The ARC auto plant is seen, July 14, 2015 in Knoxville, Tenn.
Adam Lau/AP
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Adam Lau/AP
The ARC auto plant is seen, July 14, 2015 in Knoxville, Tenn.
Adam Lau/AP
DETROIT — A Tennessee company may be waging a legal battle with U.S. auto safety regulators after denying a request to recall millions of potentially hazardous airbag inflators. dangerous.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is asking ARC Automotive Inc. in Knoxville is recalling 67 million inflatables in the United States because they could explode and shoot shrapnel. The agency said at least two people were killed in the United States and Canada, and seven others were injured due to a faulty ARC inflator.
The recall will cover a large portion of the 284 million vehicles currently on US roads, but the percentage is difficult to determine. Some have inflatable ARC for both the driver and front passenger.
In a letter posted on Friday, the agency told ARC it had provisionally concluded after an eight-year investigation that ARC’s inflatables for the driver and front passenger were defective. safe.
Stephen Ridella, director of the NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigations, said: “Airbag inflators launch metal shards at the occupants of the vehicle, rather than properly inflating the attached airbag, creating a hazard. unreasonable death and injury”. wrote in a letter to the ARC.
But ARC replied that no defect existed in the inflator and that all problems were related to individual manufacturing issues.
The next step in the process is for NHTSA to schedule a public hearing. It can then take the company to court to force a recall.
“We disagree with NHTSA’s new sweeping request that extensive field testing found no inherent defects,” ARC said in a statement Friday night.
Also on Friday, NHTSA posted documents showing that General Motors is recalling nearly 1 million vehicles equipped with ARC inflators. The recall covers some 2014-2017 Buick Enclave, Chevrolet Traverse and GMC Acadia SUVs.
The automaker said an inflatable explosion “could result in sharp metal shards hitting the driver or other vehicle occupants, resulting in serious injury or death.”
Owners will be notified by mail starting June 25, but there is no fix yet. They will receive another letter when one is ready.
GM said it will provide “courtesy transportation” on a case-by-case basis to owners who are afraid to drive the vehicles affected by the recall.
The company said it is conducting the recall, expanding on previous actions, “out of an abundance of caution and with the safety of our customers as our highest priority.”
One of the two deaths was a mother of 10, who was killed in what appeared to be a minor crash on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula in the summer of 2021. found a metal piece of the inflator that had impaled her in the neck during a crash involving a passing 2015 Chevrolet SUV.
NHTSA says at least a dozen automakers are using the alleged faulty inflator, including Volkswagen, Ford, BMW and GM.
The agency believes that welding debris from the manufacturing process can block the “vent hole” of air that escapes to fill the airbag in a crash. Ridella’s letter states that any blockage could cause pressure to build up in the inflator, blowing it up and throwing metal shards.
But in a reply to Ridella on May 11, ARC Vice President of Product Integrity, Steve Gold, wrote that NHTSA’s position is not based on any objective technical or technical conclusion about a defect, “but rather on statements.” conclusive regarding the ‘slag slag’ clogging hypothesis.”
He writes that unconfirmed welding debris was the cause of any of the seven inflatable failures in the US ARC thinks only five broke in use and that “does not support concluding that a systemic and widespread defect exists in this case. population.”
Gold also wrote that manufacturers must recall, not device makers like ARC. NHTSA’s recall request, he wrote, is beyond the agency’s legal authority.
In a federal lawsuit filed last year, the plaintiffs allege that ARC’s inflatable division uses ammonium nitrate as a secondary propellant to inflate the airbags. Pelleted propellant can expand and develop microscopic holes if exposed to moisture. According to the lawsuit, the degraded pills had a larger surface area, causing them to burn too quickly and cause an explosion that was too large.
The explosion could blow away a metal canister containing chemicals, sending metal shards into the cabin. The lawsuit says ammonium nitrate, used in fertilizers and as a cheap explosive, is so dangerous that it can burn so quickly even in the absence of moisture.
The plaintiffs allege that the ARC inflators blew up seven times on U.S. roads and two more times during ARC testing. To date, there have been five limited recalls of inflatables totaling about 5,000 vehicles, including three by GM.
