I feel like I had a lot of irrational fears growing up. Weird stuff, or stuff so obscure that it would probably never happen. What if my parents decided to disown me for no reason? What if the police came to arrest me for asking for something without saying please? What if my Xbox got washed away in a tsunami? Somehow, these things are what kept me up as a child.
One fear that’s especially seared into my mind is the idea that, while riding in a car, the door would suddenly swing open without warning and I’d fall out at high speed. Never mind that I always wear my seatbelt and that’s not how door latches work—I remember being diligent about never leaning on the door, in case my weight was enough to force it somehow open (even if it was locked!).
As it turns out, that fear wasn’t as irrational as I thought. Nissan just issued a recall for faulty door striker loops that can fail, allowing the door to swing open even when it’s properly shut. Boyhood anxiety: Reawakened.
What’s A Door Striker, Anyway?
A door striker is that unpainted metal loop bolted to the door frame of a car. The loop is a hook that catches the latch on the door itself, acting as the main connection that binds the door to the chassis when the door is closed. The striker is almost always located opposite the door hinges in the door frame. Here it is on one of the affected Nissans:
This metal loop is usually the only thing holding the door from swinging freely away from the car. If the loop or the latch on the door fails, then the door will no longer be secure, and it could swing open. In the case of this Nissan recall, incorrect welds on the loop of the striker are the issue. From the recall document:
Due to a production issue that has since been corrected, certain Nissan vehicles may have been equipped with one or more door strikers that were improperly welded during the supplier’s manufacturing process. As a result, the door striker wire loop may have insufficient strength and in certain cases could crack and separate from the plate.
According to the NHTSA, the issue can present itself in two different ways. The first is a partial failure, where the door doesn’t swing open, but the latch “may not retain the door as intended while in motion or during a crash.” In this case, owners might hear a rattling noise from the striker piece.
In the second way, both sides of the loop might fail at the same time, allowing the door to swing out with “no warning.” I can hear my childhood self screaming “I told you so!” in my head right now, pretty loudly.
At Least No One’s Actually Lived My Nightmare In These Nissans
The recall covers 26,432 cars in total, including Nissan Kicks, Altimas, Frontiers, and Sentras built from August 2025 to September 2025. Nissan estimates just 1% of the cars (or 264 vehicles) qualifying for the recall are actually affected, though.
The NHTSA says there have been no reports of injury or accidents involving the faulty striker. Nissan actually found out about it internally, according to the recall document:
On August 22, 2025, a technician noted the striker wire loop had separated from the door striker plate during a door fit and function check on a Model Year 2025 Nissan Sentra vehicle. Nissan implemented containment measures, initiated a yard audit and launched an investigation along with the supplier.
The company went on to check 23,930 Sentras in an audit to see how many of them had a broken striker, and found 12 vehicles that were potentially affected. An analysis of the part by the supplier found the problem:
September 2025 through October 2025 – The supplier’s initial investigation of the returned parts identified that the fracture condition was caused by an improper welding process. The improper weld resulted in partial quench fractures due to an increased cooling rate, followed by crack propagation under tensile loading.
Nissan plans to replace all the affected strikers on the cars free of charge, but according to the recall documents, owner notifications won’t be sent out until March. Until then, if you think your car is affected, please, for the love of everything holy, don’t lean on the door.
Top graphic images: Nissan; DepositPhotos.com
My cousin had some thing as a kid where he was constantly opening car doors on the road. Aunt and Uncle had a bench seat car and he was forced to sit in the middle until he grew out of it.
Edit: My first LTD Crown Victoria wagon had a bad latch in the back and the wagon door would sometimes come open on the road. Nothing a quick jab of the brakes wouldn’t fix. I’m surprised I never smashed out the back window.
I took a ride in a taxi in Morocco (a Mercedes Benz W123, as all between town taxis were in Morocco at that time). There were six of us (you paid a flat rate for the whole car, so the more people you could cram in the cheaper it was), with four of us in the back seat, and me pressed up against the door, which did not latch properly.
I spent the entire multi-hour trip through the mountains with one hand on the grab handle, and the other holding the door shut.
My unreasonable fear as a 6-year-old child was that California planted Oleander bushes (which, in my defense, are poisonous) in the median strips of their interstates and I asked my mom what would happen if I was ejected from the car and my mouth came up against an Oleander bush. This, obviously, was before I understood what probably would have happened to my body before that moment.
Not only are oleander bushes poisonous, but they are full of oils that make them burn quite fiercely once they get started. Big toxic oily smoky hard to put out fires. The poisonous smoke really makes you want to be upwind of the fire. The logistics of putting out a toxic fire in the median of a 8 lane highway with shifting wind eventually convinced them to stop planting them. Supposedly the state thought they would be good crash barriers. Compared to highways lined with oak and eucalyptus trees I suppose they were correct.
I think if “what happens if it catches fire?” were top of mind in California , nothing would get built.
Of course non of this stopped my mom from planting 170 of them around our house, and along the highway that passes it.
I didn’t know about the oils. Happy to live in WA now.
And when I was wondering about them as a six-year-old, my neighbors had some of them climbing over our fence.
Actually, a classmate at CalArts had the door open in an old Mustang on the 405, and went to slam it shut, fell out of the car and ran over himself and died.
Yikes!
My family’s car until I was about six was a MGTD and its doors would open if its own volition. As a result my sister and I would sit on little wicker Mexican chairs stuck in the space between the seats and the gas tank. I am fortunate that my parents took my safety seriously.
This fear is also shared by me. As a kid my mom told us all that we were not to touch the door controls while driving EVER. Her reasoning is that she fell from a moving van when she was little because she grabbed the door handle when it went around a corner.
> One fear that’s especially seared into my mind is the idea that, while riding in a car, the door would suddenly swing open without warning and I’d fall out at high speed.
Same. And this was before rear seat belts were a thing, so it was a weeeee bit founded.
I feared the Tommy Boy hood malfunction myself. That also happened to Nissan a few years back.
Never ignore a recall, folks!
Joking aside, kudos to Nissan for taking this seriously. One tech in a garage somewhere noticed an issue and they went into action.
I’ve see a fair few of Altimas with doors and windows ducts taped shut. Nissan maybe covering the real number and a decade of less then functional welds.
Can I just say: Called it!
That reminds me of my grandpa’s Volvo P1600. Going round a curve, door popped open, I slid out under the seatbelt, and bounced across the lawn. Lucky day, really.
Striker hasn’t been the same since that day over Macho Grande. Can’t be relied upon to hold things together.
George Zip said that?
Lieutenant Zip died this morning.
That’s when I developed a drinking problem.
This is a treat only for us olds.
Surely most generations get the reference.
Stop calling me Shirley!
I don’t think I’ll ever get over Macho Grande.
My parents had these bolt on door twist latches that attached to the drip rail. The mechanism had a twist latch that locked in place and prevented the door from opening. We were a rowdy bunch and I guess this gave them piece of mind when we were on a family vacation. This was back in the 60’s. I’ve never seen them in the intervening years.
Like 40 years ago my aunt was driving their VW Rabbit and had my cousin the backseat; not sure if there was a carseat involved or not. Aunt hears a bunch of wind, turns around and sees her daughter hanging onto the door frame. She pulled over in time and probably scolded her kid for opening door.
I was working on the door of one of my XJ’s once and had the panel off- can’t remember if I was doing speakers, or maybe replacing a window regulator- and after I buttoned it all back up, I remember going around a corner and my driver door flying open. Apparently I had bent the rods just enough to not get the latches to close properly when I was putting the panel back on. Was able to fix it the next day, but that was an interesting problem to have.
Car doors latching properly are another one of those things we take for granted, and if they quit latching properly then life gets weird fast. I’ve seen pictures of people that had ropes or bungee cords going across the interior of the car from door handle to opposite door handle to hold the doors shut.
My grandparents had a beat to shit old wagon that required two of the kids to hold one of the doors shut with a rope. There were no seatbelts in the back of course, so if anything had really put force on that door some combination of my mom and/or one of her siblings could have been flung out of the car.
My dad told me about when his little brother accidentally opened the back door while driving and my dad had to pull him back in. My grandfather only ever bought 2-door cars after that.
I never had that irrational fear, but damn did my mother. It’s why my parents would only buy 2 door cars when I was a kid. They didn’t buy a sedan until I was in high school.
Actually back in the 50s my aunt fell out of the car when the car door suddenly came open. My grandfather stopped, got out, dusted her off and put her back on the front seat. If only he had the foresight to sue the manufacturer.