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
Remember a few years ago when ford had to do a recall because the doors on either the escape or edge. My friend literally had the door open while driving with her kid in the back seat. When she went to the dealership to get it fixed they would only fix one door, and it wasn’t the one that opened. They refused to fix both because that wasn’t part of the recall.
Dante’s Peak scared the shit out of me as a 9 year old (not really sure why I was taken to see this in movie theaters) and for a while I became obsessed with where volcanic activity could theoretically occur.
Oh cars? Huh, I guess I don’t recall having too many car based fears as a kid. I was too focused on volcanoes.
I had a Lada that the passenger door would open randomly in turns, I used a bungee cord to hold it shut usually or if I had a passenger I would warn them, and they would forget until I went around a corner and it flopped open
Unsurprising. Big Altima Energy creates lateral G forces that no OEM striker is engineered to handle.
My brother was maybe 5 or 6 when he fell out of my dad’s 62 Tempest 4 door. Dad was doing a U turn, the rear right door popped open, and my brother rolled out in the street. I was in the back seat on the other side. Thankfully he was fine, he somehow instinctually just did a tuck and roll and he was unharmed. I don’t think the car even had rear seatbelts
As its a Nissan, I was really expecting the fix to involve duct tape
I have seen someone driving down the street holding the door of their Altima closed. Right hand on the steering wheel, left hand wrapping around the outside of the door (i.e., if the door banged shut it would pinch their hand). It made me glad I wasn’t poor anymore.
By the end of it’s tenure, my parent’s ’91 Dodge Shadow had a driver’s door with two party tricks:
-Couldn’t be opened from the outside
-Would sometimes fly open on right-hand turns.
Thankfully, it was a 2-door, so in the back seat I was safe from going for a tumble.
It was a real thing in the early eighties for me. My dad’s 2 door Celica had a tendancy to require the door to be slammed pretty hard to ensure the latch stayed latched. Never really had concerns about falling out and/or opening going straight or anything, but if he took a right turn and it was not latched. that was Often a pucker butt moment.
Ditto, we had an 81-ish Celica with an iffy latch too!
Usually, we say somene fell from (or with) motorcycles, bicycles and alikes.
That changed for me when I saw someone falling from an old VW Bus driving ahead. It went on a light curve to the left and suddenly the passenger front door opened and a woman fell (along some potatos and onions(!).
Never really considered someone falling from inside a car until that very moment. I mean, I would expect that from people hanging from a car window or in truck bed, but not under normal circunstances.
Also, only I felt really old because his concern as kid was to have his xbox washed away in tsunami? I was already working to buy myself one when they launched…
Friendly reminder that the kids earning their license this year were born the year Megamind came out.
this is so upsetting
Deeply.
If you’re middle aged, our births are closer in time to the Great Depression than to the present day.
Cheers.
I really don’t appreciate you pointing this out…
Man, I came down to the comments to mention that one of our old VW Vanagons had an issue where the passenger front door would just fly open at random on left turns. We made sure never to lean on the door when we sat in the front. My dad eventually rigged up a ratchet strap to the seat frame to hold it shut and whoever sat in that seat had to climb in through one of the other doors. Luckily, no one ever fell out of it, but your story about the lady falling out brings back my childhood anxiety about it.
My dad use to tell the story about driving his mom in their new 89 Camry with auto belts. She got in and the should belt came across and she assumed she was all buckled up (despite not doing her lap belt). They went around a left turn and out she went onto the street. She hadn’t shut her door properly and the shoulder belt did nothing to hold the little 4 foot something in her seat. A few scrapes and bruises, but otherwise fine. She was unhappy.
In talking with a company that makes door latches for cars, he noted than having a door that won’t open is far better than one that doesn’t hold itself closed.
Even having door latches that fail during a crash, by opening, can cause a major recall. Whilst the opposite, a door that won’t open, won’t. .
Explains why nobody’s pitching a fit about Tesla’s roach motel doors.
That seems kinda opposite to me. Being stuck in the car in an emergency seems like it could be extremely dangerous. On the other hand, if the door opens, you’re not going anywhere (unless you don’t have a seatbelt which … it’s 2026, people).
As I understand current regulations, it’s required to lock the doors automatically when collision is detected (or to have them auto-lock when vehicle moving >speed). This helps keep things on the inside inside, or outside outside.
All sorts of arguments could be made, especially as Jeep and Ford both offer vehicles where doors can be completely removed. Insert further absurdity when certain American states don’t require seatbelts though crash laws need to consider them.
But the line needed to be drawn somewhere.
You can always cut a door open – it’s hard to claim the opposite of closing the door, as the cat’s already out of the bag by then.
I recall hearing (on The Smoking Tire Podcast) that the reason we don’t have the Alpine A110 in the US is primarily because it doesn’t pass US unrestrained occupant crash tests. Again, it’s 2026 people…
Doors used to fly open all the time. I don’t think they were reliable until the 80’s.
Growing up, our family cars were always two doors because boomer parents had either fallen out of a moving vehicle or knew someone who had so they didn’t want the kids to have direct access to the doors.
My mother told me about the time she tried to slam a loose car door shut on the freeway, and forgot that it was a
suicidecoach door. No seatbelts if I recall, just the steering wheel that she had to keep steady while hauling herself back in.It is part of the reason for child locks on the back doors, but more than likely the desire for the more socially attractive 2 door version of anything was the real reason. Rear seatbelts and the wagons with rear storage space tables and access to a rear drop down or popup door was probably even more of a concern/excuse.
I don’t think it was really a status or appearance issue.
Chevy Monte Carlo (and other GM variants) were very common as family cars, almost the default family car in my area in the early/mid 80s (as long as you had 3 kids or fewer). Nobody was proud to be driving them.
According to C&D, the Oldsmobile Cutlass was the best selling car in the US from 1978-1983 (except for 1982 which went to the new Escort). Consider that there were also Chevy, Buick and Pontiac versions of that vehicle.
eh, maybe I am wrong, I don’t know for sure, but the 2 door Personal Luxury segment was pretty solid in the malaise era, T-Birds and Monte Carlo’s were considered a higher class and more desirable to most I grew up around.
The biggest surprise in this article is that an Altima failed at striking something.
I was watching a youtube video about dangerous roads, and they were in Guinea. The truck was some ancient thing from the Soviet Union, a Zil 130. The cab was so rusted and floppy that the door latch was long gone, replaced by a U-shaped piece or rebar shoved between the broken window and the cab. Those guys have guts.
My biggest childhood fear was a ceiling fan falling on me while I slept.
My biggest childhood fear was a ceiling fan falling on me while I slept.
This happened to me, kind of.
One of the fan blades broke off while it was running and the spinning fan hurled it into the wall above my bed while I slept. It left a gash in the sheetrock and landed on my face.
What I remember most is that neither of my parents seemed concerned about it…In fact, my dad was pissed that he had to spend his weekend replacing the fan and repairing the wall.
I still have memories of having the gravel scraped out of my arm by our country doctor after falling out of my dad’s late 70s land boat in a turn. This was also the day I almost became fatherless.
I had a 73 Nova that the passenger door would fly open on left hand turns, fun times driving shit boxes in the 80’s.
You must have bought my dad’s car after the incident above!
Back in the 70’s, we had an old rusted out Suburban that had this very problem: taking a hard right turn would cause the front passenger door to fly open. Dad was in the Navy and was gone to Vietnam and my Mom didn’t have the mechanical know-how or funds to get it fixed. So as the oldest child, my job was to tend the door. Whenever Mom got ready to take a right-hand turn, she’d give me the signal and I’d grab the door handle and hang on. Also, the wheel wells were rusted through and when my sister and I got to ride in the way-back, we’d drop small rocks and army men and stuff down onto the tires to watch them get whisked away at high speed. Rusty clapped out cars are loads of fun when you’re a kid!
My dad had an 1800ES, and you could see the pavement rush by through the gear shifter boot…
My 1800E had frame rust so bad, it made Toyota pickups look good!
For our 7 year old readers: rest assured that, at least at highway speeds, the wind will keep that door from flying open.
Plus they should be buckled in. Or if small enough, in a booster that likely has at least vestigial armrests holding them in place.
*and rest assured your seatbelt and its anchors are incredibly strong and will not fail in the event of a strong wind.
Can confirm! For some reason, when I was very small I thought it would be fun to try opening the door of a late ’80s Suburban while Mom was driving; we were approaching an urban area, so I’m going to guess we were doing at least 55. The latch opened, but the door barely moved. (I have no idea why the doors weren’t locked.)
Yup. I fell asleep in the front seat of my dad’s car (don’t worry this was before airbags, so totally safe). In my sleep I tried to open the door on the highway. Scared the crap out of both of us, but yeah that door wasn’t going anywhere.
What if the police came to arrest me for asking for something without saying please?
People have gone to the Gulag for less.
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.
This happened a lot in my Triumph, a combination of primitive door latch tech and a very flexible body.
“primitive door latch tech and a very flexible body”
Exactly the case with our 1942 American LaFrance pumper. It happens exclusively on turns where the road is banked wrong. Luckily we’re rarely traveling above 20, so just tuck and roll.
Ngl, I had never heard of an “American LaFrance.” What a delightful name.
If you live in Minnesota or Maine right now, a whole lot less.
I thought at this time of year those ARE the Gulags.
ICE really are the stormtroopers in both the historical and sci-fi senses of the term. If they’re not spraying chemical agents directly in the face of a protester 5 of them already have pinned down, they’re throwing a tear gas canister uphill and upwind and gassing themselves.
It’s incredibly easy to give Nissan a hard time for their quality issues, but this should be applauded. Having worked in manufacturing environments as a design engineer, it’s extremely common for technicians to not report quality problems, either because management/engineers don’t care or because they fear they will end up behind on their production targets. Sure, we shouldn’t have to be giving out gold stars for doing what is correct, but based on reports about Tesla manufacturing punishing anyone that doesn’t act in lock-step with Elon’s looney demands, it’s nice to see not ever company is irreversibly ruined.
As a non engineer it makes me appreciate how complicated manufacturing even simple stuff actually is.
In the grand scheme of f*ck ups, this seems a lot more forgivable and understandable than forgetting to install seat rail anchor bolts or letting engines go out with metal shavings in them.