Agency says traditional recall impossible for parts sold through gray market
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration banned the sale and import of airbag inflaters bearing a part number associated with Chinese manufacturer Jilin Province Detiannuo Safety Technology — known as DTN — in April, after investigators tied the components to at least 10 fatalities and three severe injuries in the U.S. since 2023, according to agency documents and statements reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison said in an interview that a traditional recall of the parts is unlikely if not impossible. Normally, automakers can trace where potentially defective parts originated and how they were imported, but in this case there are no records of who sent the inflaters to the U.S. or distributed them. Morrison said the agency found that some aftermarket inflaters entered the country stuffed inside items like toys and dollhouses. “This is a really unusual situation,” he said.
The agency assembled a team of engineers, defect investigators, and lawyers to determine how to use a seldom-enforced enforcement power to ban the dangerous parts. In April, NHTSA ordered “each manufacturer, including each importer, of the inflaters to conduct a recall,” without naming any company. Morrison said the ban raises awareness, helps investigators identify sellers and importers, and makes clear that selling such parts is unlawful. “We want to make every aspect of commerce with these inflaters unlawful,” he said.
The inflaters — a component that ignites and rapidly fills an air bag during a crash — were likely illegally imported and placed inside air bags sold online as aftermarket replacements, according to NHTSA. The agency said that, despite substantial efforts, it has been unable to obtain sufficient information to estimate how many DTN-branded inflaters are in U.S. vehicles.
DTN, which launched in 2009 and currently has 29 employees, said in a response to NHTSA in April that it does not do business in the U.S. and that the parts in question are “a counterfeit of our product manufactured by another company.” The company called for NHTSA to “reassess its preliminary decision and terminate this investigation against DTN.” NHTSA acknowledged the counterfeit argument but proceeded with the ban.
The deadly consequences of the substandard parts have been documented in multiple accidents. In October 2023, Eui Seok Kang, a flight school student, lost control of his Chevrolet Malibu in Texas during heavy rain. When his air bag deployed, it tore apart his jaw. Kang lost half of his lower jaw, most of his lower teeth, and underwent three surgeries. The air bag had been purchased on eBay and installed by the Texas dealership that sold him the used car. The dealership owner, Saad Attar, said in a deposition that the air bag appeared legitimate, with a GM sticker. Attar’s lawyer said the lawsuit has been settled.
In 2023, Destiny Byassee, a 22-year-old mother in Florida, died after the air bag in her Chevrolet Malibu exploded during a crash. The vehicle had been in a previous accident in which the air bags deployed, and the replacement part contained a DTN-marked component, according to a NHTSA filing and court records. The lawsuit went to trial in June 2026 in South Florida. DTN did not appear to defend itself at trial, and a jury awarded $603 million to Byassee’s family, according to Andrew Parker Felix, a lawyer representing the family.
Felix, of the Orlando office of Morgan & Morgan, has represented seven families in fatal accidents where DTN inflaters allegedly exploded in otherwise survivable crashes. “We are going to keep having innocent Americans killed because they have no idea what’s been placed into their car,” he said.
The supply chain for the counterfeit parts has proven difficult to disrupt. U.S. Attorney Ellis Boyle of the Eastern District of North Carolina, whose office prosecuted a case involving counterfeit air bags, described the risk directly: “The worry here is that a bunch of consumers are going to unwittingly purchase bombs and put them in their steering columns.”
Over a two-year period through spring 2024, Mateen Mohammad Alinaghian, a former North Carolina state transportation department employee, imported about 2,500 counterfeit air bags into Raleigh, N.C., with counterfeit markings of several automakers, including Chevrolet and Honda, and sold them on Facebook Marketplace, according to Justice Department statements and court documents. Alinaghian was sentenced to a year and a day in prison.
NHTSA has sought information from eBay and Facebook owner Meta about their oversight of counterfeit air bag listings. eBay said in a letter that courts have held that it is not liable for defective products sold on its website and that it “only acts as a publisher of sellers’ listings.” Meta said it provides digital infrastructure for third parties to list items in accordance with internal policies and does not provide warehousing or delivery services. EBay said it works to prevent and remove unsafe product listings and cooperates with NHTSA. Facebook said its rules prohibit the sale of certain vehicle parts and accessories, including air bags.
The agency has been tracking the problem for years. NHTSA warned the public about counterfeit air bags in 2012, at the time with no reported deaths linked to the parts. The 2014 Takata recall, which involved faulty inflators in new cars and was linked to 28 deaths in the U.S., prompted NHTSA to require automakers to report any air bag rupture incidents. By then, DTN had been selling air bag inflaters for years, starting in 2009.
Regulators said the DTN-branded inflaters that killed Americans were likely manufactured in 2021 and 2022. In January, NHTSA created a dedicated web page on DTN and began assembling its enforcement team.
The agency’s investigators have been forced to trace the parts through a complex online supply chain. In a January email, an NHTSA investigator wrote that predicting future rupture events “would be close to a wild guess as many of the factors cannot be determined.” NHTSA has sent letters to people believed to have purchased the dangerous air bag parts. The agency’s website contains information for car owners about the risk, and Carfax is allowing vehicle owners to check their vehicle identification number for free to determine whether their vehicle has been in a crash that may have deployed air bags.