The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) may enforce a recall of 52 million airbag inflators from ARC Automotive, Car and Driver reports.
The agency has said that it is preparing to enact a recall next year and detailed its position during a public meeting held this past Thursday in Washington, D.C.
The recall would apply to ARC Automotive as well as another manufacturer, Delphi Automotive Systems, due to incidents of their airbag inflators that can explode and expel shrapnel in the cabin of a vehicle.
According to the NHTSA, the problem stems from a manufacturing error while joining parts of the inflator together, where excess weld slag on the metal seam that accumulates during the process can block gas flow to the airbag and create too much pressure.
Though ARC took measures to avoid this happening after a standing order from the NHTSA in 2016, automakers have still reported incidents of ruptures.
If the recall goes into effect, it would impact a dozen automakers and tens of millions of vehicles and would be the second-largest recall since the Takata airbag recall in 2014.
The NHTSA took the first step to issue a recall in September after it found seven instances of inflator ruptures with ARC’s product.
Four of these incidents involved a Chevrolet Traverse, with one victim passing away. This prompted General Motors to recall almost one million vehicles this past May, some of which included the Traverse.
Other vehicles involved included a 2002 Chrysler Town & Country, a 2004 Kia Optima, and a 2016 Audi A3 e-tron, though recalls for this problem were issued by BMW in 2017 and Volkswagen in 2022.
Though the NHTSA warns that there is a 1 in 370,000 chance of these airbag inflators rupturing following a crash, ARC Vice President of Product Integrity Steve Gold claims that the existing incidents were not indicative of a systemic defect.
