Every fault on file.
Owners have filed 1,569,818 complaints about their vehicles with federal safety regulators, and manufacturers have opened 21,880 recalls. Look up any car and read the record.
72,880 model years · source: NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation
Filed this week
Verbatim from the recordAirbag and seat belt warning lights won't turn off one each on instrument cluster RED, and one ORANGEYELLOW center of dash next to hazard lights button
2013 Nissan Altima · Air Bags · Sep 17, 2026
The steering rack limiter on the passenger side dislodged itself and got caught on the rack and pinion teeth causing my wheel to get stuck
2013 Ford Explorer · Steering · Sep 17, 2026
The water pump on these explorers are internal and if not caught by a professional in time, the water pump will fail and cause catastrophic engine failure
2013 Ford Explorer · Engine · Sep 17, 2026
Complaints are unverified accounts submitted by vehicle owners and published by NHTSA. Text is reproduced as filed.
Stop driving these
All 873 →A do-not-drive advisory is the most serious warning a recall carries. It means the defect can hurt someone before the repair happens.
| Vehicle | Recalls | Complaints | Most reported failure |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 Ford Fusion | 13 | 5,127 | Steering |
| 2011 Ford Fusion | 9 | 2,785 | Steering |
| 2013 Ford Escape | 18 | 2,749 | Engine |
| 2014 Ford Focus | 12 | 2,601 | Power Train |
| 2012 Ford Fusion | 6 | 2,514 | Steering |
Where failures turn serious
Full ranking →Ranked by what the complaints describe — fires, crashes and injuries — rather than by how many were filed.
| Vehicle | Complaints | Fires | Crashes | Deaths | Assessment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1997 Ford F-150 | 2,758 | 262 | 165 | 14 | Fatalities reported |
| 2000 Ford F-150 | 1,074 | 343 | 81 | 1 | Fatalities reported |
| 1996 Ford Explorer | 1,450 | 37 | 197 | 51 | Fatalities reported |
| 2000 Ford Focus | 3,686 | 118 | 248 | 9 | Fatalities reported |
| 2001 Ford F-150 | 1,236 | 248 | 91 | 7 | Fatalities reported |
| 1997 Ford Explorer | 1,731 | 53 | 155 | 34 | Fatalities reported |
| 1998 Ford Explorer | 1,959 | 102 | 181 | 16 | Fatalities reported |
| 2011 Hyundai Sonata | 3,376 | 112 | 116 | 3 | Fatalities reported |
By manufacturer
All 1,867 →Why this site exists
Ask the internet whether a car is reliable and you get articles calling a transmission "notorious" with nothing behind the word, or a forum thread with four owners in it. The actual evidence is public: NHTSA publishes every complaint an owner files and every recall a manufacturer opens. It just sits in gigabyte-sized text files with no column headers.
We parse those files and show what they contain — how many people reported the same failure, at what mileage it hit them, whether anyone was hurt, and what the manufacturer did about it.