If you’re the owner of a Dodge Journey, you may want to keep a hammer inside the vehicle. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is looking into the Journey, as nearly one million of the crossovers may have a defect that prevents its windows and doors from unlocking, potentially trapping occupants inside.
This news comes to us by way of Motor1, who reported on the NHTSA’s Office of Defects investigation of the Journey. The office says that it became aware of an incident involving a Journey in December 2022 where a driver pulled to the side of the road when their Journey started electrically malfunctioning. Not long after, NHTSA says the Journey caught fire and the door and window locks malfunctioned, trapping the driver inside. Sadly, the occupant was killed.
The Office of Defects is looking into whether or not thermal damage from the fire had something to do with the locks malfunctioning. If that’s the case, a lot of Journeys are going to be affected by this. As Motor1 remarked, if a widespread problem is found it’s going to affect nearly every Journey ever made, going back to the model’s 2009 introduction.
If a problem is found, NHTSA documents state there are 992,643 Dodge Journeys that could be affected. It goes back to the beginning of production in 2009 and runs through the final model year in 2020. Front-wheel drive and all-wheel drive models are included.
NHTSA is also looking into a problem with the Journey’s backup camera. Complaints from 26 owners of 2018-2020 models say the backup camera fails, and the problem could potentially affect over 226,000 vehicles.
The Journey came out back when Chrysler’s quality was, shall we say, iffy. Riding on Mitsubishi’s GS platform that was shared with other stellar products like the Dodge Avenger, Chrysler 200 and Jeep Patriot, power came from either an inline-4 or optional V6, both paired with an ancient four speed automatic. At one point, the Journey was the cheapest new crossover on the market that came with a standard third row.
