IIHS Put a Dummy in the Back Seat. 147 Cars That Scored Good Now Don't.
For years the front crash test measured the driver. When a rear dummy was added, the same cars stopped passing — and the gap says something uncomfortable about where safety engineering went.
68,482 Owners Wrote That It Happened Without Warning. Most of Them Meant the Engine.
Most faults announce themselves. A noise, a light, a smell, something that gets worse over a week. A measurable share do not, and the complaint text says which systems behave that way.
25,641 Cars Caught Fire Without Crashing. Only 1,239 Burned After a Crash.
Car fires are filed under crash safety in most people's heads. In the complaint record they are almost entirely a separate phenomenon: the overwhelming majority start with no impact of any kind.
After a Death, the Complaint Takes 467 Days. After a Fire, 179.
We have measured the reporting delay by component before. Sorting the same million records by what actually happened to the people involved reverses the expected order completely.
Tyres Fail at 60 MPH. Brakes Fail at 35.
Owners almost always remember how fast they were going. Extracted across a hundred thousand reports, those numbers turn out to describe each component's failure mode more precisely than the fault text does.
A Burning Smell Means Fire 12x More Often. Grinding Means It Less.
Symptoms are not interchangeable warnings. Sorted by what actually happened next, they split cleanly into two groups — and the group people take least seriously is the dangerous one.
A Fault on the Motorway Crashes 5% of the Time. At a Junction, 13%.
Owners describe where the fault happened, and the location turns out to predict the outcome better than the fault does. The dangerous place is not the one going fastest.
36,815 Owners Say the Same Fault Came Back After Repair
A repair either works or it does not, and the complaint database records a large number that did not. What makes these different from ordinary faults is that somebody had already been paid to solve them.
70,474 Complaints End With the Car on a Flatbed
A breakdown is not the same as a defect, and most faults never strand anyone. These are the ones that did — and the age at which they did it is younger than most people would guess.
24,701 Complaints Mention a Spouse. 875 Mention Being Pregnant.
A complaint form asks what failed. A large number of people answer by explaining who was sitting next to them, which turns out to change how the report reads and what it is useful for.
Lincoln Complaints Involve a Death Twice as Often as Toyota's. Age Explains Most of It.
A rate looks more rigorous than a count, which is exactly why it misleads more easily. Here is what happens when you divide fatal complaints by total complaints, and why the result is not a safety ranking.
One Airbag Complaint in Six Reports an Injury. For Brakes It Is One in Thirty-Four.
Which car part hurts people most depends entirely on whether you count injuries or measure the odds. One question ranks by how often a part is fitted. The other ranks by what happens when it fails.