DETROIT — U.S. auto safety regulators have backed away from seeking a giant recall of nearly 50 million air bag inflators and will investigate further after the auto industry raised questions about whether all of the inflators are defective.
But in a document posted Wednesday in the Federal Register and dated Dec. 13, the agency said it considered comments on a decision from January seeking the recall. The auto industry pointed to technical and engineering differences between ARC inflators in vehicles made by different manufacturers. The comments also raised manufacturing-process variations at different plants that made the ARC inflators.
In a supplemental decision in January, NHTSA said seven of the inflators have blown apart in the field in the U.S., each showing evidence of insufficient welds or too much pressure in a canister designed to contain the explosion and fill the air bags in a crash.