Six drivers have died and two others were seriously injured in separate incidents involving airbag inflators made by Jilin Province Detiannuo Automobile Safety System Co., also known as DTN.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has launched a formal engineering analysis, suspecting that these DTN inflators were illegally imported and fitted into vehicles as replacement parts after previous accidents. The components were used in multiple makes and models, despite being banned from sale in the United States.
A Deadly Pattern Uncovered
In June 2023, NHTSA received its first warning through a Vehicle Owner Questionnaire filed after the death of a driver in a 2020 Chevrolet Malibu. The agency’s Office of Defects Investigation began tracing similar cases and identified a clear pattern: all vehicles involved had replacement airbags sourced from DTN.
The investigation revealed that eight airbags had ruptured violently, leading to six confirmed deaths and two serious injuries. Each of these inflators had been installed following earlier accidents and were found to share the same origin — the DTN factory in China. According to Carscoops, investigators struggled for months to determine the manufacturer behind the explosions until recently confirming DTN’s involvement through recovered components.
How Illegal Parts Enter the Supply Chain
DTN airbag inflators, which are not approved for import into the US, appear to have entered the country through unofficial channels. The report highlights that these counterfeit inflators were often indistinguishable from legitimate components and sold at a fraction of the price — sometimes costing just one-tenth of an OEM part.
Many American repair shops and vehicle refurbishers may have unknowingly purchased and installed these substandard parts. The NHTSA’s early analysis points to widespread distribution of the inflators without proper regulatory oversight, raising major questions about the enforcement of parts importation standards.
Vehicles and Victims: Tracing the Fatalities
Among the confirmed cases, four of the affected vehicles were Chevrolet Malibus. The most recent Malibu-related fatality occurred in early October 2025. In addition, two Hyundai Sonata drivers lost their lives earlier this year, one in March involving a 2017 model, and another in August with a 2019 model.
Photos of exploded airbag inflators retrieved from crash scenes matched the design and construction of DTN-manufactured devices. Even images from earlier, initially inconclusive incidents now show that DTN was the supplier in all eight documented cases.
In a public statement issued last month, DTN denied conducting any business in the US, reiterating that their products are banned from being imported. Despite this, the trail of evidence points clearly to their inflators being installed across multiple states — a development now central to the NHTSA’s widening probe.
