More than 30 million U.S. drivers face risk of dangerous airbag blast

Supplier refuses regulator’s demand to recall 67 million inflators

NHTSA argues that the recall is justified because two people have been killed in the U.S. and Canada and at least seven others have been injured by ARC’s inflators

More than 33 million people in the U.S. are driving vehicles that contain a potentially deadly threat: Airbag inflators that in rare cases can explode in a collision and spew shrapnel.

Few of them know it.

And because of a dispute between federal safety regulators and an airbag parts manufacturer, they aren’t likely to find out any time soon.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is demanding that the manufacturer, ARC Automotive of Knoxville, Tenn., recall 67 million inflators that could explode with such force as to blow apart a metal canister and expel shrapnel. But ARC is refusing to do so, setting up a possible court fight with the agency.

NHTSA argues that the recall is justified because two people have been killed in the U.S. and Canada and at least seven others have been injured by ARC’s inflators. The explosions, which first occurred in 2009, have continued as recently as this year. NHTSA tentatively concluded, after an investigation that has lasted for eight years, that the inflators are defective. The agency’s documents show that the inflators date from at least the 2002 model year to January 2018, when ARC installed equipment on its manufacturing lines that could detect potential safety problems.

One of those who died was Marlene Beaudoin, a 40-year-old mother of 10 from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula who was struck by metal fragments when her 2015 Chevrolet Traverse SUV was involved in a minor crash in 2021.

ARC 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 carry out recalls, which ARC contends are the responsibility of automakers.

In the meantime, 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. (Some vehicles have ARC inflators on both sides.)

Because ARC supplies inflators that are included in other manufacturers’ airbags, there’s no easy way for vehicle owners to determine whether their inflators are made by ARC. Neither NHTSA nor ARC nor the automakers have released a full list of affected models.