The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is commissioning an engineering analysis to investigate a possible problem with the 2013-2015 Nissan Versa and 2014-2015 Versa Note.
The agency wants to gather more information about sections of the footwell that can potentially interfere with operating the pedals, and NHTSA estimates this could affect 360,000 vehicles if the agency requests a recall.
The preliminary evaluation of this problem was opened last June when NHTSA received a report of a driver’s foot being trapped by a trim panel on the right side of the footwell. Since then, the government agency has tallied 24 total complaints, including one crash and an injury, which might have been linked to this issue. It’s also possible the HVAC relay actuator in a nearby area could be doing the same thing. Either might lead to unintended acceleration and delayed braking.
NHTSA’s new engineering analysis is meant to “assess the scope, frequency and safety-related consequences of the alleged defect.” It also adds the 2015 Versa Sedan and Note to the list of potentially affected models but removes the examples from 2012 because of a different footwell panel design.
“Nissan is cooperating fully to answer the agency’s questions,” the automaker said in a prepared statement emailed to Autoblog (embedded in full below). You can read the entire report in PDF format, including photos of the potential issue, here.