NHTSA Investigation PE24026

Child seat harness may not restrain occupant in the event of a crash.

On April 18, 2024, the Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) received a Defect Petition (DP) requesting the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) investigate Nuna Rava child seats for a harness that can allegedly loosen without pressing the harness release button. The Petitioner stated there were 24 complaints in the NHTSA database all describing a similar issue. According to the Petitioner, "this condition has poor detectability and the consequence of failure in case of a crash would be severe or fatal injury". On April 25, 2024, ODI received a second DP requesting NHTSA investigate Nuna child seats for a similar allegation as the initial petition. Upon receiving these petitions, ODI sent an Information Request (IR) letter to Nuna on May 16, 2024, asking for information regarding the petitioners’ allegations.  Nuna responded to ODI’s IR letter on June 21, 2024. On July 18, 2024, Nuna submitted a supplemental response to ODI’s IR letter. After evaluating the petitioner’s allegations and Nuna’s responses to ODI’s IR letter, ODI decided to grant the petition and open this defect investigation. On September 18, 2024 ODI opened PE24026 on the 2020-2022 Nuna Rava child seats.  These seats had significantly higher failure rates than other model year Nuna Rava child seats analyzed in the DP IR response. Following a meeting with ODI to discuss precedent recalls from peer manufacturers, Nuna filed recall 24C-002 on November 27th, 2024.  This recall affected Nuna Rava child seats manufactured from July 16, 2016, to October 25, 2023, which covered the entire scope of PE24026.  After submitting this recall, Nuna requested relief from responding to a new IR letter ODI sent on October 24, 2024 for PE24026.ODI granted partial relief but required Nuna to respond to some of the requests.  After receiving recall 24C-002 and Nuna’s partial PE24026 IR response, ODI is closing this investigation with recall 24C-002. The Agency reserves the right to take additional action if warranted by future circumstances. To review the ODI reports cited in the Closing Resume ODI Report Identification Number document, go to NHTSA.gov.

An investigation is a separate record from a recall and from a manufacturer communication. A manufacturer campaign to repair a safety defect or a failure to meet a federal safety standard.