NHTSA Complaint #11498282 — 2014 NISSAN PATHFINDER

On December 5, 2022, I was driving on the 134W fwy around 6:40 am. I was driving around 60 mph in the fast lane when all of a sudden my hood popped open. I was unable to see in front of my car as the hood was completely up and blocking my windshield. I slowed down and crouched down to see in the sliver of space between the windshield and the top (now located at the bottom due to it being open) of the hood. There was no left shoulder so my only recourse was to make my way to an exit as the section of the fwy I was on was around a merge of another fwy onto the one that I was currently on and there was no safe place to pull my car over to close the hood and unblock my view. Since it was early in the morning, the traffic was light but if there had been more traffic, then I would have slammed into a car in front of me and or someone would have slammed into me as I slowed down due to the surprise of the hood popping open, unexpectedly, and blocking my view. I called my insurance and sent video and pictures and they said to take it to the dealership. They also stated that because of a recall, the dealer should be fixing this hood latch issue. There was no warning to the hood latch failure as I've been driving this car for 8 years and this just happened unexpectedly. The local dealership of this car manufacturer said they oiled and cleaned the latch when we took it in to fix, as per our insurance's advice, but this car is not safe to drive as we are unsure when and if the hood will pop open again. When we called the Nissan Consumer Affairs department, the person my husband spoke to stated that we were never notified of this recall.