NHTSA Complaint #11467671 — 2013 JEEP COMPASS

While preparing to enter my car today (6/5/2022) I heard a fairly loud popping/exploding sound. I quickly backed away from the car then approached it again and realized the passenger headrest, though attached, had basically split in 2. Upon further inspection I couldn’t see why this had randomly happened as I didn’t have a passenger with me and hadn’t touched it. I tried to force it back together but couldn’t figure out how to get it to move so I left it as is. Later this evening I started searching online for how to fit it back together and it appears this happens frequently especially with jeeps and is a failure of a safety feature called active headrest. I went back out to look at it and saw exactly what I had seen other drivers mention, there’s 2 teeny tiny pieces of black plastic that apparently keep it from deploying and the right one had cracked. Just lucky that no one was sitting there at the time or that it wasn’t the driver headrest while driving - very unsafe, I can’t even believe a “safety feature” is approved when it’s only withheld by a piece of plastic so small you wouldn’t think twice about discarding it if you found it while opening a toy.