US to force defiant company to recall 52 million airbags that could explode

05 September 2023 , 20:32

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The ARC Automotive manufacturing plant in Knoxville, Tenn (Image: AP)

The US announced a rare move against a defiant Tenessee company that has so far refused to launch a recall of a "defective" airbag that was found to be the cause of at least two deaths and seven people injured since 2009.

The recall would include nearly 52million airbags made by ARC Automotive Inc., that are under license by another company. It would cover a large portion of the 284million vehicles now on US roads, but the percentage is difficult to determine. Some have ARC inflators for both the driver and front passenger.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration scheduled a public hearing for October 5, a required step before deciding to seek a court-ordered recall. “Air bag inflators that project metal fragments into vehicle occupants, rather than properly inflating the attached air bag, create an unreasonable risk of death and injury,” Stephen Ridella, director of NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation, wrote in a letter to ARC.

The recall could impact a significant number of vehicles - but keep drivers safer at the end of the day (Getty Images)

ARC responded that it no defect exists in the inflators and that any problems are related to isolated manufacturing issues. The company maintains that no safety defect exists, that NHTSA’s demand is based on a hypothesis rather than technical conclusions, and that the agency has no authority to order a parts manufacturer to announce recalls.

The next step in the process is for NHTSA to schedule a public hearing. It could then take the company to court to force a recall. “We disagree with NHTSA’s new sweeping request when extensive field testing has found no inherent defect,” ARC said in a statement.

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“These air bag inflators may rupture when the vehicle’s air bag is commanded to deploy, causing metal debris to be forcefully ejected into the passenger compartment of the vehicle,” NHTSA wrote in an initial decision document. “A rupturing air bag inflator poses an unreasonable risk of serious injury or death to vehicle occupants.”

NHTSA wants ARC to recall inflators in driver and passenger front air bags from at least a dozen automakers. Neither ARC nor the auto industry has released a full list of vehicle models with the kind of air bag inflators that have exploded. But at least 25 million of the 284 million vehicles on U.S. roads are believed to contain them.

Owners of vehicles made by at least a dozen automakers — Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, Ford, Toyota, Stellantis, Volkswagen, Audi, BMW, Porsche, Hyundai and Kia — are left to wonder anxiously whether their vehicles contain driver or front passenger inflators made by ARC.

Airbag safety is vital, and several independent studies have shown that ARC's are known to explode, which the company disputes (Getty Images)

Though ARC is resisting a full-scale recall, automakers have conducted seven smaller recalls of inflators since 2017 that were attributed to isolated manufacturing problems. Those recalls included one that General Motors announced in May involving nearly 1 million vehicles.

Initially, NHTSA said that an estimated 67 million inflators should be recalled, but it revised the number to 52 million due to manufacturer responses in its investigation that over-counted the number, the agency said in documents issued Tuesday.

NHTSA contends that byproducts from welding during manufacturing can clog a vent inside the inflator canister that is designed to let gas escape to fill air bags in a crash quickly. In defective products, pressure can build to the point where the canister is blown apart.

“Even with appropriate industry standards and efforts by manufacturers to minimize the risks of failures, the manufacturing processes may not completely eliminate the risk of occasional or isolated failures,” ARC wrote. The company further argued that the federal motor vehicle safety act “does not require vehicles and equipment to never experience a failure in the field."

"Rather the Safety Act seeks to protect the public against unreasonable risks,” said ARC. The company has noted in the past that no automaker has found a defect common to all the inflators and that no root cause of the inflator ruptures has been identified.

One person who died after an ARC inflator explosion was Marlene Beaudoin, a 40-year-old mother of 10 from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. She was struck by metal fragments when her 2015 Chevrolet Traverse SUV was involved in a minor crash in 2021. Beaudoin and four of her sons had been on their way to get ice cream. The sons were not hurt.

Yelena Mandenberg