We have a brand new 2021 Jayco Melbourne that we've had for almost a year. We just took a trip and opened our bins underneath to find that in transit something shifted and TURNED THE LIGHT ON IN THE BIN and it burned the plastic cover of the light AND it burned a plastic tarp! Had it been touching something else, our entire unit could have gone up in flames! It seems that the bin that is directly UNDER THE BED accessible from OUTSIDE the RV has THREE LIGHT SWITCHES on the INSIDE WALLS of that bin. There is NO COVER over that switches. The bulbs in those lights are old style lights that get extremely hot. When things move during transit they can bump those switches and TURN THEM ON. THERE IS NO WAY TO KNOW THE LIGHT IS ON. (In my Fleetwood the Cago bin light switch was INSIDE THE RV and an indicator told you when it was on). Not so in this Jayco. So the light can get bumped on, you don't know it's on and it starts a fire! It melted and burned the cover over the light and it burned a tarp. Luckily the tarp mostly melted and never caught fire or we would have all DIED! THIS IS A SERIOUS SAFETY HAZARD. They either need to replace ALL these bulbs with LEDs that don't get hot OR put a COVER over that switch so that it cannot be accidentally turned on when contents in the bin shift during driving. I HAVE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING ON AN RV THIS UNSAFE!
- NHTSA ID
- 11463961
- Incident
- May 9, 2022