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
I had issues with the door latchs of my Polestar 2, the back doors for some reason during winter they were not locking, they looked like the doors were shut but after several slams, the door finally closed but then not open back again. I had an instance where I had to take my kids out using the front doors.
mid 80’s I was like 10 by brother 6. My grandfather had a Granada coupe and I still thought it was cool to have to move the seat to get in the back so my brother got “stuck” with the front seat.Grandpa hooks a left to this day I can still see the door opening with my brother swinging out the door holding onto it and his toe catching the sill. Straighten out door closes brother slides across the bench seat into Grandpa, he pushes him back over and says that never happened, let get ice cream.
Wow! Nothing like that ever happened in my parents’ and grandfathers’ Oldsmobiles.
You know what, you just reminded me that I used to have that fear as a little kid too. I had completely forgotten about it. It was also while riding in the plane with my dad because one plane he owned had a door that didn’t like to fully latch, and would pop unlatched during flight. He cured my fear of this by fully unlatching it as we were flying and telling me to try as hard as I could to push it open, which of course I could not do because the air was pushing it closed. So I learned it was just noise and not actually a danger.
I remember one time a car pulled out of a BK onto a stroad I was driving on, and mid turn the passenger door flew open and a small child came tumbling out and rolled onto the street. Luckily traffic was light and everyone slammed on their brakes (including me.) The kid just hopped up, jumped back in the car and mom sped off in shame. Made me wonder if this was a regular occurrence based on how smoothly it went.
Jeez, I’d have had a heart attack seeing that!
Definitely had to take some deep breaths for a minute – I was the car closest to the kid, the lady pulled out in front of me (it wasn’t an unreasonable maneuver, had the door stayed shut!)
A decade ago one of my siblings conducted a series of interviews with a very elderly resident (let’s call her Maureen, not her real name, no, Elise wasn’t her real name either) of a neighboring assisted living home for a family history project at the behest of Maureen’s family as she indeed had numerous memorable anecdotes. One in particular was about riding in a car during a Sunday drive (which would have been in the mid-1930s) when Maureen was about ten years old & her sister about eight. Her parents were taking the family for the aforementioned Sunday drive with the kids in the rear seat; as they were driving on a long sweeping curve her sister wanted to roll down her window but grabbed the door pull instead of the window crank whereupon the door flew open and her sister started sliding out. Maureen grabbed her sister’s dress while clutching the strap on her side’s B pillar and held on for dear life (lives, rather) until her sister could climb back in. Talk about a close call (and a shout out to quality clothing, that dress was doing some work, all right.)
So, yeah, not altogether irrational a childhood fear, falling out of a car when the door flies open…
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.
There is a customer satisfaction program on my Escape, but not because the door fly open, but because the rod for the door catch can break free of the door. After reading of this a few months ago mine broke off about a week later. Free door replacement (or repair if you catch it in time,) but it can affect either front door.
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 have an ex/now friend that’s terrified of wind chimes because of Twister.
Not shocking.
Twister for whatever reason didn’t bother me at all. But then again, we don’t get tornadoes here, basically ever. Somehow a volcanic eruption, despite literally never happening here in modern history, seemed more plausible.
Also, cows mooing in a tornado with 90’s movie effects sort of brought a level of comic relief that made it harder to take seriously. Also, the deaths are just less gruesome. Blunt force trauma? I can deal with that. Boiled alive or subjected to you know… lava? Woof.
But hey, we all have our own triggers.
I feel like Volcano, where it was underground in Los Angeles was scarier than Dante’s Peak, which you know, looked like a volcano
In fact, wasn’t the volcano in Dante’s Peak a known volcano? A bunch of the characters were there specifically because they were studying it.
Man, I miss 90’s disaster movies.
It was, lol. And the couple that get’s boiled alive in the hot springs at the beginning, was a pretty fair warning.
Also, the grandma gets boiled alive too. There was a whole lot of getting boiled alive in that movie. Didn’t love it.
Lol, sure but I was 9.
And I come from a mountainous area that at least visually comes closer to looking like the Dante’s Peak PNW town, than LA. LA might as well be another planet.
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.
That’s basically what I did to a rental car last February. I was on my way from NM to Tucson to fly back home in NYC. When I was about two hours from the airport, one of the two latches for the hood came loose and the hood was rattling like crazy, with only one latch preventing it from flying open. The less-than-ideal road surfaces in SW NM might have loosened one of the latches.
I pulled over, tried to close both latches, but to no avail. Driving below 50MPH could stop the rattling, but it’s akin to committing suicide on a rural interstate in SE Arizona. Worse, I’d have missed the flight.
After some quick thinking I just asked Google for the nearest Autozone along the way. I bought a roll of duct tape and just duct taped the shit out of it. I made the rest of the drive at… posted speed limit… and it did not squeak one bit.
I told the rental agency at the car return area. He just ripped off the tape (since the tape was on for only two hours it did not leave any residue), opened the hood up high, and let it fall all the way down, slamming it shut. As it turned out, I just wasn’t trying hard enough.
Moral of the story: don’t be gentle. It’s a rental.
PS: it’s not a Nissan
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!
I did too (81 Celica), but the problem was a saggy door. I just replaced me door with a different junkyard one. It also had a problem with the seat backs breaking. The next gen Celica (82-85) had much better build quality – I actually had an 85 before I bought the 81.
It was a very long door and I can see how the weight stressed the hinges and put it slightly out of alignment.
Ours was yellow. We called it the bananamobile.
My guess is the alignment problem then wears out the latch mechanism.
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…
I was thinking something along those lines with WW2 just last week.
I will turn 53 next month. Which means being born in 1973. My birth is equal in time-distance to today and 1920. This is nuts to me.
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.
For the younger people here; there used to be a commercial for a “Roach Motel” you could buy to kill roaches, and the slogan was “Roaches check in, but they don’t check out!”
Former secretary Chao’s sister Angela certainly checked out in her Tesla that wouldn’t open.
Yeah, Angela became Fried Chao Mein that day.
Incredibly tasteless joke aside, Tesla’s hermetically self sealing doors are a real menace.
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…
I certainly hope a car whose doors don’t open would cause a recall. Heck, I’d be happy if any cars with electric latches like Teslas and many others were all recalled and forced to use obvious and reliable mechanical latches.
Latches are a component that has definitely not benefited from innovations in the past 20 years.
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.
Started that way, but the best selling model in the US is, by sales numbers alone, not going to be ‘luxury.’ It’s going to be ‘average.’
A great deal of those cars were sold with crank windows and no air conditioning (both would be included in a mid-trim Caprice of the same time).
Our 75 MC had crank windows and the freaking coldest AC you can possibly imagine.
We had an Escort as a family car in the mid 80s (3 kids).
I know I sound like a senile boomer when I say this, but I don’t get why cars need to be so flapping big when you have kids. It can’t just be the larger child seats.
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.
(here’s more than you wanted to know)
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.
Just saw a hilarious photo of a dude blowing pepper-spray back at an ICS/CBP goon with an electric leaf-blower. I have a Migra Watch training session this weekend.
My Dad fought Nazis, it’s the least I can do.
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.