Vehicle Complaint Tracker — NHTSA Owner Complaints

Search raw owner-submitted vehicle complaints filed with NHTSA by make, model, and model-year range. Complaints are the early-warning signal — patterns show up here months or years before NHTSA opens an investigation or a manufacturer issues an official recall.

Built for consumer advocates, class-action researchers, journalists, and used-car buyers who want to know what owners are actually reporting, not just what's already been officially recalled.

Input

{
  "make": "Honda",
  "model": "Accord",
  "yearFrom": 2018,
  "yearTo": 2022,
  "seriousOnly": false,
  "maxResults": 50
}

Field	Type	Description
make	string	Vehicle manufacturer, e.g. "Honda", "Ford", "Toyota".
model	string	Vehicle model, e.g. "Accord", "Explorer", "Camry".
yearFrom	number	Earliest model year to search (inclusive). Default 2018.
yearTo	number	Latest model year to search (inclusive). Default 2026. Range capped at 15 years.
seriousOnly	boolean	Only return complaints involving a crash, fire, injury, or death. Default false.
maxResults	number	Max complaints to return, most recently filed first. Default 50, max 200.

Output

One record per complaint:

{
  "odiNumber": 11755895,
  "manufacturer": "Honda (American Honda Motor Co.)",
  "vehicle": { "make": "HONDA", "model": "ACCORD", "year": "2020" },
  "components": "POWER TRAIN,ENGINE,FUEL/PROPULSION SYSTEM",
  "summary": "The car has a blown head gasket at 72k miles the odometer. This seems to be a major problem with 2018-2022 honda accords with the 1.5 turbo engine...",
  "crash": false,
  "fire": false,
  "numberOfInjuries": 0,
  "numberOfDeaths": 0,
  "dateOfIncident": "2026-04-02",
  "dateComplaintFiled": "2026-08-10",
  "vin": "1HGCV1F35LA"
}

vin is partial (the last 6-8 characters are redacted by NHTSA before publication). A search with no matching complaints returns no items but is still billed once for the search.

How it works

Direct calls to the official NHTSA Complaints API (api.nhtsa.gov/complaints), one request per model year in the requested range, deduplicated by ODI complaint number. No proxy, no key, no scraping — public-domain U.S. government data.

Note: these are unverified consumer-submitted reports, not confirmed defects — NHTSA publishes them as filed. Treat volume and pattern as a signal worth investigating, not proof of a defect.

Pricing note

Billed per search, not per complaint returned — one charge whether the search spans one model year or fifteen, and whether it returns 0 complaints or 200.

Related products

• Vehicle Recall Tracker — official confirmed recalls from the same NHTSA data family, the "after" to this actor's "before"