— A Kia Carnival sliding door recall involves more than 51,000 minivans because the sliding doors may suddenly close and break your bones.
The 2022-2023 Kia Carnivals are equipped with auto-reverse features for the power sliding doors, but Kia says auto-reverse may fail to activate.
The Carnival sliding door recall was announced following at least nine confirmed injuries, including a broken thumb, broken arm, bruises, scrapes, cuts and incidents of swelling.
However, Kia engineers and outside engineering experts believe the injuries are possibly the fault of people, not defects with the Carnival sliding doors.
According to Kia, the Carnival power sliding door auto-reverse feature is a supplemental feature and may not activate in all situations. Kia engineers have not been able to find a cause of the problem.
However, Kia says the blame may point to people who are getting caught in the power sliding doors, unaware the doors are closing.
Kia says the sliding door recall is being conducted to help increase awareness the Carnivals are equipped with power sliding doors.
Kia Carnival Power Sliding Doors: The Investigations
Kia saw Carnival sliding door complaints in the Summer of 2021 alleging children were injured by 2022 Kia Carnival power sliding doors.
In addition to Kia's engineers, the automaker hired a third-party engineering company to investigate the Carnivals.
Kia also mailed Carnival owners to remind them about the auto-reverse features and how the power sliding doors function.
Then in April 2022, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation into the Kia Carnival sliding doors. In the meantime, the engineering firm hired by Kia determined the Carnival sliding doors and doors from similar vehicles were comparable.
So Kia retained a "third-party biomechanical firm to evaluate injuries from a biomechanical perspective."
All those involved, including Kia’s third-party engineering and third-party biomechanical firms, found no problems with the Carnival sliding doors that had been involved in injuries.
In October 2022, the Kia third-party engineering firm and Kia third-party biomechanical firm tested a 2022 Carnival sliding door and a sliding door from a peer vehicle.
In addition, a child prosthetic arm was designed and built for the test, but testing confirmed no difference between Carnival power sliding doors and doors from peer vehicles.
The investigation continued but no problems were ever found with the Kia Carnival power sliding doors.
Kia says it can fix the sliding door problem by updating the power sliding door control module software. Because engineers believe people are injured because they don't know the sliding doors are powered, the updated software will add two warning chimes when the power sliding door begins to open or close.
And how fast the sliding doors move will also change as the software update will change the door speed to move more slowly as the door approaches its latching point.
That will occur after Kia mails Carnival sliding door recall letters April 28, 2023.
Kia Carnival owners may call 800-333-4542 and refer to sliding door recall number SC266.
