DETROIT (AP) — U.S. auto safety regulators are a step closer to seeking a recall of nearly a million Dodge Journey SUVs after a woman was trapped and died when her vehicle caught fire in 2022.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration upgraded an investigation opened last year to an engineering analysis and added 11 model years to the probe.
The agency says in documents posted on its website Friday that it now has 19 complaints from owners and the automaker that inoperative door locks and windows can prevent people from getting out of the small SUVs during an emergency. There were no additional fires, injuries or deaths.
The probe started with Journeys from the 2009 model year, but has been expanded to include those sold through 2020. Agency documents say investigators will look at the cause of the fire “and its potential effect on the actuation of the door locks.”
Stellantis, which makes Dodge vehicles, said in a statement that the company is cooperating in the investigation and extends sympathy to the woman's family.
NHTSA says it also will explore other possible causes for any door lock malfunctions. The Journey owner’s manual says the doors can be unlocked manually by pulling up a plunger on the top of the door trim panel.
A complaint filed with the agency before the investigation began says the woman pulled to the side of a road when warning lights started flashing, windshield wipers came on, the horn started honking, windows wouldn’t go down and the doors wouldn’t unlock. The complaint alleged that fire apparently started in the engine and spread, trapping her inside.
“The driver was unable to exit the vehicle, resulting in her death,” the agency wrote in documents.
Agency documents don’t say where the fire happened, but the Wisconsin State Journal reported in 2023 that 73-year-old Mary Frahm died when her Journey caught fire on Dec. 9, 2022 near Madison.
Frahm had called her fiance and told him she pulled to the side of the road after the Journey started having electrical problems. Later she called back and said smoke was coming from the dashboard and she could smell burning, the newspaper said. She called 911, but by the time first responders had arrived, flames had engulfed the SUV, the newspaper reported.
In 2009, Chrysler LLC recalled about 17,000 Journeys because an unused electrical connector could corrode and short circuit, potentially causing a fire, according to NHTSA documents.
Michael Brooks, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Auto Safety, said in 2023 that drivers should try to pull up the plunger first to escape if their vehicle’s electrical system malfunctions.
Beyond that, escape is difficult because many windows now have plastic laminated between two layers of glass and are difficult to shatter. He suggested keeping a metal tool in the car and becoming familiar with which windows are tempered glass and can be shattered with the tool.
Laminated glass, he said, helps to prevent people from being thrown from cars in a crash.
He said there’s a need to standardize a way to unlock doors or somehow escape from all cars.
FILE - The Dodge logo is seen on a new Dodge RAM 3500 Heavy Duty pickup truck at a dealership in Springfield, Ill., Aug. 15, 2010. U.S. auto safety regulators are a step closer to seeking a recall of nearly a million Dodge Journey SUVs after a woman was trapped and died when her vehicle caught fire in 2022. The agency says in documents posted on its website Friday, Aug. 2, 2024, that it now has 19 complaints that inoperative door locks and windows can prevent people from getting out of the small SUVs during an emergency. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman, File)
What's in a name change, after all?
The water bordered by the Southern United States, Mexico and Cuba will be critical to shipping lanes and vacationers whether it’s called the Gulf of Mexico, as it has been for four centuries, or the Gulf of America, as President Donald Trump ordered this week. North America’s highest mountain peak will still loom above Alaska whether it’s called Mt. Denali, as ordered by former President Barack Obama in 2015, or changed back to Mt. McKinley as Trump also decreed.
But Trump's territorial assertions, in line with his “America First” worldview, sparked a round of rethinking by mapmakers and teachers, snark on social media and sarcasm by at least one other world leader. And though Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis put the Trumpian “Gulf of America” on an official document and some other gulf-adjacent states were considering doing the same, it was not clear how many others would follow Trump's lead.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum joked that if Trump went ahead with the renaming, her country would rename North America “Mexican America.” On Tuesday, she toned it down: “For us and for the entire world it will continue to be called the Gulf of Mexico.”
Map lines are inherently political. After all, they're representations of the places that are important to human beings — and those priorities can be delicate and contentious, even more so in a globalized world.
There’s no agreed-upon scheme to name boundaries and features across the Earth.
“Denali” is the mountain's preferred name for Alaska Natives, while “McKinley" is a tribute to President William McKinley, designated in the late 19th century by a gold prospector. China sees Taiwan as its own territory, and the countries surrounding what the United States calls the South China Sea have multiple names for the same body of water.
The Persian Gulf has been widely known by that name since the 16th century, although usage of “Gulf” and “Arabian Gulf” is dominant in many countries in the Middle East. The government of Iran — formerly Persia — threatened to sue Google in 2012 over the company’s decision not to label the body of water at all on its maps. Many Arab countries don’t recognize Israel and instead call it Palestine. And in many official releases, Israel calls the occupied West Bank by its biblical name, “Judea and Samaria.”
Americans and Mexicans diverge on what to call another key body of water, the river that forms the border between Texas and the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas. Americans call it the Rio Grande; Mexicans call it the Rio Bravo.
Trump's executive order — titled “Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness” — concludes thusly: “It is in the national interest to promote the extraordinary heritage of our Nation and ensure future generations of American citizens celebrate the legacy of our American heroes. The naming of our national treasures, including breathtaking natural wonders and historic works of art, should honor the contributions of visionary and patriotic Americans in our Nation’s rich past.”
But what to call the gulf with the 3,700-mile coastline?
“It is, I suppose, an internationally recognized sea, but (to be honest), a situation like this has never come up before so I need to confirm the appropriate convention,” said Peter Bellerby, who said he was talking over the issue with the cartographers at his London company, Bellerby & Co. Globemakers. “If, for instance, he wanted to change the Atlantic Ocean to the American Ocean, we would probably just ignore it."
As of Wednesday night, map applications for Google and Apple still called the mountain and the gulf by their old names. Spokespersons for those platforms did not immediately respond to emailed questions.
A spokesperson for National Geographic, one of the most prominent map makers in the U.S., said this week that the company does not comment on individual cases and referred questions to a statement on its web site, which reads in part that it "strives to be apolitical, to consult multiple authoritative sources, and to make independent decisions based on extensive research.” National Geographic also has a policy of including explanatory notes for place names in dispute, citing as an example a body of water between Japan and the Korean peninsula, referred to as the Sea of Japan by the Japanese and the East Sea by Koreans.
In discussion on social media, one thread noted that the Sears Tower in Chicago was renamed the Willis Tower in 2009, though it's still commonly known by its original moniker. Pennsylvania's capital, Harrisburg, renamed its Market Street to Martin Luther King Boulevard and then switched back to Market Street several years later — with loud complaints both times. In 2017, New York's Tappan Zee Bridge was renamed for the late Gov. Mario Cuomo to great controversy. The new name appears on maps, but “no one calls it that,” noted another user.
“Are we going to start teaching this as the name of the body of water?” asked one Reddit poster on Tuesday.
“I guess you can tell students that SOME PEOPLE want to rename this body of water the Gulf of America, but everyone else in the world calls it the Gulf of Mexico,” came one answer. “Cover all your bases — they know the reality-based name, but also the wannabe name as well.”
Wrote another user: “I'll call it the Gulf of America when I'm forced to call the Tappan Zee the Mario Cuomo Bridge, which is to say never.”
FILE - President Donald Trump speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)
FILE - Peter Bellerby, the founder of Bellerby & Co. Globemakers, holds a globe at a studio in London, Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File)
FILE - A boat is seen on the Susitna River near Talkeetna, Alaska, on Sunday, June 13, 2021, with Denali in the background. Denali, the tallest mountain on the North American continent, is located about 60 miles northwest of Talkeetna. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen, File)
FILE - The water in the Gulf of Mexico appears bluer than usual off of East Beach, Saturday, June 24, 2023, in Galveston, Texas. (Jill Karnicki/Houston Chronicle via AP, File)