General Motors is trying to avoid recalling potentially deadly Takata air bag inflators in thousands of full-size pickup trucks and SUVs for the fourth straight year, leaving owners to wonder if the vehicles are safe to drive.
General Motors Co. is trying to avoid recalling potentially deadly Takata air bag inflators in thousands of full-size pickup trucks and SUVs for the fourth straight year, leaving owners to wonder if the vehicles are safe to drive.
GM’s petition, posted Wednesday by the government, says the inflators are unique to GM and are safe, with no explosions even though nearly 67,000 air bags have deployed in the field. Takata used the volatile chemical ammonium nitrate to create a small explosion and inflate air bags. But high humidity and hot temperatures can cause the chemical to deteriorate and burn too fast, blowing apart metal canisters designed to contain the explosions and hurling shrapnel.
Even though GM filed the petition in January, the NHTSA didn’t publish it in the Federal Register as required until Wednesday. GM also had to file recall paperwork, but the NHTSA does not make that public until a decision is made on the petitions. In its petition, GM said Northrop Grumman tested 4,270 inflators by artificially exposing them to added humidity and temperature cycling, and there were no explosions or abnormal deployments. It says GM has “established that worse-than-worst-case humidity exposure and temperature cycling will not cause inflator ruptures at any point within even unrealistically conservative vehicle service life estimates.
Jason Levine, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety, a nonprofit consumer group, said the NHTSA appears to be paralyzed in the GM case. Information provided by GM so far isn’t sufficient for the NHTSA to approve the petition, said Levine, who questions the validity of some tests done for GM. He questioned the need for the NHTSA to delay making a decision.
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