More than 30 million US drivers at risk from dangerous airbag blast

More than 33 million people in the United States 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.

Because of a dispute between federal safety regulators and an airbag parts manufacturer, they aren't likely to find out anytime soon.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration [NHTSA] is demanding that the manufacturer, ARC Automotive of Knoxville, Tennessee, 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 United States 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.

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 a letter to NHTSA, ARC said no automaker has found a defect common to all 67 million inflators, and no root cause has been identified in the inflator ruptures.

"ARC believes they resulted from random ‘one-off' manufacturing anomalies that were properly addressed by vehicle manufacturers through lot-specific recalls," the letter said.

In a statement, NHTSA indicated that both ARC and automakers are responsible for recalls and that it can seek a recall from a parts maker that supplies multiple 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.

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.

Automakers collecting data

The standoff with ARC has sent automakers struggling to find out just how many of their vehicles contain the inflators.

The auto manufacturers are also asking NHTSA whether they must start doing recalls. Automakers know many of the models affected.

But many say they're still gathering information from later model years to determine which vehicles contain the affected inflators. "We are still investigating," said Maria Buczkowski, a spokesperson for Ford.

"We have not had any ARC airbag inflators rupture in the field." James Bell, a Kia spokesperson, said. "We do not have a final count on vehicles that were built with ARC inflators, but the team is collecting the data."

Toyota confirmed that some of its vehicles have ARC inflators but wouldn't comment further.

Other automakers said they were trying to find a cause and were working with the government or didn't respond to requests from The Associated Press for information.