The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Air bag safety inquiry has progressed little since 2015
Nearly four years ago, the U.S. government’s highway safety agency began investigating air bag inflators made by ARC Automotive of Tennessee when two people were hit by flying shrapnel after crashes. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimated that 8 million Fiat Chrysler, Hyundai, Kia and General Motors vehicles in the U.S. use the company’s inflators. The investigation became more urgent in 2016 after a Canadian woman driving a Hyundai was killed by shrapnel from an ARC inflator.
The latest
Public records posted by the agency show little progress has been made on the probe, which began in July 2015 and remains unresolved.
Now another person has been hurt by an exploding ARC inflator, this time in a General Motors vehicle. Safety advocates say the slow investigation is a symptom of an agency that has done little to regulate the auto industry.
“That’s really unacceptable. NHTSA should have gotten on top of it sooner,” said Rosemary Shahan, president of California-based Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety. “It’s just really painfully obvious that it’s a (safety) defect.”
What it means
ARC inflators are similar to dangerous devices made by bankrupt Takata Corp. of Japan. Both use the explosive chemical ammonium nitrate to create a small explosion to inflate the bags in a crash, and both can blow apart metal canisters that hold the chemical. But unlike Takata, ARC of Knoxville uses ammonium nitrate only as a secondary method of inflating the bags.
At least 23 deaths have been reported worldwide due to Takata air bag inflators; there has been only one known death linked to ARC’s inflators.
The automaker
GM said in a statement that it recalled all the cars with inflators made in the same production lot identified by ARC. The automaker said it will inspect inflators that are replaced.
The inflator in a 2011 Malibu exploded in a Sept. 22, 2017, crash, injuring the driver. GM was told about the crash by the driver’s attorney two months later, but the company was not able to inspect the car until Dec. 13, 2018, according to documents filed with NHTSA. A GM engineer looked at the car and components and determined that the inflator “likely overpressurized and ruptured during deployment.” A week later the company decided to do the recall.
Details of the crash and the driver’s injuries were not available.
What’s next
Progress on the NHTSA investigation has been slow. The last document in the public file was a letter sent by the agency to GM in January 2017, more than two years ago.
Other investigations havemoved slowly as well. As of December, the agency had 36 investigations open into the effectiveness of recalls and possible safety defects.
Of those, 11 are more than 2 years old, and four are over 3 years old. One, a probe into Kia sunroofs that can break, began more than five years ago in October 2013.
In the fatality involving the ARC inflator, the Canadian woman died in July 2016 when the inflator ruptured and sent metal shrapnel into the passenger compartment of a 2009 Hyundai Elantra she was driving. Without the shrapnel injuries, she likely would have survived the low-speed crash, Canadian officials said.