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The online retailer eBay is joining a pack of its competitors in banning sales of airbags and many kinds of airbag parts in the U.S.
Although eBay hasn't said what motivated this action, the company's move comes after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) released investigation results in April which found that certain substandard airbag inflators imported from China were responsible for a dozen deaths or serious injuries since 2023. In July, The Wall Street Journal traced the origins of several such faulty — and potentially counterfeit — airbag components, and found that one had been purchased as an aftermarket part on eBay.
eBay declined an interview with NPR, but pointed to an online statement saying the decision was made "following a comprehensive review of the risks these products may pose to eBay users." In an emailed statement to NPR, eBay said that the company would enforce the new policy by using seller compliance audits, filtering algorithms and AI-supported monitoring.
Consumer safety advocates welcomed eBay's move. "It's a good thing that eBay is no longer going to be offering airbags or airbag components on their platform. And it's about time," said Rosemary Shahan, president of the nonprofit Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety. "There are a lot of dangerous airbags out there."
But William Wallace, director of safety advocacy for Consumer Reports, cautioned that faulty or counterfeit airbags could still crop up on other sites. "It is a game of Whack-A-Mole," he said.
After all, eBay is not the first company to ban the sale of airbags or components. Amazon, the nation's biggest online retailer, prohibits airbag sales. So does Meta, the owner of Facebook Marketplace, and so do the Chinese retail sites Temu and Alibaba.
Amazon, Meta and Temu all told NPR that they continuously monitor their platforms for prohibited item listings. They did not respond to questions about what motivated their bans.
Alibaba pointed to a press release stating that the company banned airbags over safety concerns in 2014, and that it later extended its ban "to component parts for the same reason, as well as to halt potential fakes." The release said algorithms on Alibaba's platforms will intercept pre-listings and block them.
Wallace points out that these bans alone don't seem to be preventing bad airbags from reaching the market. "It's one thing to have a policy in place banning the sale of airbags," he said. "It's an entirely different thing to actually see the sale of airbags stop."
How airbags work
Airbags are not made of pillowy fluff.
"Airbags are actually like a pyrotechnic device," said Becky Mueller, a senior research engineer at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, an independent nonprofit that conducts vehicle crash tests and awards safety ratings.
During a crash, Mueller said, a sensor measuring the car's speed determines whether it's just been in a high-speed collision and sends a signal to the airbag module. This ignites the airbag inflator.
Gases inside the inflator expand in a fraction of a second. This creates the airbag's pillowy appearance, which is meant to protect a driver's head and chest.
But when airbags don't work properly, Mueller said, the inflator can become dangerous. Its parts can become brittle and break apart. Then, as the airbag inflates, those parts are "flying at your face." That shrapnel puts people in danger, and has caused fatalities — including those alleged in the April NHTSA report.
NHTSA's largest airbag recall, which affected an estimated 67 million airbags in the U.S., began in 2014, after the agency received reports that shrapnel from airbags made by the Japanese company Takata — used in vehicles made by Honda, Toyota, and Nissan, among others — had led to fatalities. Scientists ultimately found the company's airbag igniters were letting in moisture and degrading over time, which was particularly dangerous to drivers in hotter, more humid climates.
Takata later filed for bankruptcy and was sentenced to pay over $1 billion in criminal penalties; NHTSA still has a "Do Not Drive" advisory for vehicles with a particular kind of Takata airbag, which is more likely to explode during a crash.
And while there's always a risk that an automotive part could malfunction, that risk is compounded if it's counterfeit. It might look like a brand-name part, but it may not work like one, and it might not have been tested properly — or it may not deploy at all, said Mueller.
Plus, it's hard to recall fake parts, because they're masquerading as something else, and it's hard to pin down who imported and distributed them.
Online counterfeiting doesn't seem like a big deal for some kinds of products, Mueller said. Worst case scenario, she said, if she accidentally buys some fake Nikes, "I'm out a bunch of money and maybe the shoes fall apart in six months."
"The stakes are much higher when we're talking about lives," she continued. Because of counterfeit airbags, she said, "People have died. People have been injured. People have been maimed."
Could your airbag be faulty or counterfeit?
New cars come with airbags which are certified by the manufacturer. But it can be harder to know the provenance of airbags in used cars. If an airbag needed to be replaced, like after a collision, a mechanic or car owner could have discovered that the original model wasn't available any more — and gone shopping online.
There are a few ways to check your car's airbag history. Carfax offers a free check to see if a used car's airbags were already deployed. Vehiclehistory.gov allows car owners to purchase and view a full vehicle history. You can get a Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange, or CLUE, report from Lexis Nexis, which keeps a record of insurance claims from the previous seven years — which could also include if a car's airbags were ever reported as stolen.
But the only way to tell for sure if a car's airbag poses a risk is to have it inspected by an experienced mechanic who can tell you whether it could be dangerous.
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