The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has confirmed 12 crashes tied to defective airbag inflators that don’t just fail. They rupture into shrapnel, sending metal fragments into drivers’ faces, necks, chests, and eyes. Ten people are dead. Two more were seriously injured.

That’s not a defect in the traditional sense. That’s a weapon hidden inside your steering wheel.

Every one of those 12 crashes involved frontal driver airbag inflators made by Jilin Province Detiannuo Safety Technology Co., a Chinese manufacturer the NHTSA identifies as DTN. The inflators didn’t deploy normally. They exploded. And so far, all 12 confirmed incidents happened in Chevrolet Malibu and Hyundai Sonata vehicles.

Here’s where it gets worse for used car buyers specifically. The NHTSA said it “does not have information to confirm the risk is limited to these makes and models.” Read that carefully. The agency is telling you, in plain language, that the Malibu and the Sonata are where they’ve confirmed it. They can’t tell you it stops there.

So how did counterfeit inflators from a Chinese company get inside American cars? The NHTSA is still investigating exactly how many of these parts entered the United States illegally. Think about what that word means here. Illegally. These components worked their way into the repair supply chain somehow, most likely through aftermarket parts dealers or independent shops sourcing the cheapest available replacements after crash repairs. When a vehicle doesn’t go back to a manufacturer’s dealership for post-accident work, there’s no guarantee the replacement airbag inflator is a legitimate part.

“Consumers should be concerned about any vehicle that was in a previous crash with an air bag deployment since 2020 and was not repaired by one of the manufacturer’s dealerships,” the NHTSA said in its guidance, warning that such vehicles should be inspected without delay.

That’s a wide net. If you’ve bought a used Malibu or Sonata, or honestly any used vehicle that’s changed hands since 2020, you should be asking where the repair work was done after any crash it was involved in.

First step is straightforward. Pull a vehicle history report. Services that compile title records, accident filings, and repair history exist for exactly this reason, and they’re cheap compared to what’s at stake. If the report shows a crash with airbag deployment since 2020, find out which shop did the repair. If it wasn’t a manufacturer-authorized dealership, get the car inspected by a mechanic you trust and ask specifically about the airbag inflator.

The National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center has been involved in flagging how counterfeit auto parts enter American markets, and this situation fits that pattern exactly. Counterfeit safety components are a documented problem, not a hypothetical one. The DTN inflators are a case study in what happens when that chain breaks down and nobody catches it before the part ends up inside someone’s car.

For more background on the broader federal effort to ban dangerous inflators, Family Handyman has been tracking NHTSA’s ongoing actions on this issue.

If your vehicle turns out to have one of these DTN inflators, don’t drive it. That’s the NHTSA’s guidance, and it’s not overcautious. Park it. Take it to a dealership. The risk isn’t theoretical. It’s already happened 12 times, and ten of those people didn’t survive.

The lesson here isn’t complicated. It’s about knowing your car’s history before you trust it with your life. A vehicle that’s been in a crash and wasn’t repaired at a dealership carries a real question mark about what’s inside the steering column. For most people that’s never been a concern worth thinking about. After this, it should be.