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.

2,245,377 Total Complaints

140,173 Reported Crashes

56,794 Reported Fires

8,580 Reported 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

How to Read NHTSA Consumer Complaints › How NHTSA Investigations Work › Used Car: 7 Recall Checks to Run First › The Takata Airbag Recall: Full Story › OBD-II Codes Explained › All Articles ›

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Showing 9,875 complaints for INFINITI

AIR BAG DEPLOYED ON MODERATE IMPACT COLLISION. RIGHT EYE SERIOUSLY INJURED BY AIR BAG. SURGERY WAS REQUIRED FOR INJURY TO RIGHT EYE. INJURY CAUSED SIGNIFICANT DAMAGE TO NERVES IN THE EYE. DOCTOR SAID I CAN NO LONGER HAVE CORRECTIVE EYE SURGERY IN THE FUTURE AND I WILL DEVELOP CATARACT BECAUSE OF THE DAMAGE TO THE RIGHT EYE. DT

Incident date: Nov 24, 2002

I HAVE BEEN IN TWO CAR ACCIDENTS WITH MY I 30 IN BOTH OF THE ACCIDENTS. DT

Crash

Incident date: Nov 7, 2002

NO SUMMARY. DT

Incident date: Oct 15, 2002

THIS ISN'T REALLY A COMPLAINT BUT A NOTIFICATION: WHILE DRIVING ON I-10E IN BATON ROUGE THE WINDOW SIMPLY EXPLODED INWARD, (WITH A LOUD BOOM) SHOWERING MY LEFT SHOULDER AND LAP WITH TINY BITS OF GLASS. THE WINDOW WAS NOT STRUCK WITH A ROCK OR OBJECT AND TEMPERATURES WERE IN UPPER 70'S. I WAS ABLE TO PULL OFF ONTO THE SHOULDER AND LOOKED FOR A BULLET EXIT-HOLE THINKING THE LOUD BANG WAS A GUNSHOT. ... Read more

Incident date: Oct 17, 2002

CONSUMER STATES WHEN PUSH THE BRAKE THE CAR SURGE FORWARD CAUSING A ACCIDENT. PLEASE PROVIDE ANY INFORMATION. TS

Incident date: Oct 1, 2002

CONSUMER STATES VEHICLE'S CLOCK IS POORLY ILLUMINATED, MAKING IT DIFFICULT TO VIEW WHEN DARK. CONSUMER STATES HAS TO TAKE EYES OFF OF ROAD WHEN ATTEMPTING TO VIEW CLOCK BECAUSE OF IT'S UNSAFE DESIGN. MR

Incident date: Aug 15, 2001

CONSUMER STATES WHILE SHE WAS AT THE POST OFFICE DEPOSTING A LETTER , SHE GOT OUT OF THE AUTOMOBILE AND WHEN SHE GOT BACK INTO THE AUTO SHE SMELLED SMOKED. AFTER THAT SHE BEGUN TO LOOK AROUND AND ACTUALLY SAW THE SMOKE, SHE STOPPED THE CAR. LATER SHE FOUND OUT THAT IS APPEARED TO BE ONE OF THE ELECTRICALLY BOXES IN THE TRUCK OF THE AUTO. NO INJURIES. MR

Fire

Incident date: Aug 1, 2001

ELECTRICAL PROBLEM. MR *TC

Incident date: Jul 13, 2002

CONSUMER STATES THE VEHICLE AT A STAND STILL AND WAS STRUCK BY A STREETCAR. THE DRIVER DOOR WAS HIT AND NONE OF THE AIR BAGS DEPLOYED IN THE VEHICLE. THE DEALER WAS NOTIFIED. PLEASE PROVIDE MORE INFORMATION. MR

Crash

Incident date: Mar 1, 2001

WHILE TURNING THE VEHICLE LEFT OR RIGHT THERE IS HESITATION AND STALLING. THE DEALERSHIP IS AWARE OF THE PROBLEM. NLM

Incident date: Sep 5, 2002

CONSUMER STATES WHILE DRIVING 30MPH THE CAR START SMOKING FROM THE TRUNK AREA AND 3 MINUTES LATER A FIRE STARTED IN THE TRUNK AREA.

Incident date: Feb 23, 2001

CONSUMER STATES THAT THE DRIVERS SEAT WILL NOT LOCK PROPERLY.DEALER WAS CONTACTED.

CONSUMER STATED THAT THE GAS PEDAL WOULD NOT ENGAGE READILY, WHEN PRESSING THE GAS PEDAL FROM A STOPPED POSITION, THE VEHICLE WOULD NOT MOVE, THEN MORE FORCE WOULD BE USED ON THE GAS PEDAL AND VEHICLE WOULD LURCH FORWARD, THE DEALER CLEANED THE THROTTLE CHAMBER. *SLC

Incident date: Apr 29, 2002