The federal government is investigating an airbag supplier whose inflators ruptured and injured two drivers within the past seven months, according to documents posted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration this week.
The inflators, produced by ARC Automotive of Knoxville, Tennessee, are not related to the rupturing Takata inflators that affect 32 million cars and have killed eight people. NHTSA said it first received a complaint in December of a driver’s-side airbag rupturing on a 2002 Chrysler Town & Country and dismissed the case as a “single isolated event” until Kia in June reported a lawsuit involving another ARC inflator rupturing on a 2004 Optima. Both drivers were injured. At present, NHTSA is looking at a vehicle population of 420,000 Town & Country minivans and 70,000 Optimas, although there is no root cause identified.
Unlike Takata, ARC is not a Tier 1 supplier and does not build complete airbags. Instead, it supplies inflators to other airbag suppliers (in these cases, to Key Safety Systems for Chrysler and to Delphi for Kia). NHTSA said the Town & Country airbag had something blocking the inflator’s exhaust gases when it deployed, causing “high internal pressure and subsequent rupture.” The agency said it did not know any details regarding the Kia airbag or of any other airbag failures on other Fiat-Chrysler or Kia vehicles.
It could be months or next year before the agency may choose to upgrade its investigation to an engineering analysis, and possibly, a recall. If ARC or the affected manufacturers act first, it could be much sooner. Stay tuned.
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