Complaints by Component

By the US Vehicle Safety Data Editorial Team
Last updated: October 2026

Each NHTSA complaint names the component or components involved. Counting those fields across all 93,153 complaints in the tracked range gives the table below — the clearest available picture of what actually bothers owners, as opposed to what gets recalled. The final column names the model-year contributing the most complaints for that component, which is where to look for the pattern in its strongest form.

Electrical and powertrain complaints dominate owner filings, while air bags — the largest recall component — rank far lower here, because air-bag defects are usually discovered by manufacturers and regulators rather than experienced by owners first. Steering and service-brake complaints deserve the closest attention when comparing used vehicles: they are common, safety-relevant, and often expensive out of warranty.

One row deserves a footnote: the "Unknown or Other" category — 12,476 filings — is NHTSA's bucket for complaints whose component the owner could not identify or whose description does not fit the standard list. Its size is a reminder that these are owner reports, not workshop diagnoses: an owner experiences a symptom (a noise, a stall, a warning light) and names the system they believe is responsible. The signal survives the noise because patterns repeat across thousands of independent filings — when the biggest contributor for a component is a single model-year with hundreds of filings naming the same system, the pattern is real even if individual filings are imprecise.