Consumer Safety Complaints
Search 2,245,377 safety complaints filed by vehicle owners with NHTSA, including 140,173 crashes, 56,794 fires, and 8,580 deaths.
What is a NHTSA consumer complaint?
A consumer complaint is a free-form report filed by a vehicle owner directly to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) describing a safety concern about their vehicle. NHTSA collects these reports through its Vehicle Owner Defect Report (VOQ) system and publishes them publicly. Each complaint includes the affected component, the date and circumstances of the incident, whether the failure caused a crash or fire, and any reported injuries or deaths. The owner's full narrative description is included verbatim, NHTSA does not edit or moderate the descriptions.
The database below contains over 2,245,377 individual complaints. NHTSA's investigators monitor it for clusters of similar reports, when enough owners describe the same failure mode on the same vehicle, NHTSA may open a Preliminary Evaluation that can lead to a recall. Many of the largest recalls in U.S. history, including the Takata airbag recall and the Hyundai/Kia engine fire recalls, started as patterns visible in this complaint database years before they became formal recalls.
How to interpret what you read
A few principles for reading consumer complaints usefully:
- One complaint is anecdote; a hundred similar complaints is data. NHTSA does not investigate the truthfulness of any individual report, that's the job of the Office of Defects Investigation, which looks at the full pattern. When evaluating a vehicle, look for whether multiple owners describe the same chain of events.
- Crash, fire, injury, and death flags are owner-set. They are not verified by NHTSA. They are still useful as a filter, because owners who tick those boxes are typically reporting more serious incidents than those who don't.
- Component categories are NHTSA-assigned, not owner-assigned. NHTSA standardizes the component field so that complaints can be aggregated. The owner narrative often goes into more detail than the component category captures.
- Complaint volume scales with sales volume. A best-selling model will accumulate more raw complaints than a niche model even at the same defect rate. To compare across vehicles, look at complaints per 100,000 units sold, not raw counts.
If you've experienced a defect
File a complaint. NHTSA's investigators rely on this database to detect emerging defects, and useful complaints, specific, concrete, with dates and mileage and clear descriptions of what happened, feed directly into the agency's pattern detection. The form takes about 10 minutes and is at nhtsa.gov/recalls under "Report a Safety Problem." Your complaint becomes part of the same public record that this page is built from. Owners filing detailed VOQs are how recalls get triggered.
Read more from our blog
Showing 42,929 complaints - component: EXTERIOR LIGHTING
Incident date: May 6, 2024
The highbeams while not failing do not operate in a safe manner. While driving you are unable to really disable them. While driving about 12 miles down hill the Auto High beams repeatedly turned on likely blinding oncoming traffic and traffic passing me while I scrampled to turn them off so that I would not blind other drivers. These auto high beams seem poorly designed and poorly thought out ther... Read more
VOLKSWAGEN
ATLAS CROSS SPORT
(2022) - EXTERIOR LIGHTING
Jan 2, 2025
Incident date: Jan 2, 2025
IN FRONT OF VEHICLE THERE ARE SIDE MARKER PARK LIGHTS AND IN CENTER THERE ARE 2 PARK LIGHT TURN SIGNAL COMBINATIONS. DRIVERS SIDE PARK LAMP IN CENTER WORKS PASSENGER SIDE DOES NOT INSIDE HEADLIGHT ASSEMBLY ON PASSENGER SIDE THERE IS NOT A POWER FEED WIRE ON ORIGINAL OR REPLACEMENT FOR THE PARK LIGHT CIRCUIT. DRIVERS SIDE DOES HAVE THIS WIRE.
Incident date: Jan 2, 2025
AHB, which is part of Toyota's TSS (total safety system) fails intermittently and because the system is run by a sensor, headlight may or may not be illuminated during periods of darkness. Given the intermittent nature of the failure, it seems like there should be something to indicate to the operator that the lights are either on or not on, but the green light indicator goes on and off without an... Read more
MERCEDES-BENZ
GLB 250
(2020) - EXTERIOR LIGHTING
Jan 1, 2025
Incident date: Jun 3, 2024
Turn signal button frequently gets stuck and will not activate. This prevents driver from being able to properly signal when changing lanes and causes very dangerous situations, particularly when trying to exit the highway. My vehicle has not been inspected by the manufacturer, but this issue is very common across owners' forums. No warning signs or messages prior to failure.
Incident date: Jun 8, 2016
2015 Cadillac SRX is unsafe to drive while using its low beams after dark, and after having its High and Low Beam bulbs replaced. I purchased this car used in March 2024 for my wife. She only occasionally drives but never at night. In April I drove it when nearly dark and thought the low beams were very dim. I called the dealer and asked about getting warranty coverage and was told it had too ... Read more
Incident date: Jan 1, 2025
I want to bring to your attention what I consider a safety concern with the 2025 Honda Ridgeline Black Editition that I just purchased and an important feature that does not function properly. My concern is the the Auto High Beam Headlight feature. This is one of the features for which I choice to purchase this particular pickup truck. The issue/problem is as follows. The auto high beam featur... Read more
Incident date: Dec 24, 2024
The rear lights on the tailgate on these vehicles continue to fail due to water inclusion. This affects night time visibility. I've noticed this trend on many Dodge Durango models spanning many different years. My vehicle had this occurrence with roughly 70,000 miles. Many vehicle owners have had much earlier failures.
Incident date: Jul 24, 2024
When driving at night, there is a shadow in the headlight, that shines onto the road and makes driving at night difficult. This shadow looks like it comes from a tall screw or bolt in both headlights. The lights work correctly, but the shadow causes the driver to have a dark "spot" in the beam of light, which then makes it hard to see clearly while driving in dusk, or darkening circumstances. I ... Read more
VOLKSWAGEN
ID.4
(2021) - EXTERIOR LIGHTING
Dec 31, 2024
Incident date: Dec 16, 2024
My 2024 Ford Maverick manufactured 9/24 has failed to unlock on two separate occasions with key fob and the interior lights failed to come on when I unlocked the driver door with the mechanical metal key. When I checked the charge status of my battery it was depleted below 75%. I also noticed that the battery was a flooded acid type and is installed under the rear seat within the passenger compart... Read more
CHEVROLET
TRAILBLAZER
(2021) - EXTERIOR LIGHTING
Dec 31, 2024
Incident date: Dec 27, 2024
Daytime running light LEDs are failing, has turned purple and is very dim on the passenger side.
THOR MOTOR COACH
PALAZZO
(2019) - EXTERIOR LIGHTING
Dec 30, 2024
Incident date: Oct 7, 2024
The high beams on the car malfunctioned. The sheathing material on the wires is supposedly “Soy based” and breaks down with heat and time. When the wire insulation breaks down beyond a certain point, it will crumble off of the wires, leading to exposed wires, which may touch each other, and cause certain functions of the headlamp to fail. If the headlamp fails while driving at night, vision ma... Read more
Incident date: Dec 30, 2024
Front low beam headlights are dangerously dim.
Incident date: Dec 30, 2024
My vehicle has a battery issue, we replaced the battery twice in two years still the issue might happened again and again. Once the battery start draining energy, everything start blinking and car stops all of a sudden in the middle of the road because of brake assistance problem. All the system errors come up. It is very scary to drive the vehicle with my kids inside. All system in car works w... Read more
Incident date: Dec 30, 2024
Rear inner tail light on driver side is not working (34155-TZ5-H03). There is active recall on models between 2014-2019 but when checked my VIN it shows it is not covered. I went through the detail of recall and it can be clearly seen that the damage is same as shown in the recall. I will appreciate if someone can provide how do we know that my VIN was not impacted as there could be subcomponent w... Read more
Incident date: Dec 22, 2024
The contact owns a 2019 Ford F-350. The contact stated while driving at an undisclosed speed, the contact noticed that the windshield wipers became inoperable. The contact stated that when the windshield wipers were engaged, the contact could not shut off the windshield wipers. The contact had to turn off the vehicle to stop the windshield wipers. The contact restarted the vehicle, and the failure... Read more
FREIGHTLINER
CASCADIA
(2024) - EXTERIOR LIGHTING
Dec 30, 2024
Incident date: Aug 19, 2024
The contact owns a 2017 GMC Acadia. The contact stated that the "Shift to Park" message was displayed on the instrument panel while attempting to park the vehicle. Additionally, there was a constant beeping alert coming from the vehicle during the failure. The contact later discovered that the rear brake lights and reverse lights were illuminated during the failure. A local dealer was contacted ab... Read more
GRAND DESIGN
MOMENTUM
(2022) - EXTERIOR LIGHTING
Dec 30, 2024
Incident date: Oct 1, 2024
The contact owns a 2022 Ford F-150. The contact stated that the driver’s side daytime running headlight was flickering while driving. The contact stated that the passenger’s side headlight was dim and the driver’s side fog light failed to operate as needed. The dealer was notified about the failure and related the failure to NHTSA Campaign Number: 23V802000 (Exterior Lighting); however, the ... Read more
Incident date: Dec 24, 2024
The night before Christmas Eve, I was commuting home from the neighboring city, which is about a 25 minute drive home from where I was currently located. It was late in the evening and 2 of my children were in the car with me. I live in a rural area that is extremely dark in most of the areas. As I'm driving along both of my low beams go out without warning. This made for a very dangerous situatio... Read more
Incident date: Dec 23, 2024
"check turn signal error". This message pops up at random times. When this error does pop up, the rear turn signal ceases to operate until the error message clears itself. Dealership "cannot duplicate". I have photographed the warning many times. Hyundai corporate is of no help. Check LED headlamp error issue as well.
Incident date: Nov 4, 2024
I am not the owner of a 2024 or 2025 Honda CR-V but I am regularly blinded by their new dual low beam LED headlamps on the road. These lamps are shockingly bright and exceed the glare of some other vehicles with high beams on. I suspect the beam pattern of these lamps is poorly designed and can blind other motorists either in an oncoming traffic flow or when the CR-V driver is following a vehicl... Read more
Incident date: May 1, 2024
Low beam headlight internal reflectors have degraded and light have become very dim. Dangerous to drive at night or in bad weather. aThe car cannot be operated at night. Dealer replacement is $3,000, making the car value negative. The car otherwise is drivable but this defect makes the car unsuitable for use.
Incident date: Dec 6, 2024
The low beam headlights are not bright enough for safe driving in normal weather. They register as not on. In rain and wet pavement - they are highly dangerous and it’s very difficult to see lane markings or for any distance in front of the car. At higher speeds on the highway - it’s even more concerning. I’ve had them checked when I bought the car for alignment and replaced the bulbs with... Read more
Incident date: Nov 8, 2024
"Front left side market light defective" - When the vehicle turns on and the lights activate the side marker lights do not illuminate. There was a recall for this model and year but doesn't include my VIN#. This is happening to MANY 2017 Q7 models. As such, these vehicles fail to comply with the requirements of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) number 108, "Lamps, Reflective Devices... Read more
Incident date: Nov 1, 2024
Headlight brightness has diminished to levels below safe operation of vehicle in darkness. Changing bulbs, adjusting beam pattern and restoring outer shell of headlight assembly did not increase brightness. Internal reflectors, which cannot be cleaned or replaced, have lost their effectiveness over time. Driver, pedestrian and all other driver’s safety are at risk. Independent observation and mu... Read more
Incident date: Dec 21, 2024
Inside display dims inappropriately, even in daylight making it impossible to see navigation. Hazard when trying to drive on road. Could cause accident. Needs option to manually brighten/dim. Auto dim feature in this vehicle is terrible.
Incident date: Dec 19, 2024
This a Safety concern with the console dropping down while driving. The Overhead (Central) Console behind the rearview mirror dropped down on my current vehicle (It also dropped down on another Tiguan that I owned while it was parked at the dealership for a different repair (doesn't seem to be a coincidence along with other complaints by customers who show photos online of the same problem with th... Read more
Incident date: Nov 1, 2024
The rear LED license plate lights are corroded and need replacing. One does not work.
Incident date: Nov 29, 2024
We own a 2019 Tesla model 3 which had a left front headlight stop working (headlight, turn signal, and daytime running light). As soon as the headlight went out the windshield wipers stopped working. The vehicle does not have fuses but the headlight and wipers share a wiring circuit. I thought it might be a coincidence but found several of the same issues on a google search. It is beyond ridiculou... Read more
VOLKSWAGEN
TIGUAN
(2019) - EXTERIOR LIGHTING
Dec 27, 2024
Incident date: Dec 22, 2024
I purchased the 2024 Acura ZDX, an EV SUV, three months ago with approximately 2000 miles. Both the front and entertainment displays (monitors) have ceased to function. Unfortunately, the user menu does not provide any guidance on repairing or resetting. I still could drive to my dealer to have it repaired with a black screen, which poses a safety concern. The ZDX was manufactured by GM under the ... Read more
Incident date: Dec 26, 2024
Daytime running lights failed and are built into the housing, this is a known issue across many F150’s 2021+
Incident date: Dec 27, 2024
Nothing has malfunctioned but I want to complain about the false advertising of the 2025 Mazda CX-70 PHEV Premium Plus. This car is the most expensive one Mazda sells and they exclude so many features from it that the Top trim inline 6 has. This is supposed to be the same car but hybrid. My chief complaints are deleting the lighting on the liftgate and not having the full lighting on the headlight... Read more
Incident date: Dec 11, 2024
There has been an issue with front LED lights where they go out. It’s an electrical issue where my truck had both replaced and still in warranty this caused almost hit accidents a night. Many vehicles warned me by flashing the high beams. Also another issue is the transmission where it creates a huge jerk on the transmission causing a change in shift. Almost had an accident caused by it. No poli... Read more
Incident date: Dec 20, 2024
DRL lights are dead after three years of ownership. Dealer wants $1600 per light assembly to repair them. Cannot afford to repair them. makes the truck less visible day and night.
JEEP
GRAND CHEROKEE
(2023) - EXTERIOR LIGHTING
Dec 26, 2024
Incident date: Dec 13, 2024
There is an issue with this vehicle that seems to have been addressed by Audi recall campaign 97CB (NHTSA campaign ID 16V642000), however it does not apply to all affected vehicles. I bought the car used in 2020 with approx 35k miles on it. At about 55k miles, I began getting a warning on the dash that says “front (left/right) side marker light defective. see owners manual.” It began with t... Read more
Incident date: Dec 26, 2024
When the lights are set on Auto mode the high beams feature will not work. You push the steering column cluster switch forward to turn on high beams and it kicks it back immediately and will not turn on high beams. This is a huge safety issue. We've had to drive through wooded areas at night with elk and deer on the roads and almost been hit. Jeep needs to recall this and modify to allow h... Read more
Incident date: Nov 30, 2024
In the headlight assembly the main headlight bowls are deteriorated/defective. The amount of light that the regular low beams or high beams provide at night is insufficient. This makes driving at night with the factory assembly lights highly dangerous.
Incident date: Jun 30, 2023
Right daytime running lamp failed at approximately 40,000 miles. Dealer has not been contacted other than to get a price for the replacement part. Safety is compromised by vehicle being less noticeable to other drivers. No warning lamps are activated.
VOLKSWAGEN
TIGUAN
(2023) - EXTERIOR LIGHTING
Dec 26, 2024
Incident date: Sep 16, 2024
The contact owns a 2018 Dodge Journey. The contact stated while parked or driving, the headlights would become fogged. The skid and a check engine warning lights illuminated. The vehicle was taken to an independent mechanic to be diagnosed where it was diagnosed with sensor issues. The vehicle was repaired however the warning light re-illuminated. The local dealer was contacted; however, the vehic... Read more
Incident date: Dec 25, 2024
Low beam headlights have both went out in our second year of ownership. At 1600.00 each and 600.00 labor to replace.
Incident date: Dec 24, 2024
The morning of Tuesday 12/24/24 while driving the car at 30-40 mph, in the dark, all systems suddenly shut off - by all systems I'm mean the engine, all interior and exterior lights, the "computer" screen. Everything went black in an instant. After a second of two the car lurched back to life. I was able to pull over at that point. The only "idiot light" that came on was a yellow engine sy... Read more
Incident date: Dec 23, 2024
When driving on the freeway at night in intermittently foggy conditions, I attempted to adjust the automatic high-beam controls on the center console screen in the vehicle. During this attempt, as I was selecting to deactivate the auto lighting function, ALL of the vehicle lights shut off at once, and the console and screen-based instrument cluster went completely black. I attempted to stop the ve... Read more
Incident date: Dec 12, 2024
The bigger issue is the car will prematurely dim the display and dusk/dawn - making it very hard to see at those times - even with max dimmer setting. Took it to the dealer multiple times they say it’s working as expected but it’s a known issue for all lyriq owners that GM ignores
HARLEY-DAVIDSON
FLRT
(2016) - EXTERIOR LIGHTING
Dec 24, 2024
Incident date: Jan 11, 2024
I don't have this problem anymore because I had the circuit board replaced. The issue I have observed is the auto high beam feature doesn't work properly. They get stuck in the high setting and don't adapt to on-coming traffic. It's primarily in model y cars but all models have been observed. This might be as simple as needing the adaptive setting to be default or in my case a new control board re... Read more
Incident date: Nov 22, 2024
A medium rain caused water to enter the rear taillights and short out, causing malfunctions for both sides. The forums and Facebooks are littered with these post. It’s not off but when. It’s a poor design and safety hazard that is costing to repair.
Incident date: May 11, 2023
Auto Dimming Headlights are so sensitive that they essential do not work. Auto dimming is a safety feature, but it puts the driver at risk by shutting the high beams off in situations they should be on to increase visability. The dealer says they are 'working as designed' but with further discussion, admits to them being 'useless'. The dealer used their diagnostic tool and says no error was found... Read more
Incident date: Dec 8, 2024
The lights dim way too quickly. HID basically is garbage. Major safety issue since most people can’t afford to be constantly replacing their headlight assemblies.
Incident date: Dec 23, 2024
Reflectors are critical for visibility especially when it is foggy outside. My reflectors made my vehicle less visible to other driver because he backed his trailer into my car not seeing my lights or me and directly caused or perhaps contributed to the accident. I seek compensation due to the Product liability. Manufactures must be held responsible for defective vehicles parts, which caused it a ... Read more
Crash
Incident date: Dec 15, 2024
My 2017 KIA Soul failed while going 70 on the highway, almost completely lost power. Pull over to the side of the road to check the issue. Checked the oil, and it was down to less than a quart. There was no indicator light to bring attention to this issue. Brought it into the dealership after returning home. The Soul was completely unsafe to drive due to engine knocks. Despite letting the dealersh... Read more
Incident date: Aug 3, 2024
I own a 2009 audi a4. On the Month of october 2024 my transmission failed. I towed my car to a mechanic who then replaced my transmission i picked up my car on December 11 2024 at 7 am from audi of fresno. I have had no prior issues and like always i expect a dealership to inspect a new vehicle that comes in ,as i have never been able to get work done with out them always doing their own diagnosti... Read more
Fire
Incident date: Dec 22, 2024
The instrument cluster display is too dim to see, making it unsafe to drive