Older Jeep, Dodge, Chrysler and Ram owners are waking up to one of the starkest warnings regulators can issue: do not drive your vehicle at all until a defective airbag is fixed. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) says FCA US is telling drivers with certain unrepaired Takata airbag recalls to park their vehicles immediately. Regulators are casting this as more than another recall notice, describing it as a firm directive aimed at preventing additional deaths and serious injuries linked to rupturing inflators.
The alert zeroes in on long-running Takata airbag problems that have already prompted earlier warnings and left a trail of injuries. By tying this new directive to specific recall campaigns and a prior “Do Not Drive” order covering about 276,000 vehicles, NHTSA signals that standard recall outreach has not been enough to get all affected vehicles repaired. The message is blunt: if the Takata recall on an older Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep or Ram is still open, the safest choice is to stop driving that vehicle until the airbag is replaced.
What the new ‘Do Not Drive’ warning covers
The latest consumer alert explains that FCA US has issued a “Do Not Drive” warning for all of its vehicles with unrepaired Takata airbag recalls that fall within specified campaigns, and NHTSA’s notice emphasizes that this covers Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram models as well as the Mitsubishi Raider pickup that shares affected components. According to the agency’s February 2026 alert on unrepaired Takata inflators, the warning applies when a covered vehicle still has an open Takata airbag recall, regardless of trim level or mileage, and owners are urged to treat the vehicle as unsafe to operate until the repair is completed.
NHTSA frames this as a direct response to the ongoing risk posed by aging Takata inflators, which can rupture and send metal fragments into the cabin when they deploy. In its February 11, 2026 consumer alert, the agency describes the action as a “Do Not Drive” warning for all affected FCA US vehicles with unrepaired Takata recalls in the listed campaigns, noting that the danger increases as the inflators age and remain exposed to heat and humidity. In that context, the trigger for the warning is not the brand badge but the presence of an unrepaired Takata inflator covered by the recall.
A timeline built on earlier FCA warnings
This is not the first time FCA has been pushed to tell its customers not to drive certain vehicles at all. An earlier NHTSA consumer alert on Takata-equipped FCA models states that Fiat Chrysler Automobiles issued a “Do Not Drive” warning after the automaker reported additional fatalities and injuries linked to defective airbags, and that the warning covered roughly 276,000 vehicles at the time of that action, according to the agency’s Takata enforcement notice. That prior alert focused on specific higher-risk vehicles but already used the strongest language available to discourage continued driving until repairs were completed.
NHTSA’s description of both the earlier and newer alerts shows a progression from a narrower set of high-risk vehicles to a broader instruction that now covers all FCA US vehicles with unrepaired Takata recalls in the identified campaigns. The agency’s materials explain that FCA has repeatedly notified owners and offered free repairs, yet significant numbers of vehicles remain unrepaired, which is why regulators now characterize the situation as urgent and justify the expanded “Do Not Drive” language.
How recall campaign IDs define the risk
Rather than only listing model names, NHTSA connects the new warning to specific recall campaigns that define which vehicles are covered. The February 2026 consumer alert identifies recall campaign IDs 16V352, 18V021 and 19V018 as the campaigns subject to the “Do Not Drive” warning, and the agency’s detailed Takata guidance further notes that these campaigns collectively involve at least 698,000 FCA US vehicles when combining all affected Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram models across the model years specified in the recall documentation, based on NHTSA’s vehicle-owner information. These recall identifiers are how dealers and owners can confirm whether a particular vehicle falls under the warning, and they tie the directive to previously announced technical fixes.
By anchoring the warning to those recall IDs, NHTSA effectively states that any Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep or Ram vehicle, as well as any Mitsubishi Raider, linked to campaigns 16V352, 18V021 or 19V018 and not yet repaired should be parked. The agency’s technical summary indicates that campaign 16V352 alone accounts for approximately 686,000 vehicles, while campaigns 18V021 and 19V018 together add about 217,700 more, bringing the combined scope of these FCA-related Takata actions to roughly 904,000 vehicles when rounding NHTSA’s figures from its campaign listing. Within that total, NHTSA notes that about 692,000 vehicles remained unrepaired as of its most recent tally, underscoring why the agency is telling owners to treat an open recall as a stop sign rather than a suggestion.
What owners are being told to do now
The federal safety regulator’s latest communication does more than sound an alarm; it tells owners to act immediately. The February 11, 2026 consumer alert explains that FCA US has issued a “Do Not Drive” warning for all of its vehicles with unrepaired Takata recalls in the covered campaigns and urges owners to contact FCA or a franchised dealer to arrange for free airbag replacement as soon as possible. NHTSA stresses that towing or mobile repair options may be available so that owners do not have to drive an unsafe vehicle to a service appointment.
The same federal summary emphasizes that the warning applies to Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram vehicles equipped with Takata airbags that have not yet been fixed, and it specifically calls out the Mitsubishi Raider among the affected models because it shares the same inflator design and failure mode. NHTSA’s language is intended to remove ambiguity for drivers who might assume that an older recall can wait or that a rarely driven vehicle is somehow safer, stressing that the risk is tied directly to the presence of an unrepaired Takata inflator and that any deployment in a crash could have catastrophic consequences.
Why this warning is so blunt
NHTSA reserves “Do Not Drive” language for situations where the agency judges the risk of serious injury or death to be unacceptably high if a defect is left unaddressed. In the February 2026 alert, regulators state that FCA US has issued a “Do Not Drive” warning for all of its vehicles with unrepaired Takata recalls in the specified campaigns, and they link this step to prior incidents in which Takata inflators ruptured and caused fatal or life-threatening injuries. The earlier FCA consumer alert documented additional fatalities and injuries associated with these airbags and noted that FCA issued a “Do Not Drive” warning for about 276,000 vehicles at that time, reinforcing NHTSA’s view that the combination of aging inflators and delayed repairs presents an immediate and severe hazard.
The February 11, 2026 dating of the latest consumer alert on NHTSA’s Takata page shows that this is a current directive rather than a historical footnote, and it places responsibility on present-day owners to decide whether they will keep driving vehicles that regulators and the automaker have both said should stay parked until fixed. By expanding the warning to all FCA US vehicles with unrepaired Takata recalls in campaigns 16V352, 18V021 and 19V018, and by highlighting the large number of unrepaired vehicles still on the road, NHTSA is using its strongest available language to push completion of these critical safety repairs.
This article was generated with AI assistance. All factual claims are backed by cited sources. Areas without supported data have been omitted or labeled.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
