Consumer Safety Complaints
Search 2,215,138 safety complaints filed by vehicle owners with NHTSA — including 138,663 crashes, 56,255 fires, and 8,561 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 2,215,138 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 16,985 complaints for ACURA
Incident date: Oct 1, 2021
Rear rotors warped after only about 15000 miles. Calipers failed early too. This causes the vehicle to shake very hard when braking, and creates an unsafe condition. Competent mechanics have inspected the vehicle and confirmed this.
Incident date: Oct 25, 2021
The projector low beam lighting is NOT providing enough light output to be safely driven at night. I did a search online and it seems this is a well-known issue among RDX owners. It looks like there were enough complaint for the 2014 RDX, but no safety recall done on the 2015 models. It is extremely dangerous to drive this vehicle at night and I hope a recall is enforce before someone gets kill... Read more
Incident date: Aug 17, 2021
The gears are very jerky i got this tlx at 70k miles and its been jerky ever since. Car looses power when turning from stop the steering get hard sometimes. Transmission chirping noises.
Incident date: Aug 17, 2021
The gears are very jerky i got this tlx at 70k miles and its been jerky ever since. Car looses power when turning from stop the steering get hard sometimes. Transmission chirping noises.
Incident date: Aug 17, 2021
The gears are very jerky i got this tlx at 70k miles and its been jerky ever since. Car looses power when turning from stop the steering get hard sometimes. Transmission chirping noises.
Incident date: Feb 2, 2021
The contact owns a 2015 Acura RDX. The contact stated while driving at night the driver’s side and passenger’s side headlights lo-beam was too dim while driving. The contact took the vehicle to a local dealer who inspected the vehicle and attempted to replace the headlight bulbs to fix issue however, the failure persisted. The vehicle was not repaired. The manufacturer was not made aware of th... Read more
Incident date: Oct 15, 2021
My Acura TLX engine Drive reduced completely on the highway, Went going 60 to 25 roughly up to date maintenance 100% oil life and Now Im concern that’s my vechile has been manufactured failed. Since I purchased my vehicle my seat beats get stuck unable to clip belt. My car came with speakers not working dealer tried to tell me I was crazy, until the speaker system was check Yess sure enough no s... Read more
Incident date: Oct 15, 2021
My Acura TLX engine Drive reduced completely on the highway, Went going 60 to 25 roughly up to date maintenance 100% oil life and Now Im concern that’s my vechile has been manufactured failed. Since I purchased my vehicle my seat beats get stuck unable to clip belt. My car came with speakers not working dealer tried to tell me I was crazy, until the speaker system was check Yess sure enough no s... Read more
Incident date: Sep 29, 2021
I'm writing this complaint form concerning to a 2019 car I finance at Acura Of Milford. In 9/29/2021 I was driving my 2019 car I smell something burning coming from the car, with no insistence I drove straight to the Acura company. when I got there a lot of smoke is coming Out from the car and its Overheating about to explode. The service advisor gave me a courtesy car to drive .and he told me he... Read more
Incident date: Oct 19, 2021
I was driving and all of a sudden the car started to slow down and wouldn’t accelerate. After a couple pushes on the pedal it just completely shut off. Every mechanical light was on or flashing. I was in the middle of the road terrified but was able to steer over to the side of the street. I called 911. 2 gentlemen tried helping push it out of the way of traffic but we couldn’t get the ca... Read more
Incident date: Oct 19, 2021
I was driving and all of a sudden the car started to slow down and wouldn’t accelerate. After a couple pushes on the pedal it just completely shut off. Every mechanical light was on or flashing. I was in the middle of the road terrified but was able to steer over to the side of the street. I called 911. 2 gentlemen tried helping push it out of the way of traffic but we couldn’t get the ca... Read more
Incident date: Oct 5, 2021
Pulled out to pass and when I tried to accelerate, the engine basically died. It didn't turn off, but dropped to limp mode and the check engine light started flashing. Engine stayed in limp mode until being turned off and on again. In limp mode, car would not even go 10 mhp on even a slight uphill incline. Doubt it would have made it up more of a hill. This could be a huge safety problem if there ... Read more
Incident date: Jul 15, 2021
Paint started to peel off at upper side of rear roof (under the upper side of the gate). I have reported this issue el the dealership and as of today they haven’t yet responded. Vehicle sleeps in the garage every day and.only has about 72,000 miles. Same issue happened with my 2012 Honda Odyssey (same white diamond color). Honda fixed the van under extended warranty. So I hope Acura (Honda)... Read more
Incident date: Oct 18, 2021
Headlights (low beams) are way too dim making driving in the dark impossible. Replacing bulbs and aligning lights did not correct problem. Driver in another car said headlights were barely visible on their end.
Incident date: Dec 25, 2020
The visibility of my headlights are so bad that I am unable to drive my car at night. At first, I thought that I was imagining it and maybe my eye sight was going bad, but my husband noticed it too. This has been going on for about 8 months or so. I didn't notice it much at first because I was not driving as much with the pandemic. The only way that I can drive my car at night is if I keep my hea... Read more
Incident date: Oct 18, 2021
Car brake warning lights will flash when there is nothing in front of me, car keeps braking and losing power while driving on freeway for no reason.
Incident date: Oct 15, 2021
Lights are so dim cannot drive at night without brights. Have replaced lights to brightest and had lenses professionally refinished with no help.
Incident date: Sep 1, 2021
Power Steering Hose Leak. I took my vehicle in to have the oil changed and mechanics noticed a power steering leak. The mechanic looked up any recalls on my vehicle and noted this was a previous recall. Upon searching, 2010 there was a bulletin that went out, and the car was taken in 2010 and inspected and released. Upon further searching the other day there was a 2018 release and update of the sa... Read more
Incident date: Aug 1, 2019
Headlights are very dim. Sometimes need to use high beams to see at night. From what I read on line, it is a common problem with the headlight housing on 2013-2015 Acura RDX. This is a serious safety risk and Acura should repair. I purchased the car used about 2 years ago and the problem has gotten worse
Incident date: Jan 1, 2020
After owning my car for a few years, the front headlights began to dim. I've replaced them multiple times even with LED lights and now they are dim all the time. For example, the LED lights were installed in June and immediately there was no improvement. The car cannot be driven at night at all. It is extremely dangerous. I was told by the dealership that the 2015 base model is known to have ... Read more
Incident date: Oct 2, 2021
driving 65-70 MPH on highway the car would feel sluggish like it needs power then I can hear the engine roar louder then i get alerts on my dash that my brakes are not working my blind spot or lane keep assist or any safety features in my car is not activated working properly is what my car tells me i Almost lost my life twice those two times I almost got rear ended my semi truck on highway going ... Read more
Incident date: Oct 1, 2021
While driving suddenly all error warnings came up. It included Check Engine Light, Error messages included: Electronic Braking System error, Emission System error. The light indicative of parking P! kept blinking also the (P) came up on the dashboard. Interestingly after some time this all cleared on its own. Then came back again only this time it stayed on. I don't know if this has compromised ... Read more
Incident date: Oct 1, 2021
While driving suddenly all error warnings came up. It included Check Engine Light, Error messages included: Electronic Braking System error, Emission System error. The light indicative of parking P! kept blinking also the (P) came up on the dashboard. Interestingly after some time this all cleared on its own. Then came back again only this time it stayed on. I don't know if this has compromised ... Read more
Incident date: Oct 1, 2021
While driving suddenly all error warnings came up. It included Check Engine Light, Error messages included: Electronic Braking System error, Emission System error. The light indicative of parking P! kept blinking also the (P) came up on the dashboard. Interestingly after some time this all cleared on its own. Then came back again only this time it stayed on. I don't know if this has compromised ... Read more
Incident date: Oct 9, 2021
I believe my transmission or the electrical component(s) to my transmission failed. I was driving down the road and all of a sudden my car shifted into neutral and would not allow me to accelerate so we had make our way to the shoulder to put the car in park. Having my vehicle thrown into neutral while driving and not being able to accelerate put not only us, but other drivers at serious risk! The... Read more
Incident date: Oct 9, 2021
I believe my transmission or the electrical component(s) to my transmission failed. I was driving down the road and all of a sudden my car shifted into neutral and would not allow me to accelerate so we had make our way to the shoulder to put the car in park. Having my vehicle thrown into neutral while driving and not being able to accelerate put not only us, but other drivers at serious risk! The... Read more
Incident date: Sep 19, 2021
The outside rear taillight was FULL of water. I discovered this when going to replace bulbs I thought were just burned out. In fact one of the bulbs was shattered I presume from the water reaching the hot light. The taillight is non functional and I will have to take it to be repaired/replaced. I should not have to pay for what is very clearly an manufacturer defect that compromises safe vehicle o... Read more
Incident date: Oct 10, 2021
Was driving my car home and there was a loud explosion. There were no other cars around me and I couldn’t figure out what happened. I was suddenly aware of the noise of air outside and I could immediately hear stuff flying off my roof. I couldn’t safely pull over for a mile. Found a hole in my front moonroof and it was completely shattered. Had my sunshade not been closed I would have been cov... Read more
Incident date: Oct 3, 2021
While driving on a two lane road at app 60 mph, we accelerated to pass a slower car, Our 2019 Acura RDX lost power and coasted down to about 20 mph and the check engine light was flashing. we had no control over the speed of the vehicle (limp mode), which was very scary and could have caused a serious accident. It was raining earlier but not at the time of the incident. This should be a recal... Read more
Incident date: Sep 24, 2021
Every since I've owned my 2016 Acura MDX I've had infrequent, and intermittent transmission issues. Several have been safety concerns: - Transmission is slow to engage when first pushing accelerator, leading to unexpected lag pulling into traffic - Transmission did not shift into park as expected, causing car to keep moving as I was opening door and starting to step out - Transmission slips and do... Read more
Incident date: Oct 8, 2021
The headlights are incredibly dim, I've replaced the actual bulb and that's not the problem there's something wrong with the housing and reading online it's a common problem , they are so bad the car can not be driven at night.
Incident date: Oct 9, 2021
I was driving on the highway, clear skies, nothing overhead. Then I heard a loud explosion and slowed down thinking I had a blown tire...but I didn't feel the car to pull to any one side no have difficulty steering. Then I started to hear wind noise in the cabin. When I finally exited the highway I looked up and saw that my sunroof was cracked and had caved in. You can hear the crackling noise. Wh... Read more
Incident date: Oct 7, 2021
The contact owns a 2017 Acura MDX. The contact stated while driving 40 MPH, several unknown warning lights illuminated, and the vehicle started to jerk back and forth. The vehicle inadvertently shifted to neutral causing the loss of motive power. The contact exited the vehicle and pushed the vehicle to the side of the road. The contact had the vehicle towed to the local dealer to be diagnosed. The... Read more
Incident date: Oct 7, 2021
Front driver side airbags spontaneously deployed while driving.
Incident date: Oct 4, 2021
My 2019 Acura RDX suddenly lost power while accelerating on two occasions this year. Both times it occurred in clear weather with temperatures around 80 degrees. The first time it happened was on 7/15/2021 when I was accelerating onto a US Highway. The second time was on 10/4/2021 when accelerating from a stoplight. Both times I had to coast to the side of the road due to loss of power. I was a... Read more
Incident date: Oct 5, 2021
Transmission locked up while attempting to backup. Very loud grinding noise. Could not place back in park. Had to shut off engine to free shifter to move back to park. Tried again but this time placed in drive. Exact same results. Checked internet and apparently transmission on this year and others before and after are know problems. Googleand you will see this. POSSIBLE CATASTROPHIC INCIDENT - W... Read more
Incident date: Sep 27, 2021
Vehicle was subject to a relay attack. Perpetrator walked right up to the vehicle and opened the door. My key fobs were far away from the vehicle in the basement. Acura claims there are no known cases of this vehicle hack. However, according to internet sources, Acura/Honda are subject to malicious hacking because their key fobs do not use a "rolling code" system. Other luxury brands have... Read more
Incident date: Sep 27, 2021
The sunroof exploded with no outside impact. I drive to the office in the morning and as soon as I put the car in park the sunroof exploded with a huge noise. Nothing fell on the sunroof and there was nothing wrong with the sunroof until then. I had opened and closed the sunroof the day before with no issues. The sunroof exploded and shattered the glass in thousands of pieces. Fortunately the suns... Read more
Incident date: Jan 6, 2020
The headlights have become dim. The bulbs have been changed several times LED and HID and casing cleaned. In order to see at night we have to drive with high beams on. This has become dangerous for driving. We tried switching the light order but the high beams are too powerful and can cause danger to other drivers. The dealers says we have to replace the headlight assembly kit $2k. This is an i... Read more
Incident date: Jul 1, 2017
the headlights are extremely dim, making it dangerous to drive at night. The bulbs have been replaced multiple times, but the lights remain dim. I literally am afraid to drive it at night. You can see in online forums that this is apparently common for the 2014 RDX, yet my car (and other) have not been included in any recall. This is a safety issue.
Incident date: Sep 28, 2021
UNKNOWN
Incident date: Sep 24, 2021
On Friday, September 24, 2021 when I went around a curve my car felt like the vehicle stability assist was trying to kick on. However, no warning light came on and I was not going to fast for the weather or road conditions. I did not hit any pot holes or anything else to cause the part to fail. When I went to apply my brakes the brakes felt soft and spongy and I was concern with the car not sto... Read more
Incident date: May 1, 2021
Fuel gauge is off, car goes through gas fast, and there is some stalling/ jumping at times
Incident date: Sep 26, 2021
Excessive oil consumption. I have the oil changed when the maintenance minder gets to 10%. Usually this is about 5,000 miles between oil changes. I will add oil to the engine at 50% oil life or 2,500 miles. I have contacted Acura and they are unwilling to address this problem. These engines need to be recalled. This is a reoccurring event.
Incident date: Jun 28, 2021
My "D" indicator light is blinking no matter changing the transmission fluid, cleaning the solenoids, etc. the car is not overheating, there are no apparent electrical problems and I do not even have any check engine lights or other codes. The light comes on blinking when I drive for a little while then goes off when I turn the car off and is fine. Then when I start it up it doesn't blink anymore.... Read more