Exploding airbag inflators strike again—1 million GM SUVs are recalled

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There’s another massive airbag safety scandal brewing. Last week, General Motors issued a recall for almost a million SUVs in order to replace potentially dangerous airbag inflators, the third such recall it has had to issue for this problem.

Many vehicles from other OEMs (including BMW, Hyundai Motor Group, and Stellantis) may also contain the same inflators, which can rupture during inflation, spraying shrapnel during a crash. But the supplier that manufactured the airbag inflators has rejected claims by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that there is a systematic defect.

The airbag inflators in question were manufactured by ARC Automotive, a tier-two automotive supplier based in Knoxville, Tennessee, and NHTSA has had an inkling of the problem for some years now. In fact, NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation started a preliminary evaluation in 2015 of ARC’s airbag inflators and whether they could rupture dangerously, following two reports of people suffering shrapnel injuries during a crash when their driver’s airbag deployed.