Which car safety problems are drivers reporting more often right now?

How it works

Where the data comes from

Every day we download two public files from the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA): the complaints drivers file about safety problems with their vehicles, and the safety recalls manufacturers file. Complaints are reports by owners. NHTSA does not verify them one by one, so a rise in complaints shows that more people report a problem – not that a defect is confirmed.

What “rising” means

For every brand and every model we count the complaints per problem area (for example brakes or steering) received in the last four weeks and compare them with the twelve four-week periods before. A problem counts as rising when all of this holds:

• at least 5 complaints in the last four weeks for one model (10 for a whole brand),
• at least 1.5 times the usual number, and
• well outside the normal ups and downs of the past year (z-score of at least 3).

Each car is compared with its own past, not with other brands. Popular models get more complaints simply because there are more of them on the road; that alone never makes a problem “rising”.

How we match recalls

A rising problem is linked to a recall when the brand, the model and the problem area match and the model years overlap. For a whole brand we only consider recalls from the last two years. A match means a recall may cover the problem. Whether your car is included depends on its VIN – check it on nhtsa.gov/recalls.

Privacy

No cookies, no tracking, no ads, no third-party content. Personal fields in the NHTSA files (VIN, city, dealer, names) are dropped before anything is processed. See the privacy policy.