigations. he wrote in a letter to ARC.
But ARC responded that there was no defect in the inflators, and that any problems were isolated manufacturing issues.
The next step in the process is for the NHTSA to schedule a public hearing. The company can then take it to court to force a withdrawal.
“We disagree with NHTSA’s new comprehensive request when extensive field testing found no inherent defect,” ARC said in a statement Friday night.
Also Friday, the NHTSA published documents showing that General Motors is recalling nearly a million vehicles equipped with ARC pumps. The recall covers some 2014-2017 Buick Enclave, Chevrolet Traverse, and GMC Acadia SUVs.
The automaker says a blast of air inflation “may result in sharp metal fragments slamming into the driver or other passengers, resulting in serious injury or death.”
Owners will be notified by letter starting June 25th, but there is no fix available yet. They’ll get another message when one of them is ready.
GM says it will offer a “courtesy transfer” on a case-by-case basis for owners who fear driving vehicles that are part of the recall.
The company said it is conducting the recall, expanding on previous measures, “out of an abundance of caution and with the safety of our customers as our highest priority.”
One of the fatalities was a mother of 10 who was killed in what appeared to be a minor accident in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula in the summer of 2021. Police reports show that shrapnel from a blown metal hit her neck In a 2015 Chevrolet Traverse SUV crash.
NHTSA said at least a dozen automakers have allegedly faulty inflators in use, including Volkswagen, Ford, BMW and GM.
The agency claims that welding debris from the manufacturing process can block the “exit hole” for gas released to fill the airbag in the event of a crash. Ridella’s letter says any blockage can cause pressure to build up the blower, blowing it off and hurling metal shards.
But in a reply to Ridella dated May 11, ARC Vice President of Product Safety Steve Gould writes that NHTSA’s position is “not based on any objective technical or engineering conclusion about a defect,” but rather definitive statements regarding the supposed blockage of the blowhole from “welding slag”.
He wrote that welding debris was not confirmed as the cause in any of the seven air-inflation lacerations in the American ARC Center asserting that only five had ruptured during use, and this “does not support the finding of a systemic and common abnormality in this population.”
Gold also writes that manufacturers should make recalls, not equipment manufacturers like ARC. NHTSA’s withdrawal request, he wrote, exceeds the agency’s legal authority.
in A federal lawsuit filed last year, Prosecutors alleged that ARC’s inflators used ammonium nitrate as a secondary propellant to inflate the air bags. The propellant is compressed into tablets that can expand and develop microscopic holes if exposed to moisture. According to the lawsuit, the disintegrating discs have a greater surface area, causing them to burn very quickly and ignite a very large explosion.
The explosion could detonate a metal canister containing the chemical, sending metal fragments into the cabin. The lawsuit says that ammonium nitrate, which is used in fertilizers and cheap explosives, is so dangerous that it can burn very quickly even without the presence of moisture.
Prosecutors allege that ARC inflators exploded seven times on US roads and twice more in a test conducted by ARC. There have so far been five limited recalls of the pumps totaling about 5,000 vehicles, including three by General Motors.