Accidentally-Firing Airbags Spark Massive Dodge Minivan Recall

After it was confirmed that badly-placed wiring could wear through to the core and short-circuit, Fiat Chrysler has had to recall nearly 300,000 Grand Caravans in North America

Matt Kimberley

16 Jun 2017

Accidentally-Firing Airbags Spark Massive Dodge Minivan Recall

Fiat Chrysler is recalling nearly 300,000 Dodge Grand Caravans in North America after it was found that the driver’s airbag could accidentally fire at random times. That’s not so grand.

You could be barrelling down the interstate when suddenly… you get the idea. Apparently the minivan’s airbag wiring can ‘chafe’ against pieces of steering wheel trim, ultimately wearing through the plastic sleeve and causing a chain reaction of short-circuits that makes the bag a little too keen to do its normally life-saving duty.

No deaths have been reported as a result of random airbag explosions, which is good news, but Fiat Chrysler has admitted that at least eight “minor” injuries have been linked to the problem.

Dodge is carrying out repairs and upgrades on 296,838 Grand Caravans; 209,135 in the US and 87,703 in Canada. We understand the recall only affects 2011 and 2012 models.

Via: USA Today

Comments

Watch out Grand Caravan owners. You might have to Dodge the airbag.

LOL PUNNY

You could say that the build quality was DODGEy…
Leaves

I wanted to buy a Grand Caravan, thankfully i Dodged the bullet on that one.

I guess in a confined space such as inside a car, you can’t really DODGE airbags, they’ll just RAM into you.

Time to tightly wrap the steering wheel in duct tape

Also, at the time of writing this, I was the only one not to use a bad pun

Only eight people were injured? Seems like Grand Caravan owners are good at DODGE-ing airbags. This reminds me of when the quality of American cars wasn’t so GRAND.