SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Stopped working / malfunction

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20190902-7C59E-2147377932. Matched catalog product: Kawasaki Teryx. Source model text: Teryx4 LE KRT800CFF. Incident: My wife and I were riding on a smooth trail in our 2015 Kawasaki Teryx4 LE side by side. While riding the steering assembly failed. I was making a left hand curve and turned the steering wheel and it popped and would not turn the wheels. The front wheels locked in a straight forward position and we struck a small tree. I was able to back up but the wheels would not turn, even manually to try and negotiate the curve. I had to use our winch to pull the side by side off the trail to allow others by. A mechanic friend was contacted that was in the area, he came to our location. The top portion of the rack and pinion steering was popped up and out of place. We were unable to reset the piece and had to pull the piece out the rest of the way so that the tires could be manually turned to get the side by side out to where a trailer could be driven to load it up. Luckily we were not traveling very fast at all or this could of caused severe injury or death had we been going at any speed and unable to turn the wheels at all.