The Average Complaint Grew From 156 Characters to 572. A Death Does Not Make It Longer.
How much somebody writes about a car fault turns out to have almost nothing to do with how bad the fault was. It tracks the keyboard they were sitting at.
One Toyota Complaint in Ten Involves a Crash. Across All Brands, One in Sixteen.
Some brands generate complaints about warning lights. Others generate complaints about accidents. The ratio between them is stable enough to mean something, and it is not a ranking of how safe the cars are.
73% of BMW Z4 Complaints Are About One Thing
A complaint count tells you how much trouble a model generates. The shape of those complaints tells you what kind — and for some models the answer is overwhelmingly one component.
775 Injuries Are Recorded in Complaints Mentioning Children
The back seat is where the smallest occupants sit and the least-inspected hardware lives. Complaints about it carry an injury rate that has nothing to do with how often the parts fail.
17,760 Complaints Describe the Steering Going Heavy Mid-Corner
Losing power steering does not mean losing steering. It means the effort required multiplies without warning, at whatever moment the system decides to stop helping.
1,244 Complaints Say the Seat Belt Came Undone by Itself
The seat belt is the single most effective safety device ever fitted to a car, and its buckle is a spring-loaded catch operated several thousand times a year. These are the reports of it letting go.
Chevrolet Owners File 43% of All Brake Line Complaints
A brake line is a steel tube running the length of the car, under it, through everything the road throws up. When it rots through the pedal goes to the floor without any warning at all.
3,564 Drivers Report a Wheel Leaving the Car
A wheel separating from a moving car sounds like the result of somebody forgetting to tighten the nuts. In these reports the suspension joint holding the wheel is blamed four times more often than the fasteners.
3,935 Owners Report a Sunroof That Exploded on Its Own
A roof panel that breaks with a bang while the car is doing seventy sounds like something hit it. In thousands of these reports nothing did, and the reason is in how the glass is made.
84,352 Complaints Describe an Engine Cutting Out in Traffic
An engine that stops while the car is moving takes the power steering and the brake servo with it. It is the most common serious complaint on file and the one drivers are least prepared for.
14% of Parking Brake Complaints End in a Crash
The parking brake is the system people trust without thinking and check almost never. When it fails, the failure has a property no other brake fault has: the driver is not there.
703 Seat Complaints Involved a Fire. The Seat Wasn't the Problem.
Nobody expects the seat to be a fire risk. It burns more often than the fuel system does, for a reason that has nothing to do with what the seat is made of and everything to do with what was added to it.