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- [00:00]
Jessica Mendoza
Live from New York, it's the Journal.
- [00:03]
Ryan Knudsen
That's right. Jess and I are back with another live show in New York City, this time on Wednesday, September 9th.
- [00:09]
Jessica Mendoza
We're going to be at City Winery for an evening of sharp reporting, insider conversation, and special guests, and probably wine.
- [00:16]
Laura Benshoff
I hope so.
- [00:17]
Jessica Mendoza
Either way, you won't want to miss it.
- [00:19]
Ryan Knudsen
Tickets are on sale now. Check out the link in our show notes.
- [00:22]
Jessica Mendoza
See you there.
- [00:29]
Ryan Knudsen
A few years ago, Ui Seok Kang was living in Texas where he was going to flight school.
- [00:34]
Laura Benshoff
He was driving along a Texas highway in a used Chevy Malibu he had bought earlier that year, and he lost control of his car while he was driving.
- [00:49]
Ryan Knudsen
Kang is originally from South Korea. Our colleague Ryan Felton recently interviewed him about that night through a translator.
- [00:56]
Laura Benshoff
Can you walk through from there? Just what happened in the moments before you lost control of the car?
- [01:08]
Ryan Knudsen
That day was heavy rain and my
- [01:12]
Laura Benshoff
car was hydroplaning on the highway.
- [01:16]
Ryan Knudsen
Kang's car slid across the road right into the path of a pickup truck. The two collided and Kang's front airbag went off and the car came to a stop. He started to take stock of what had happened. Is it? And then I tried to call a friend who was I going to meet. But you know, we got connected, but I could not talk. Like I could not physically speak. That's when I first realized, oh, this could be very serious. Kang's face was badly injured, but the thing that hurt him wasn't the other vehicle. It was something inside his own car. His airbag. Metal pieces inside the airbag blew apart and severely damaged his jaw, neck and face. He underwent three surgeries in the month after the accident.
- [02:12]
Laura Benshoff
He's had other procedures since then and more or less had to have skin moved to his jaw in order to be able to open and close his mouth like he would normally.
- [02:27]
Ryan Knudsen
All things considered, Kang was lucky. He survived the accident and moved on with his life, albeit with some scars. But that's not been the case for other people that this has happened to. I am one of the very few survivors.
- [02:44]
Laura Benshoff
Ten people have died and three people have been severely injured. There's a 17 year old high school senior whose mom bought her her first car. She died after this airbag exploded. There was a middle school teach died after her car had one of these airbag parts explode. A 20 year old kid in Mississippi. He died earlier this year after the airbag exploded.
- [03:13]
Ryan Knudsen
The airbags that are exploding are believed to be counterfeit and regulators are having a hard time tracking them down or even figuring out how many there are on the road right now.
- [03:25]
Laura Benshoff
They roughly estimate there could be 10,000 of them, but they really don't know. And it just kind of amounts to like this, like, really terrible game of whack a mole.
- [03:36]
Ryan Knudsen
Welcome to the Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Ryan knudsen. It's Friday, July 24th. Coming up on the show, the bomb lurking inside some cars.
- [04:03]
Jessica Mendoza
This episode is presented by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more@accenture.com Spotify this episode is brought to you by Indeed. The right hire can make or break your company, especially if you're a small business. And relying on luck to find that person isn't really the best strategy. But you know what is? Using Indeed Sponsored Jobs, you can use it to boost your job post to make sure it reaches more people with the right talents, certification, location and more. Sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed are 95% more likely to report a hire than non sponsored jobs. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results when you need the right person to cut through the chaos. This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves. Indeed.com podcast just go to Indeed.com podcast right now and support the show by saying you heard about Indeed here. Indeed.com podcast terms and conditions apply. Hiring now then, this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.
- [05:37]
Ryan Knudsen
It's almost too obvious to point out that airbags exist to save lives. That's why they were initially rolled out back in the 1970s.
- [05:46]
Laura Benshoff
They were kind of designed in response to people overwhelmingly refusing to wear their seatbelts. You know, believe it or not, sort
- [05:57]
Ryan Knudsen
of like a fallback, I guess. Yeah, you won't put on the thing that we know will help you.
- [06:02]
Laura Benshoff
Right. They're known to be responsible for saving, you know, at this point, it's now 50,000 lives over 30 years.
- [06:11]
Ryan Knudsen
And they're pretty sophisticated devices. Every airbag includes sensors to recognize when a crash is happening, an inflator to blow up the bag, and then the cloth airbag itself. And everything has to work in a split second. They're now mandatory, and they're heavily regulated by a federal body called the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or nhtsa.
- [06:33]
Laura Benshoff
They're essentially like a mini explosive device. So you have like, the regulations around the type of chemicals that are used, their design, and how they're supposed to inflate. When a crash happens
- [06:50]
Ryan Knudsen
in a new car fresh off the assembly line, airbags are generally considered to be trustworthy. The issue is when an airbag has to be replaced, like after a crash. That's much more common in the used car market, where the vehicle's history isn't always clear.
- [07:05]
Laura Benshoff
It's just a different market where you're really kind of going off the word of the dealers who are selling them. The carfax reports being accurate if you're looking at them.
- [07:18]
Ryan Knudsen
Through court documents, Ryan was able to recreate the path of one defective airbag that made its way into a used car in Florida, a 2020 Chevy Malibu.
- [07:28]
Laura Benshoff
The car originally was used as a rental car. In this case, Enterprise had it as rental car. The rental got into an accident that was severe enough to cause the airbags to go off. The car was then sold at an auction. The person who bought it went and got an airbag to put into the car.
- [07:54]
Ryan Knudsen
On ebay, the person who bought it runs a repair shop and installed the aftermarket airbag. The car was then resold to a
- [08:02]
Laura Benshoff
used car dealer, and then it got resold to this mother of two in Florida who had the airbag go off and exploded instead of just kind of properly inflating.
- [08:18]
Ryan Knudsen
Her name was Destiny Bayasi. Ryan says the crash she was in would have been survivable, but instead, after that airbag exploded, she died. Bayasi's family ended up suing and her case hit the local news.
- [08:33]
Laura Benshoff
A lawsuit alleges her driver's side airbag system included counterfeit and non compliant components, and that several fragments from the blast struck her in the face, head and neck, ultimately killing her.
- [08:46]
Ryan Knudsen
The auction house, the used car dealer, and enterprise all said they were not aware of the faulty repair. The repair shop settled the lawsuit and declined to comment. Deadly parts like the one that killed Byasi and that injured kangaroo usually trigger
- [09:01]
Laura Benshoff
a recall in 99.99% cases. When auto safety regulators learn of a defect, they basically can go to the automaker and say, like, hey, do a
- [09:12]
Ryan Knudsen
recall during a recall of a part in a new car. Car dealerships know who they sold their cars to so they can get in touch with them and tell them something needs to be replaced. But with used cars, especially ones that have been repaired by a mechanic outside a dealership. That system breaks down. These faulty airbag parts are being bought and sold online from sites like ebay or Facebook Marketplace.
- [09:37]
Laura Benshoff
The nits investigators have had to like essentially back their way into figuring out who sold it, who bought it, and it's like a very unwieldy process.
- [09:50]
Ryan Knudsen
As a result, a typical car recall is basically impossible. So how do you even begin to track down where these faulty airbags are coming from? That's after the break.
- [10:02]
Jessica Mendoza
Foreign. Consumers are asking AI about your brand. Do you know what it's saying about you and your local competitors? Yext does they help Fortune 500 companies get recommended across every AI and search channel that matters. The enterprise agentic marketing platform that gives you the intelligence of to get ahead and the actions to stay there. Yext.com this episode is brought to you by Optum Healthcare doesn't always work great. If you ever waited on a refill or couldn't schedule an appointment, you get it. That's what Optum is changing. They're using data and technology to integrate patient care, pharmacy and everything else. So healthcare is connected, not complicated. That means cheaper prescriptions that are easier to get and care that looks at the whole person how you need it. Optum is making healthcare work as one for everyone. Learn more@business.optum.com.
- [11:15]
Ryan Knudsen
Since 2023 cases of airbag related fatalities have grown and investigators started seeing a pattern. It had to do with the airbag's inflators. That's the part Ryan described earlier as like a mini explosive device.
- [11:30]
Laura Benshoff
The inflators have like serial numbers and part numbers and there was a specific part number that was visible in many of these crashes. It was essentially a clue to start on when digging into this.
- [11:45]
Ryan Knudsen
In at least one instance, the inflator parts weren't just present at the scene, they were physically lodged inside a victim.
- [11:53]
Laura Benshoff
There was a really jarring case of a middle aged man in Arizona. They found a shard of glass in his neck that had the unique part number on it.
- [12:05]
Ryan Knudsen
The part number on that piece in the driver's neck was linked to a company in China known as DTN Airbag.
- [12:12]
Laura Benshoff
They're pretty much this obscure company that I don't think really anyone more or less knew, at least in the auto industry who they were until people essentially started googling and searching for like what this part number meant.
- [12:28]
Ryan Knudsen
DTN has been selling airbag inflators for years, but DTN says they didn't make these airbag inflators and that they're not responsible.
- [12:39]
Laura Benshoff
They basically said, we don't sell in the United States. We don't know how this product got there. We're not even sure if it's our product. You know, anyone who buys it, it's on them to certify and do tests to ensure that it's safe.
- [12:56]
Ryan Knudsen
Either way, parts labeled as DTNs were showing up in airbags in the US in large part because they're so cheap. A real airbag replacement from an automaker can run you a thousand dollars.
- [13:10]
Laura Benshoff
So there's incentive. If you can find an airbag that's, you know, you think is, is solid and genuine, that's hundreds of dollars or, you know, even one tenth of the cost, there's a clear economic incentive as to why you might seek out airbags on online marketplaces.
- [13:30]
Ryan Knudsen
So there's a big demand for less expensive options, and counterfeiters have stepped in to fill that demand. Some counterfeit airbags are actually smuggled into the US like they're a drug or an endangered species.
- [13:42]
Laura Benshoff
And, you know, in some cases, we were told that these are showing up at ports, you know, stuffed inside things like toys and dollhouses.
- [13:54]
Ryan Knudsen
Over the last decade, more than a dozen people have been convicted by the Justice Department for selling counterfeit airbags. And a single unscrupulous importer can bring in thousands of potentially faulty ones.
- [14:06]
Laura Benshoff
The most recent person was a former North Carolina state transportation department employee. They had found that he, over a two year period through early to mid 2024, he was importing airbags and then would turn around and sell them on Facebook marketplace.
- [14:27]
Ryan Knudsen
The man imported about 2500 counterfeit airbags with the logos of several automakers on them. He wasn't acting alone. He was part of a larger counterfeiting ring that was also selling parts with DTN logos on them. According to regulators, his case kind of
- [14:45]
Laura Benshoff
exposed this ring involving folks from the United Kingdom who were buying these parts that were tied to this company from China, assembling them into airbags and being shipped over here.
- [14:58]
Ryan Knudsen
In that case, the importer ended up being convicted of selling counterfeit goods, and he went to jail for just over a year. The U.S. attorney's office who investigated the case involving the North Carolina employee said, quote, the worry here is that a bunch of consumers are going to unwittingly purchase bombs and put them in their steering columns. But ultimately, the thing that authorities were able to pin on him wasn't that he was selling potentially deadly car parts. It was for a trademark violation. Still, federal investigators are trying to take
- [15:35]
Laura Benshoff
action throughout 2025, NHTSA and investigators were learning of more accidents. And then in October, they officially opened up an investigation to try to get more detailed information from DTN and also from websites that have been found to be selling counterfeit airbags in the past, like Facebook and eBay.
- [15:57]
Ryan Knudsen
EBay is cooperating with NHTSA's investigation. It said it works diligently to prevent and remove unsafe product listings and that it prohibits counterfeit products. Facebook said its rules prohibit the purchase, sale, or trade of certain vehicle parts and accessories, including airbags. Following its investigation, NHTSA ended up banning the parts of the DTN label that are linked to the fatalities. It also worked with tech companies to trace who they thought bought the products online and send them letters of warning. But beyond that, they're pretty much just trying to raise awareness. That's essentially all they can do. So what can consumers do? How can people keep themselves safe?
- [16:38]
Laura Benshoff
The shortest answer is, if you're going to look for a car and it has some accident history reported with it, the first thing to know is, did the airbags go off in that accident? Carfax lets you check for airbag deployments associated with your unique vehicle identification number. So it basically amounts to, like, you gotta know your vehicle's history.
- [17:00]
Ryan Knudsen
Nobody knows for sure how many of these dangerous airbag inflators are still out there. The most recent known crash where a faulty DTN marked inflator went off was just this past June in Louisville, Kentucky. I mean, it feels like this is a sort of. Also sort of a story about, like, the race to the bottom in online. In online marketplaces that, like, anybody in the world can put something on Amazon or ebay or on a website and sell it. And that's kind of great because, you know, now you can get cheap stuff. But, like, in this case, we're talking about an airbag, like a critical piece of safety technology. It's not like it's a T shirt or a toaster.
- [17:44]
Laura Benshoff
It's tough. It's tough to. It's tough to know what to say because, like, so many things have gone wrong to lead to this situation. And there's a very substantial number of people who sell stuff on the Internet, and it does include things like safety devices. And we're just sort of seeing the really kind of like, potentially terrifying results with that.
- [18:14]
Ryan Knudsen
By the way, this Sunday, we have another episode in our special series about all the ways that work is changing. Last Sunday's episode was about influencers, and this week it's about working from home. I hope you'll Check it out. That's all for today. Friday, July 24 the Journal is a co production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. The show is made by Laura Benshoff, Kathryn Brewer, Evelyn Vijardo Alvarez, Pia Gadkari, Max Green, Sophie Codner, Matt Kwong, Colin McNulty, Jessica Mendoza, Laura Morris, Enrique Perez de la Rosa, Sarah Platt, Allen Rodriguez Espinosa, Heather Rogers, Pierce Singhe, Jeevika Verma, Katherine Whalen, Tatiana Zamis and me, Ryan Knudsen. Our engineers are Griffin Tanner, Nathan Singapak and Peter Leonard. And this is Laura Benchoff's last week with us. Laura, we're going to miss you so much. Please stay in touch. Our theme music is by so Wiley. Additional music this week by Katherine Anderson, Peter Leonard, Bobby Lord, Emma Munger, Nathan Singapok and Blue Dot Sessions. Fact checking this week by Nicole Pasulka. Thanks for listening. See you Sunday.
- [19:28]
Jessica Mendoza
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