Usually when a car bursts into flames, it’s due to a defective engine or high-speed accident. But one woman explained on TikTok that there’s something else that people need to worry about: heated seats. Because she left this common car feature on, she says that this caused her husband’s SUV to catch on fire within minutes, as he scrambled to save him and their dog from the flames.
Woman says a pillow caught on fire first
In a TikTok video posted on October 4, user Lindsay (@linruss0) says her husband’s 2013 Nissan Armada caught on fire because she accidentally left the heated seat feature on the last time she was in the SUV.
Lindsay recounts that her husband was driving back home Indiana when he started to smell something burning. She admits to turning on the heated seat feature, which is activated by a foot switch in the car, and leaving it on because she does this with her own vehicle.
Her husband eventually found where the smell was coming from: a pillow that was in the front passenger seat. It took him several minutes to figure out what was happening, though, and by then small flames had already emerged from the pillow.
“He was driving and smelled smoke,” Lindsay told Motor1 through a direct message on TikTok. “He thought it was his radiator but couldn’t find the problem. Then he saw smoke coming from the seat and that’s when he found out the seat was on fire. He got him and our dog out of the car. He had called me after he called 911.”
She continued, “The seat had a small flame and then out of nowhere. The car went up in flames just from the seat. The heated seat malfunctioned and got overheated and did not cool down, which started the fire.”
Within minutes of calling his wife about the incident, her husband watched the Nissan become engulfed in fire. A photo shows the SUV covered in flames with a huge plume of smoke coming from the vehicle.
Still, some commenters wondered why Lindsay left the heated seat on and why the SUV didn’t automatically turn the feature off when the cat had shut down. Lindsay says that there might been a malfunction because there’s supposed to be a temperature sensor that tells the heating element to turn off. She also says the 2013 Nissan Armada turns the heated seat feature back on upon startup if the switch is still on.
