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 519 complaints for RIVIAN
Incident date: Jan 4, 2023
The contact owns a 2022 Genesis G70. The contact stated that while driving at various speeds with the Adaptive Cruise Control activated, the vehicle experienced phantom braking without another vehicle being nearby. The contact stated that the system would be activated by a shadow within the detection zone of the vehicle. The vehicle was towed to the dealer who was unable to identify the cause of t... Read more
Incident date: Jan 4, 2023
While preparing to pull out of a parallel street parking space in my R1T with a car 3 feet in front of me, I stepped on the brake to engage Drive from Park. On releasing the brake, before stepping on the accelerator, the R1T surged at a high rate of speed hitting the car straight on, deploying the air bags in the car and blowing the rear window out of the car. The car was pushed past an empty sp... Read more
Crash
2 injured
Incident date: Jan 4, 2023
My daughter backed out of our driveway, put the truck in reverse. She was then unable to put the truck into drive. It got stuck in the middle of the street. Thankfully we live on a quite street with not much traffic during the day. However if this happened in a parking lot it would have been much different. My husband was able to come home from work and manually push it forward, then drove it back... Read more
Incident date: Jan 4, 2023
My daughter backed out of our driveway, put the truck in reverse. She was then unable to put the truck into drive. It got stuck in the middle of the street. Thankfully we live on a quite street with not much traffic during the day. However if this happened in a parking lot it would have been much different. My husband was able to come home from work and manually push it forward, then drove it back... Read more
Incident date: Nov 9, 2022
When I hit a bump with this truck the steering shakes violently. I brought to ford and they said it is a steering dampner and it is a recalled part and they would fix it as a recall however they said they dont have the part and they dont know when the part will be available. I am now left with an undriveable truck and no one can tell me when it can be fixed.
Incident date: Dec 1, 2022
Glass used on windshield is weak. I've had multiple chips on the glass in the first 3000 miles of use. Seems prevalent on other trucks as well.
Incident date: Dec 2, 2022
The truck was parked on a moderate slope (maybe 10-15 degrees), on a gravel driveway in slightly icy conditions. After 1-2 minutes in "park", the steering wheel began turning and the truck started moving backwards down the slope. It stopped when I pressed on the brakes. I immediately moved the truck to a flatter area. I was able to reproduce this effect multiple times on similar slopes that day... Read more
Incident date: Nov 26, 2022
The passenger seat has rocked back when you lean too hard into the back of the chair since taking delivery of the vehicle. Today I took a flash light and tried to find the cause, I found a missing bolt in one of the 4 points at which the seat attaches to the truck.
Incident date: Oct 18, 2022
Truck without warning, suddenly stopped and I was on one of the busiest streets in Los Angeles at an intersection, blocking a large amount of traffic and too dangerous to get out due to cars rapidly passing. Called Rivian support and they said it would take. two hours to get a tow truck to me even though AAA was only 20 min away, they would not call AAA. I was at risk of being rear ended. Fire de... Read more
1 injured
Incident date: Oct 18, 2022
Truck without warning, suddenly stopped and I was on one of the busiest streets in Los Angeles at an intersection, blocking a large amount of traffic and too dangerous to get out due to cars rapidly passing. Called Rivian support and they said it would take. two hours to get a tow truck to me even though AAA was only 20 min away, they would not call AAA. I was at risk of being rear ended. Fire de... Read more
1 injured
Incident date: Oct 18, 2022
Truck without warning, suddenly stopped and I was on one of the busiest streets in Los Angeles at an intersection, blocking a large amount of traffic and too dangerous to get out due to cars rapidly passing. Called Rivian support and they said it would take. two hours to get a tow truck to me even though AAA was only 20 min away, they would not call AAA. I was at risk of being rear ended. Fire de... Read more
1 injured
Incident date: Jun 29, 2022
I DO NOT OWN THIS VEHICLE. I WAS HOWEVER, INJURED BY THE DRIVER OF THE 2022 RIVIAN LAUNCH EDITION. I WAS REAR ENDED (WHILE I WAS STOPPED WAITING FOR A READ LIGHT) AT A RELATIVE HIGH SPEED FOR ROAD CONDITIONS. AFTER STUDYING THE OWNERS MANUAL, THERE ARE MULTIPLE COLLISION AVOIDANCE WARNINGS, AUDIBLE, VISUAL AND HAPTIC (VIBRATION OF THE STEERING WHEEL) WHEN A COLLISION IS IMMINENT. FURTHERMORE, T... Read more
Crash
1 injured
Incident date: Jun 29, 2022
I DO NOT OWN THIS VEHICLE. I WAS HOWEVER, INJURED BY THE DRIVER OF THE 2022 RIVIAN LAUNCH EDITION. I WAS REAR ENDED (WHILE I WAS STOPPED WAITING FOR A READ LIGHT) AT A RELATIVE HIGH SPEED FOR ROAD CONDITIONS. AFTER STUDYING THE OWNERS MANUAL, THERE ARE MULTIPLE COLLISION AVOIDANCE WARNINGS, AUDIBLE, VISUAL AND HAPTIC (VIBRATION OF THE STEERING WHEEL) WHEN A COLLISION IS IMMINENT. FURTHERMORE, T... Read more
Crash
1 injured
Incident date: Jun 29, 2022
I DO NOT OWN THIS VEHICLE. I WAS HOWEVER, INJURED BY THE DRIVER OF THE 2022 RIVIAN LAUNCH EDITION. I WAS REAR ENDED (WHILE I WAS STOPPED WAITING FOR A READ LIGHT) AT A RELATIVE HIGH SPEED FOR ROAD CONDITIONS. AFTER STUDYING THE OWNERS MANUAL, THERE ARE MULTIPLE COLLISION AVOIDANCE WARNINGS, AUDIBLE, VISUAL AND HAPTIC (VIBRATION OF THE STEERING WHEEL) WHEN A COLLISION IS IMMINENT. FURTHERMORE, T... Read more
Crash
1 injured
Incident date: Sep 5, 2022
When driving and when parked the digital instrument cluster and infotainment screen (2 screen) can spontaneously turn off. This results in the entire instrument cluster being inaccessible while driving. Parking the vehicle for 20 minutes will recover the screens, but then it continues to happen. Rivian is aware of the issue and initially closed my ticket but has reopened it. I haven’t received... Read more
Incident date: Aug 31, 2022
The Driver+ (D+) feature on the Rivians have both adaptive cruise control and lane centering active at the same time. There is a function unknown to me that controls whether or not the D+ feature can turn on or remain on. In certain situations, the D+ features asks the driver the disable the system by pushing the right stalk upward with a red message on the gauge console screen. In other situat... Read more
Crash
Incident date: Aug 31, 2022
The Driver+ (D+) feature on the Rivians have both adaptive cruise control and lane centering active at the same time. There is a function unknown to me that controls whether or not the D+ feature can turn on or remain on. In certain situations, the D+ features asks the driver the disable the system by pushing the right stalk upward with a red message on the gauge console screen. In other situat... Read more
Crash
Incident date: Aug 31, 2022
The Driver+ (D+) feature on the Rivians have both adaptive cruise control and lane centering active at the same time. There is a function unknown to me that controls whether or not the D+ feature can turn on or remain on. In certain situations, the D+ features asks the driver the disable the system by pushing the right stalk upward with a red message on the gauge console screen. In other situat... Read more
Crash
Incident date: Jul 3, 2022
Roof glass used is a cheap quality product (almost like an acrylic piece). I do not believe it should be on an automotive product. Cracks started developing and growing rapidly all over. Initial point of crack could have been after I installed a bike rack with elbow resting on glass. Was using a ladder for standing next to vehicle. Did not notice the crack immediately but it started on that side a... Read more