Toronto, Ontario — After rejecting a request from the NHTSA in May to recall its 67 million airbag inflators from circulation, ARC Automotive has doubled down, accusing the administration of stepping out of its lane to assert demands.
Last Friday, representatives from ARC offered their side of the story to the Associated Press, alleging that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s request for a recall of its airbag inflators is based on hypothesis and not technical analysis, and that, regardless, it has no authority to demand a recall from a parts manufacturer.
“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 in a statement.
“[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.”
This dispute stems from an NHTSA investigation of ARC Automotive launched in 2015 when the safety regulator was responding to reports of ARC airbag inflators ejecting shrapnel in crash scenarios.
Since then, a pair of deaths and a Vancouver-based class action lawsuit can be attributed to this alleged defect of ARC’s inflators.
In spite of its ongoing refusal to submit to a recall, the NHTSA said it would afford ARC “the opportunity to present information, views, and arguments showing that there is no defect or that the defect does not affect motor vehicle safety.”
While no comprehensive list of every year, make and model of vehicle equipped with an ARC airbag inflator yet exists, the aforementioned lawsuit contains a list of vehicles likely to be affected.
