DETROIT — 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 vehicles are safe to drive.

The automaker petitioned the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to exempt it from recalls that were required under a 2015 agreement between Takata and the government.

Takata inflators can explode with too much force, blowing apart a metal canister and spewing shrapnel.

Twenty-four people have been killed and hundreds injured by the inflators worldwide.

For GM, the stakes are high. If NHTSA requires it to do all the recalls, the company will have to repair more than 6 million trucks and SUVs at a cost of $1.2 billion, more than half the profit reported by the company in its most recent quarter.

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.

But Takata declared the GM front passenger inflators defective under a 2015 agreement with the government. GM’s efforts to avoid the recalls raise questions about whether the inflators are safe and why NHTSA has taken more than three years to rule on GM’s petitions. The first one was filed in May of 2016.