A Free Press investigation found vehicle recall campaigns have no threshold to clear and no timeline to fix all of the flawed cars and trucks. That has left millions unrepaired.
Matthew DolanDetroit Free Press
On a dark winter morning, Jeffrey Wu nearly lost his life stopping for gas.
Wu was driving his Jeep Grand Cherokee to work on March 4, 2022, when he pulled over to fill up about 20 miles south of Minneapolis.
He had a moment of forgetfulness as he tried to drive away from the Kwik Trip without removing the pump nozzle from his fuel tank. So the dairy plant worker said he stopped, and stepped out again into the frigid predawn.
Little did Wu know that the way he tried to put his SUV into park would lead to tragedy.
Six years before, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles had issued a recall on his 2014 Jeep for problems related to the gear shifter and parking the vehicle. The problem was so pervasive that industry insiders already dubbed it the “park-to-reverse defect.” All it would take is a quick software update to fix. Wu later said he had no idea about the danger and never received a recall notice to get the repair done.
On that cloudy morning around 3 a.m., after getting out of his Jeep, Wu was shocked to realize that his unrepaired vehicle was suddenly rolling backward toward him. The Jeep quickly slammed into him, crushing his left leg so severely doctors would later need to amputate below the knee.
“I thought, 'Oh my God, there it goes, I’m probably going to lose my life, right here at this moment,'” Wu recalled.
Wu's lawsuit now making its way through the courts illustrates one of the most serious, yet unresolved problems in the auto industry: Millions of aging, used passenger cars and trucks on the road in the U.S. today aren’t getting fixed despite dangerous defects identified by automakers and the federal government.
A Detroit Free Press investigation found that automakers are making scant progress in repairing their oldest models with safety problems, putting a growing and vulnerable group of drivers at unnecessary risk.
- Without any federal requirement on auto companies to fix all of the potentially dangerous used vehicles, the annual repair rate rarely exceeds 65% — and much less than that for older vehicles.
- Parts to fix problems aren’t always available, even after consumers are notified about their faulty vehicles. Sometimes, no one knows immediately how to fix them.
- Vehicle recall campaigns do not place any threshold for manufacturers to reach or deadlinesto fix all of the potentially flawed cars and trucks. Close federal oversight is rare.
- Proposed reforms are stalled, despite recommendations of federal officials, industry insiders and safety advocates.
- Used car retailers continue to sell potentially faulty cars and trucks with open recalls in most places, while new car dealers legally can't.
- States around the country register vehicles as roadworthy despite unfixed safety defects. Most of them, through their departments of motor vehicles, have failed to sign on to a federal effort to increase awareness about recalls.
"The recall system is still broken, and it needs to be fixed," said U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, who has fought for nearly a decade to ban dealers from selling used cars and trucks with uncorrected defects.
For the Detroit Three automakers and other major builders of cars and trucks, recalls are piling up, saddling companies with huge costs and the potential to ding their brands' reputations. One-third of consumers said a recall on their vehicle would make them less likely to purchase that brand in the future, according to LexisNexis Risk Solutions.
More than 30 million vehicles were recalled in 2023. Ernst & Young, one of the nation's largest accounting firms, estimates the industry shells out billions of dollars annually to address recalls. The three largest U.S.-based auto manufacturers, Ford Motor, General Motors and Tesla, paid a total of $10 billion in warranty claims, including recalls, during 2023, exceeding the previous year by just about a billion dollars, according to Warranty Week. That means a big drag on a company's bottom line, employee profit-sharing and stockholder dividends.
The human toll has been enormous: The decade-old General Motors' ignition switch defect linked to 124 fatalities and 275 injuries; the faulty Takata air bags connected to more than two dozen dead and at least 400 injured.
But a full accounting of the dead and injured related to all known safety defects is not regularly collected and reported widely by automakers or the federal government.
“What's clear is the system has been stagnant for too long,” former top federal regulator Mark Rosekind said in an interview. “Every once in a while, it comes back to our headlines that defects … can cost people their lives, create injuries, be unsafe to drive and we're just happy leaving it where it is. And that's not OK.”
Rosekind, who led the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) between 2014 and 2017, added that “Takata showed us this could be huge and very dangerous, and we need to do something about it. And we need to start thinking about sort of the full range of tools that we could use.”
Since 1966, Congress has given NHTSA the power to issue safety standards and require manufacturers to recall vehicles that have safety-related defects or do not meet standards. NHTSA collects consumer complaints about vehicles and launches investigations, including over the timeliness of recalls and whether they cover enough vehicles. Ultimately, manufacturers are responsible for reporting their own problems and voluntarily initiating recalls.
Their authorized dealers are required to fix all recalled vehicles brought to them for repair.
All repairs are free for cars and trucks up to 15 years old. In some cases, manufacturers eliminate the need for a trip to the dealership through an over-the-air software update.
Ralph Nader, the pioneering consumer advocate and auto-safety icon who helped lead the push for legislation to create NHTSA, said in an interview the “whole recall system has been in shambles for decades.”
He said it's possible for NHTSA to initiate recalls on its own. But the agency leans heavily on automakers to lead the way. The result? A weakened approach, he said. “You want to start with the language of the recall. It’s not alarming enough. It's almost wonky. They don't say … quick, bring it back. …
“It was thought that NHTSA would have a flurry of mandatory orders and that the companies would be scared of the enforcement,” Nader added. “We overestimated that one, didn’t we?”
Millions unrepaired
Many people never get their vehicles fixed, making the problem more severe by the day. In the past 10 years, more than 300 million vehicles have been recalled.
All the while, the effort to fix a greater number of cars and trucks under recall has generally stalled, thanks, in part, to the growing number of recalled vehicles, shortages in workers and parts, as well as the greater consumer acceptance of risk many don’t see as especially severe.
NHTSA regularly monitors recall efforts but, overall, the agency has focused more on investigating defects and pushing to launch recall campaigns, rather than broader efforts to get more recalled vehicles repaired, the federal General Accounting Office, a government watchdog, concluded in a January report.
It’s also a world of haves and have nots, favoring the wealthy with pricey new cars.
Over time, about 90% of new vehicles — up to 3 years old — have their recall problems quickly fixed. But the average age of vehicles in use — more than 12 years old — has soared to an all-time high. And a fraction — less than half — of recalled cars and trucks 8 years or older ever have their outstanding repairs completed, according to Stout, an auto industry consultant.
It "feels like you're pushing a boulder up a hill," Jennifer Timian, the former chief of the recall management division at NHTSA, said in an interview.
Federal transportation department officials tout numbers showing cars and trucks up to 5 years old have an 83% recall completion rate. But as cars age, those numbers drop off sharply: Vehicles 5 to 10 years old have a 60% rate; vehicles 11 to 15 years old have a 52% rate; and 16 to 20 years have a 38% rate.
Federal vehicle safety officials admitted the issue is a challenge. But they also cautioned that some of the data regularly cited may include scrapped or totaled vehicles likely no longer in service or even in existence.
Recent data indicates the auto industry is also failing to prioritize the most potentially lethal vehicles by getting them off the road and fixed. There isn’t much difference, for example, between the success rate for repairing vehicles with relatively minor flaws, compared with those cars and trucks with more serious problems that could lead to injury and death, figures from Stout show.
The used vehicle industry seems driven to sell potentially dangerous vehicles, warts and all.
Sparking objections from consumer groups and a coalition of U.S. senators, the Federal Trade Commission in 2016 announced a settlement after complaints that General Motors, CarMax and several associated car dealerships advertised their used vehicles with open recalls using terms like “certified” and “172-point inspection." Under the settlement, the FTC required these ads to mention that a vehicle “may” be under an open recall for safety defects. This enabled dealers to advertise these vehicles as certified even if they still have unrepaired safety defects.
Today, according to a GM spokesman, its "dealers are required to remedy all new and used vehicles subject to open recalls before selling them." CarMax says it informs customers about any recalls before purchase.
"The widespread practice of selling these dangerous vehicles without first fixing obvious and identified safety hazards unacceptably shifts the burden from manufacturers and used car sellers onto the party least equipped to address the danger — the consumer," Michael Brooks, executive director of Center for Auto Safety, said in a statement. He described the outlook to improve the repair rate for older cars and trucks as "bleak."
"There's a real problem in both reaching owners of older vehicles, and also in many cases, incentivizing them to bring their vehicle in," he said in an interview, adding that "there's a big gap in the law there, that if the (NHTSA) wants to push manufacturers to do a better job where it sees problems, it has a hard time doing that."
So far, settlements over product liability lawsuits or actions taken by federal regulators haven’t moved the needle toward a significantly better repair rate for older vehicles with open recalls. NHTSA can impose civil penalties for violation of federal safety laws — Volvo, for example, agreed last year to pay $65 million for problems related to recalls — but such large fines against makers of passenger cars and light trucks have been generally few and far between.
“A more active regime around civil penalties and enforcement, as well as larger amounts to punish violations, would go a long way towards making automakers prioritize safety,” Brooks said in an email.
'A bomb detonated'
Among the most alarming safety recalls still haunting roadways are the defective Takata air bags.
Roughly 67 million Takata air bags have been recalled in the U.S. since 2013, the largest callback in automotive history. Long-term exposure to high heat and humidity can cause these air bags to explode with flying shrapnel instead of safely deploying as designed.
Despite yearslong investigations, lawsuits, regulatory orders and unprecedented recall campaigns involving innovations such as repairs done in car owners' driveways, more than 6million inflators have yet to be replaced or otherwise accounted for in the U.S., according to NHTSA.
"To many occupants who have experienced the explosion of a defective Takata air bag inflator, it is as if a bomb detonated in their vehicle," according to a 2017 report from the independent monitor overseeing the recalls.
Older vehicles put their occupants at higher risk since the age of the air bag is one of the contributing factors. A Free Press review of Takata-related deaths in the U.S. compiled by Safety Research & Strategies found the vast majority of the vehicles involved were more than 10 years old.
Threats from the malfunctioning air bags still loom.
Two years ago, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles issued an urgent warning to owners of more than 250,000 vehicles to not drive them after the company reported two people in older Chrysler or Dodge vehicles died from exploding Takata air bags. And this year, a Free Press report revealed the challenges of Ford Motor Co.’s “recall of a recall,” a massive effort to reexamine more than a quarter-million vehicles after discovering subpar work around replacing Takata air bags.
More: Thousands of Ford owners may be at risk of injury from flawed air bag repairs
The problem grew yet again last month: nearly 400,000 BMW models recalled for defective air bags that could lead to deadly explosions. On Tuesday, NHTSA announced that Ford and Mazda issued new “Do Not Drive” warnings for more than 457,000 vehicles equipped with recalled, unrepaired Takata air bags.
Another Takata-like recall could be on the horizon.
More than 50 million air bag inflators built by other manufacturers and installed in vehicles by 13 automakers are dangerous and should not be in use, according to federal regulators. The agency has said the inflators are responsible for at least seven injuries and two deaths in the United States and Canada since 2009. A final decision on a new recall has not been announced.
Reform stuck in neutral
Jeffrey Liker, a retired University of Michigan professor who studied engineering with a focus on Toyota, believes the largely voluntary recall system has fundamental flaws.
"Depending on the automakers to come forward and say, 'I'm gonna confess that I had this problem' is not a great system," Liker said in an interview. "And, in addition to that, then having no consequence for just sending out postcards, and waiting, and expecting people to make appointments, and take time from their busy workday to bring the car in for the day."
In an effort to alert consumers quickly, NHTSA in 2013 moved up the notification requirement, mandating that manufacturers alert owners within 60 days of notifying the government of a recall campaign. The agency more recently created a lookup website and cellphone app to push out the latest information.
But often, the part needed to fix a problem is not available, an issue made worse during the supply-chain crisis after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Still one of the authors of the 60-day deadline defended the approach.
"This is America, OK? And people deserve to know, even if there's nothing you can do about it. Even if it's frustrating, you deserve to know," said Timian, the former safety official.
This has led to consternation among some owners, who may call the dealership once seeking a fix, but never again if the solution isn't yet available, safety advocates say.
“What good is this actually doing?” asked Rosemary Shahan, president of the national group Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety. “When people get it and there's no repair available, then what are they supposed to do?”
Consumers say they’re not getting their recalled vehicles fixed, in part, because they worry a dealership might try to upsell them during the visit. They also expressed concern about the inconvenience of giving up their vehicles for repair, according to a 2017 University of Michigan national survey.
The poor and vulnerable
Who is likely to pay the price of unrepaired vehicles still on the road? Poor and vulnerable people. The greatest percentage of vehicles purchased by low-income consumers are used, which means that they will likely be sold a disproportionate share of recalled vehicles.
One in every five used vehicles for sale in the U.S. — more than 21% of all used cars for sale from both private sellers and auto dealers — carries an unfixed recall, according to Carfax, the private vehicle data company.
"It is completely unacceptable that any vehicle with an open recall could leave a dealer’s lot," said U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts who was a co-sponsor with Blumenthal on the proposed used-car recall sales ban. "This endangers the driver, and everyone on the road with them."
In 2019, Genon Bell, a Connecticut man who worked for an auto parts store but had never bought a car from a dealer, purchased an 8-year-old Hyundai Sonata with 11 open recalls. According to an arbitrator in his legal case, "this fact was disclosed to Mr. Bell only when he tried to return the car the same day he purchased it because he did not think it was safe to drive."
Tracking down current owners of older cars and trucks can also be difficult. Their mailing addresses on file may be outdated. And speed matters. If an automaker can contact customers within three months of purchasing their vehicles, consumers are five times more likely to complete a safety recall fix, according to LexisNexis research.
Still, even if alerted, many are wary of bringing their only vehicle into a pricey car dealership even though the vast majority of recall repairs are free. (Vehicles older than 15 years with recalls don't qualify for no-cost repair.) There also may be a language barrier for some car owners.
Vivek Astvansh, who studies consumer behavior and U.S. vehicle recalls as an associate professor at McGill University in Montreal, found part of the problem is inertia. Owners of older vehicles "are less motivated or incentivized to take their car or vehicle to dealerships," Astvansh said in an interview. He added that consumers often believe that if the recalled vehicle has been working safely thus far, the attitude is “why worry, why bother?"
Many car and truck owners “tend to migrate away from dealerships” as their vehicles age, making it less likely to get a recall vehicle repaired, said Bruce Belzowski, a retired auto safety scientist at the University of Michigan Transportation Institute. “They tend to go to mom-and-pop shops that are less expensive. And for some reason or another, they have more trust in them.”
Among the hardest owners to reach for manufacturers are young people and people who move often, according to David Nemtuda, who works in data services for carmakers at LexisNexis.
The GAO in its January report found "accommodations, such as towing and mobile repair, were effective in encouraging owners of older vehicles to schedule a recall repair." But many manufacturers don't offer such services for routine recall repairs.
Some state officials say they have tried to keep consumers better informed about potential risks.
Thirty-six states’ attorneys general, including Michigan's, sued CarMax Auto Superstores, alleging nondisclosure of information about recalls as well as advertising vehicles as safe despite open recalls. The states settled for $1 million and the promise that the giant retailer would disclose open recalls on vehicles before consumers buy them. (CarMax said in a statement it has been disclosing vehicle-specific recall information in its sales process and online advertising since 2014.)
Today, CarMax says it links its vehicle listings to the federal safety website on recalls. The national used-car retailer also posts two stickers on the windows of its used cars and trucks for sale with information about how to check a recall status. Before any purchase, customers review two separate times if the car or truck has an outstanding recall and sign an acknowledgment.
"As CarMax is not authorized by manufacturers to complete recall repairs and close out recalls, we work hard to ensure our customers have the information they need to take action and have recalls repaired at a manufacturer-authorized facility," said Joe Wilson, CarMax's chief operating officer.
Some manufacturers argue the ultimate responsibility rests with the owners, including those who don’t take recalls very seriously.
One vehicle owner was so incensed by multiple notifications that "he threatened us with a cease-and-desist letter if we did not stop sending recall notices to him," said Eric Mayne, a spokesman for Stellantis, which builds cars and trucks under the Chrysler, Jeep and Ram brands, among others.
Why recalled vehicles remain unfixed
Jeffrey Wu claims he never knew his Jeep had an outstanding recall because he said he never received a notice. Wu says he would have had his Jeep fixed if he had known.
That’s because he had another truck before the Jeep and received a recall notice. He knew to pay attention to the safety notices and get his truck’s recall addressed in a timely way.
“I had a Toyota pickup truck, I drove for 12 years, with hundreds of thousands of miles on there. And one day I got this recall saying … the car was unsafe.” He said the frame was falling apart and wearing down his tires.
“Finally, I got the recall notice and I brought it in,” he said. Toyota eventually paid Wu three times the value of the aging truck because the safety problem could not be fixed. “They really wanted the car back because it was unsafe.”(A Toyota spokesman this week did not respond to specific questions about Wu's experience.)
Overall, nearly 58 million vehicles on U.S. roads today are being driven with a known recall that should be repaired, including 1.6 million vehicles in Michigan, according to data through January compiled by Carfax for the Free Press.
Manufacturers in part blame the challenge of identifying the fix quickly and making the part available, especially for older models out of production. Ford spokeswoman Maria Buczkowski said the industry would benefit from learning which vehicles are out of commission as it did in the cash-for-clunkers program — the federal government subsidy for consumers turning in their beat-up old cars to buy new ones. "Many older vehicles are already off the road but can't be located due to data-sharing gaps, " Busczkowski said.
The GAO more than a decade ago found NHTSA could be doing more to improve the recall repair rate.
The internal watchdog agency found in 2011 that "although recall completion rates vary considerably by certain factors, NHTSA has not consistently used the data it collects to identify which factors make some recalls more successful than others."
This year, the agency echoed a similar theme.
The GAO found that the current recall repair rate is hampered by a lack of convenience for customers, the owner's diminished perception of safety risk, the owner's awareness of the recall, the availability of parts as well as the vehicle's age. The agency concluded in its January report that NHTSA knows this information, but has no plans to do more research into what can be done to improve the rate.
The GAO also worried that "NHTSA may be losing valuable insights that could improve repair rates and help the agency work toward its vision of achieving a 100 percent repair rate for every recall." In addition, the GAO chided NHTSA for failing to fully embrace measures, including industry “collaborations that aim to improve completion rates."
A May 2024 NHTSA research report based on focus groups sought to find out more about potential barriers for consumers. The report concluded drivers like to keep on top of vehicle maintenance, but say checking for recalls is “not top-of-mind.” They also see providing free alternative transportation and offering mobile repairs as keys to improving the likelihood of getting their recalled vehicles repaired.
There have been some bright spots. In 2015, with support from the industry, Congress passed a law that banned rental car companies from letting out vehicles with open recalls.
But other key players like auto insurance companies don't want to enter the fray.
“Safety recall notifications are meant to give manufacturers the chance to correct a defect in their product before something worse happens. Recall notices establish a direct line of communication between the responsible party and consumers who may be affected if the problem isn’t fixed," said Tony Cotto, public policy counsel for the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies.
"Bringing an insurer into this process is only likely to add to confusion around recalls.”
Some industry analysts worry that the federal government, auto manufacturers and other stakeholders responsible for vehicle safety are failing to concentrate their effort on the most acute problem.
“When we talk about recalls not being completed, we're talking about older vehicles,” Raymond Roth, a director focusing on automotive recalls with the consultancy Stout, said in an industry meeting on the issue in Livonia last year. Roth argued that the broader industry has not stepped up its efforts to identify, notify and motivate owners of older vehicles, even though that’s where the greatest gap is.
Some dealers have argued that auto manufacturers don't have a great incentive to get vehicles with safety defects fixed because it drives up their costs.
"Manufacturers view recalls as expense, and they naturally seek to avoid expense wherever and however they can," said Jim Appleton, president of the New Jersey Coalition of Automotive Retailers, a statewide trade association that represents more than 500 franchised dealerships. "Dealers, on the other hand, see recalls as revenue — and an opportunity to step up and often advocate on behalf of their customer to build and strengthen the relationships they have with their customer. …
"The automakers don't have the financial incentive. Indeed, they have the financial disincentive to go any further than they're required under the federal law to notify consumers."
The government and auto manufacturers sometimes send more severe “Do Not Drive” and “Park Outside” recall alerts when the safety risk is seen as especially high. Those notifications are for vehicles with a risk of serious accident or physical harm, and those with high risk of fire that could start inside a garage or near a home.
Those notifications have recently exploded.
There are 4.2 million vehicles that have been tagged with “Do Not Drive” or “Park Outside” safety recalls and remained unrepaired as of January, up from an estimated 2.5 million last year, according to a Carfax analysis completed for the Free Press. For example, Hyundai Motor America and Kia America issued “park outside” recalls for more than 3.3 million vehicles due to the risk of fire, according to a NHTSA announcement last year.
Among those left in the cold is Gloria Villegas.
The 49-year-old full-time caregiver from Woodland, California, bought her 2015 Hyundai Elantra with about 180,000 miles from a CarMax store for $18,000 in October 2022. When the car began to have trouble, a friend recommended a search for open recalls. Villegas found an urgent one for her brakes that could spark a fire, but she said she never got the legally required notice in the mail.
Villegas, who works six days a week, parks the car away from her home, but still hasn't gotten it fixed. "I have a crazy schedule," she said. "It's just really hard."
Even if Villegas had had the time, it wouldn't have mattered. Hyundai sent warning letters last November, but wasn't scheduled to have a fix until sometime this spring, according to NHTSA. (A Hyundai spokeswoman said in an email Wednesday that a part to fix the problem is available and customers can now schedule an appointment to get the work done.)
Some analysts worry overall that vehicles with the greatest risk to cause injury and death are not getting enough attention from automakers and other important stakeholders to get them fixed.
"We're taking a generally one-size-fits-all approach to recalls, we have recalls that we know are hurting people, and we're treating them the same way as a typo in an owner's manual,” Roth added. "So we know what can be done and what should be done. But just haven't thought through, ‘OK, maybe we should treat these differently.’ And this is important."
Recalling a sales ban
Industry forces have long fought a proposed ban on the sale of used cars and trucks with unfixed recalls. In fact, one leading used car dealer imposed its own ban, but that didn’t last very long.
In 2015, AutoNation — one of the nation’s largest automotive retailers — announced that it would not sell, lease or wholesale from its nearly 300 stores any vehicle that had an open safety recall.
"There's no way to expect that customers would or should know of every safety recall on every vehicle they might purchase, so we will ensure that our vehicles have all recalls completed," AutoNation CEO Mike Jackson said at the time. "We make it our responsibility as a retailer to identify those vehicles and remove them from the market until their safety issues have been addressed."
A year later, the company reversed course, selling those vehicles with open recalls again because they said their competitors failed to follow suit.
Former CarMax CEO Tom Folliard told a forum hosted by Florida Institute of Technology in October 2019 that “what we want to make sure we do is be completely transparent with the customer.” He called some recalls “not really safety issues.”
“It's not really realistic to say you won't sell a car with an open recall,” Folliard, who still serves as the company's chairman of the board, told the audience. “You'd be surprised how many cars on the road today have open recalls. Many of them are not really safety issues. They're just open recalls. But because of all the consumer movement around it, they're all considered safety recalls. So we don't not sell a car that has a recall. We just make sure we're transparent with the customer.”
The federal government disagrees.
It's our position that “every recall is a safety recall,” Tanya Topka, director of NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation, said in an interview. “And it's critical to be done.”
Concerned about a possible ban, the used-car industry has sought to enshrine at the state level the right to sell cars and trucks with open recalls.
Auto dealers crafted what’s known as “model legislation” that would allow them to continue selling recalled used cars, so long as they disclosed open recalls to customers somewhere in a stack of sales documents. An investigation published in 2019 by USA TODAY and others found that after a lobbying effort, copycat versions of the auto dealers’ bill had been introduced in at least 11 states (not in Michigan), including two states that passed the measures.
Consumer advocates criticized the bills, which required disclosure of open recalls but no requirement for vehicle owners to fix them.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel's Office said it's concerned about sales of vehicles with open recalls, but press secretary Danny Wimmer added that because of recent state court cases that prevent state investigation of certain businesses, and a lack of legislation, the office is unable to undertake "meaningful in-state investigation or enforcement."
'Park to Reverse' recall
Jeffrey Wu drove his recalled Jeep for the last time in March 2022.
“I was picking up the hose and was trying to put it back on the … gasoline (pump),” Wu recalled in a recent interview from his home in Lakeville, Minnesota. “I saw the car come around me. ... Should I go towards the car and try to stop it? Or should I try to move away? So my reaction was maybe I should go towards the car, but then I realized that was a bad mistake.”
He was soon pinned by his own car, his lower left leg absorbing the blow.
“I think I fell down to the ground. And then I reached for my leg. And then that's when I realized my leg was gone.
“I tried to call for help, help … screaming for two minutes, nobody was around, because it was early at 3 in the morning, around that time. So finally, someone helped …
“And they rushed out and they, you know, try to take care of me and try to comfort me. …. They actually was able to get ahold of my wife and get her down to the spot before the ambulance took off."
In September 2015, Wu bought his used Jeep with nearly 30,000 miles from an independent seller.
He said in an interview that he never knew that less than a year after his purchase, in April 2016, FCA, the manufacturer of his Jeep, issued a recall warning:
“Your vehicle may roll away striking and injuring you, your passengers, or bystanders, if the vehicle’s engine is left running, the parking brake is not engaged, and the vehicle is not in the park position before exiting the vehicle. Drivers may inadvertently fail to achieve the park position before exiting the vehicle.”
The fix to the gear shifter was related to the Jeep’s computer. The recall was designed to “update software to include an additional mechanism to mitigate the effect of operator error in failing to shift the monostable gear selector into PARK prior to exiting the vehicle.”
More: Key question in lawsuit against FCA: Did company knowingly sell defective shifters?
Wu was not alone in his encounter with a tricky gear shifter. Star Trek film actor Anton Yelchin was killed in 2016 because he was struck by his own Jeep Grand Cherokee after, his attorneys said, they believe he tried to put the vehicle into park.
The recalled Grand Cherokees used electronic shift levers that confused drivers because they could think they put their vehicle in park, but they had not. As part of a recall of more than a million vehicles, FCA altered the software so Jeeps with the engine running automatically shift into park after opening the driver’s door.
According to police reports, Yelchin climbed out of his recalled Jeep, which rolled backward down a driveway, pinning him against a mailbox pillar and killing him.
“If you look at the recall letter, ‘Dear Anton Yelchin, your car is defective. It can roll away,’ ” Yelchin family attorney Gary Dordick told a news conference announcing a lawsuit against FCA later in 2016. “They mailed that letter to him seven days after he died.”
Douglas Shaffer, an attorney at Dordick’s firm who worked on the case, said in an interview this month it had been unclear whether Yelchin had received an earlier letter sent by FCA explaining it was working on a fix.
Shaffer added Fiat Chrysler knew of problems with the gear selector as early as 2012 but still installed it in the 2014 and 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokees. The gearshift was changed for the 2016 model.
FCA, now Stellantis, reached a confidential settlement with Yelchin’s family out of court in 2018.
"We extend our sincerest condolences to Mr. Yelchin’s family," Mayne, the Stellantis spokesman, said in a statement. "A recall notice, which also contained an advisory to help further enable safe operation of the vehicle, was sent to his home address in May of 2016."
He estimated that "customers used this shifter to safely exit their vehicles more than 1.75 billion times."
Wu and his wife, Ting Yang, who were both born in China, married after they met in the U.S. and raised a now college-age daughter in Minnesota, said they filed suit in March 2023 in state court against FCA so that others don’t suffer a similar fate.
Regarding the Wus' suit, Mayne said for Stellantis, "We reject these claims and will vigorously defend against them in court."
"Multiple recall notices were sent to this customer’s home address," Mayne added. "More than 635,000 customers availed themselves of the free remedy within the first 24 months of service launch in 2016."
In court filings, defense attorneys for FCA raised their doubts about Wu’s account of his accident, citing a video and a police report from the scene.
The Jeep “starts to reverse when the driver’s door is opened” by Wu, who never exited the Jeep, according to a November 2023 court document. FCA’s lawyers also cited Wu’s statement to the police, in which Wu reportedly said he left his left foot and leg dangling outside the open driver’s side door while operating the Jeep in reverse.
The police officer’s incident report said that Wu told the officer he “exited the vehicle without placing it back into park; Jeffrey observed the vehicle begin to move again and quickly reentered the vehicle to place the transmission into park.
“As he entered the vehicle, Jeffrey stuck his left foot out. This limb then became trapped between the slow-moving vehicle’s door and the barrier protecting the pump.”
When asked about the police report description of his account, Wu said during a deposition in his lawsuit, “I don't remember saying anything like that,” adding “this is not even close to what happened.” In the deposition, Wu also said, “I put the car in park.”
The judge in the case has so far declined to take sides in the conflict.
“This Court need not decide the underlying facts at this time,” Dakota County District Judge Dannia Edwards wrote in a March 1 order. “Regardless of which parties’ factual contentions are more accurate, it is uncontested that as a result of the March 4, 2022, incident, (Wu's) left leg was amputated.”
In an interview in her Minnesota home late last year, Yang questioned why customers appear to shoulder so much responsibility in trying to find out and repair potentially dangerous cars and trucks.
“Why do we have to make sure that we're buying a safe vehicle?” asked Yang, who works in Wu's family Chinese restaurant. She added that she hopes automakers would “focus more on the safety” of the vehicles they manufacture “rather than the quantity they're making. ... I don't want any family to go through what we went through.”
The injury to Wu, 47, meant he could no longer drive a forklift during a day shift at his dairy plant, moving instead to an overnight production line. His long recovery has tested the strength of the couple’s marriage.
Yang, 42, said she refuses to sugarcoat the family’s struggle. “It’s never a pretty picture.”
Jeffrey Wu's wife, Ting Yang, talks about the night he was struck by his Jeep
Jeffrey Wu's wife, Ting Yang, talks about the night he was struck by his Jeep
"So the accident happened. It was never a smooth recovery for us. It's up and down ... emotionally, physically, we fight over small things. We lost temper on each other” because of the lingering anguish over the accident.
“But we’re still here today because we love each other,” she said, adding, hopefully, one day, “we will help each other to have our life back again."
Wu's case is set to go to trial in September 2025.
He pleaded for the auto industry to make and sell safe vehicles “because I'm going to continue driving," he said. "So just next time, I want to buy a new car, I want to be safe.”
This report received funding from the Abrams Nieman Fellowships for Local Investigative Journalism at Harvard University.
Have a question about vehicle recalls or a story to share? Contact Matthew Dolan: 313-223-4743 or msdolan@freepress.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @matthewsdolan
