WASHINGTON — General Motors said Friday it will recall about 1 million sport utility vehicles in the United States because the driver’s airbag inflator may explode during deployment. The recall covers 994,763 Buick Enclave, Chevrolet Traverse and GMC Acadia vehicles from the 2014 to 2017 model years with modules manufactured by ARC Automotive Inc. Dealers will replace the driver’s airbag module. The driver of a 2017 Chevrolet Traverse in Michigan was involved in a crash in which the front-driver airbag inflator ruptured during deployment and suffered facial injuries, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said. An April 25 inspection confirmed that the front driver’s airbag inflator had ruptured in the vehicle. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) sought to recall 67 million air bag inflators because of what it believes to be a safety flaw, but auto supplier ARC Automotive Inc rejected the US regulator’s request, documents released Friday showed. The Auto Safety Agency said inflators pose an unreasonable risk of death or injury. Despite the increase in crashes, “ARC has not identified a defect that would require a recall in this population,” NHTSA said in its demand letter to the Tennessee-based company. “Air bag inflators that project metal fragments into the vehicle instead of properly inflating the attached air bag pose an unreasonable risk of death and injury.” GM said it is still investigating the issue with the help of a third-party engineering firm. “GM is taking this extended field action out of an abundance of caution and the safety of our customers as our highest priority,” the Detroit automaker said. GM said it is aware of two previous failures of ARC-manufactured airbag inflators in 2015 Chevrolet Traverse vehicles, and GM had two previous small recalls of about 3,000 ARC inflators. All three crashes involving Chevrolet Traverse vehicles involved the same inflator variant. ARC noted in a letter released Friday that neither ARC nor GM identified a root cause for that breakdown. ARC said it is evaluating the scope of GM’s recall.
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