DETROIT — A Tennessee company could be heading for a legal battle with U.S. auto safety regulators after refusing a request that millions of potentially dangerous air bag inflators be recalled.
The next step in the process is for NHTSA to schedule a public hearing. It could then take the company to court to force a recall. The automaker says an inflator explosion “may result in sharp metal fragments striking the driver or other occupants, resulting in serious injury or death.” The company said that it’s doing the recall, which expands previous actions, “out of an abundance of caution and with the safety of our customers as our highest priority.”
He wrote that welding debris has not been confirmed as the cause in any of the seven inflator ruptures in the U.S. ARC contends that only five have ruptured while in use, and that “does not support a finding that a systemic and prevalent defect exists in this population.”