Lawsuit accuses GM, Ford, VW and Arc Automotive in airbag case:
Messages were left seeking comment from ARC and Ford. Volkswagen declined comment.
The plaintiffs allege that ARC inflators have blown apart seven times on U.S. roads and two other times in testing by ARC. There have so far been five limitedAuto safety advocates say the case seems to mirror thethat began in the early 2000s, which also involved exploding air bag inflators and resulted in 28 deaths worldwide, hundreds of injuries and the largest automotive recall in U.S. history.
ARC, the lawsuit alleges, knew about the danger of ammonium nitrate in patent applications it filed in 1995 and 1998. In 2019, after several ARC inflators blew apart, ARC acknowledged that its use was not acceptable for automotive air bags, according to the lawsuit.