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US moves to force recall of 52 million air bag inflators that can explode and hurl shrapnel (apnews.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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US moves to force recall of 52 million air bag inflators that can explode and hurl shrapnel::The U.S. government is taking a big step toward forcing a defiant Tennessee company to recall 52 million air bag inflators that could explode, hurl shrapnel and injure or kill people.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mean, air bag inflator are pretty much just explosive devices to begin with, just ones that are calibrated to only make enough of an explosion to fill up an air bag and no more. I can't think of a more obvious failure mode than exploding too much except for not exploding enough.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

The issue isn’t exploding too much, it’s that on a very small sample of them, some of the welding could block the exhaust port that goes to fill the airbag up.

So without that exhaust, the thing just explodes like a small bomb rather than filling the airbag.

The actual number is ridiculously tiny though. They only have less than 10 possible cases across hundreds of millions of airbags over 14 years across the US and Canada.