NHTSA Issues the First Defect Recall Order in Decades

On April 29, 2026, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) took a rare step: It issued a final decision ordering a recall of vehicle equipment—in this case, air bag inflators manufactured in China that allegedly caused numerous deaths and serious injuries by exploding during a crash. This was the agency’s first recall order in decades and illustrates the unusual situation in which the agency found itself.

The Investigation

In 2023, NHTSA began receiving reports of injuries and deaths caused by air bag inflators that malfunctioned when deployed, “sending large metal fragments into drivers’ chests, necks, eyes and faces, killing or severely injuring drivers in otherwise survivable crashes.” The inflators were not part of the originally manufactured vehicles but rather were installed as aftermarket replacement equipment.

The following year, NHTSA published an alert regarding “substandard replacement air bag inflators that can cause death or serious injury in a crash.” The Secretary of Transportation likewise warned that “whoever is bringing this faulty Chinese equipment into the country and installing them is putting American families in danger and committing a serious crime.”

In October 2025, NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation formally opened an Engineering Analysis, the highest level of safety investigation the office undertakes. It did so without taking the usual step of first opening a Preliminary Evaluation, which is a less-intensive type of investigation. NHTSA’s investigation was highly publicized.

The air bag inflators in question were, according to NHTSA, apparently manufactured by Jilin Province Detiannuo Safety Technology Co., Ltd., a China-based company known as DTN. The inflators were allegedly imported into the United States illegally and installed in used vehicles.

Specifically, NHTSA explained that “most of the vehicles involved were in a crash and had their original equipment air bags replaced with air bag modules containing these air bag inflators. Air bags may have been replaced for other reasons, including theft. After the air bags were replaced and the vehicle was involved in a crash, the air bag inflators malfunctioned and ruptured….”

The Recall Order

On April 2, NHTSA published an initial decision finding a defect, which is the first administrative step toward ordering a recall. NHTSA explained that it was “aware of twelve instances in which such inflators have ruptured in vehicles in the United States after the vehicle’s air bag was commanded to deploy.”

On April 29, after a brief public notice-and-comment period, NHTSA published its final decision, ordering a recall of the inflators and banning their sale or importation into the United States. NHTSA stated that “[a]fter consideration of all relevant information, including responses to the initial decision, NHTSA has concluded that these inflators pose an unreasonable risk of serious injury or death to vehicle occupants.” NHTSA ordered “each manufacturer, including each importer, of the inflators to conduct a recall. In addition, the order makes it illegal for any person to sell, offer for sale, introduce or deliver for introduction in interstate commerce, or import into the United States these inflators.”

Takeaways

• This case serves as an exception to the rule. Mandated recalls for vehicles and equipment are extremely rare in the United States. Although manufacturers initiate approximately a thousand recalls each year, those recalls are overwhelmingly voluntary rather than the result of an agency order.
  • Under the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act, manufacturers have an affirmative obligation to recall defective vehicles and equipment and to notify NHTSA and owners of the recall. Accordingly, of 997 vehicle and equipment recalls initiated in the United States in 2025, 88% were “uninfluenced”—that is, issued by the manufacturer without any NHTSA involvement. The remaining 12% of recalls were “influenced,” meaning they followed a NHTSA investigation. But even the influenced recalls were not ordered by the agency, and not every NHTSA investigation ends with a recall.
  • A mandated recall is a rarity. Indeed, even in the exceptional cases where NHTSA has published an initial defect decision, the ultimate result has typically been a voluntary recall or other settlement.
• The practical effect of NHTSA’s recall order here is also atypical. In a standard recall, the manufacturer will notify vehicle owners and dealers of the issue and offer free repairs of the affected vehicles or equipment once a remedy is available. Here, however, the manufacturer of the equipment at issue is not only located outside the United States, but it also denies that its product was even installed in vehicles in the United States. U.S.-based importers of the recalled equipment are also subject to the order; because the inflators were allegedly brought into the U.S. illegally, however, the recall process will not follow the usual, systematic process of notification and repair. NHTSA has acknowledged that “because these inflators were likely illegally imported and a list of affected vehicles is not available, a traditional recall is unlikely.”
• Finally, the investigative and administrative processes in this case gave every indication of an agency trying to move as quickly as possible.
  • While NHTSA was aware of the air bag inflator issue for years, its response greatly accelerated in 2025. Bypassing the investigative step of a Preliminary Evaluation, NHTSA jumped immediately to a heightened Engineering Analysis. Then, after publishing its initial defect decision, NHTSA limited the public comment period to just 15 days. NHTSA released its final recall decision 27 days after the initial decision. In total, just over six months elapsed between the opening of the Engineering Analysis and the issuing of the final recall order.
  • The defect decisions were also relatively concise: the initial and final decisions were each just over 3,000 words. By contrast, a supplemental initial defect decision that NHTSA published in 2024—in a still-pending matter that also involved air bag inflators—was over 21,000 words.
  • The agency’s speed and brevity likely reflected—in addition to the urgent danger apparently posed by inflators—a recognition that the manufacturer was unlikely to put up a major legal fight in the United States. At a time of heightened geopolitical and trade tensions, it is also probably not incidental that the equipment at issue originated in China.

This post is as of the posting date stated above. Sidley Austin LLP assumes no duty to update this post or post about any subsequent developments having a bearing on this post.