Are these complaints verified by NHTSA?

No. They are unverified reports filed by vehicle owners describing problems they experienced. NHTSA collects them to spot trends that may justify an investigation or recall, but an individual complaint is one person's account rather than a confirmed defect.

Yes. It uses the public NHTSA complaints API, which has open CORS and requires no API key or account. The request goes directly from your browser to the U.S. government service.

How should I read a high complaint count?

A component with many complaints is a useful warning sign, especially for a used purchase, but raw counts favour high-volume models. Read the summaries for severity, and cross-reference recalls and technical service bulletins before drawing conclusions.

Why do I need the exact make and model?

The API matches on the make and model strings NHTSA uses, so a near-miss like Chevy instead of Chevrolet, or a trim name instead of the base model, can return nothing. Use the manufacturer's full name and the base model name for the most complete results.

What do the crash and fire flags mean?

Each complaint records whether the incident involved a crash or a fire and whether anyone was injured or killed. The tool highlights those flags so the most serious reports stand out from routine quality complaints.

NHTSA Complaints Lookup

NHTSA collects consumer complaints to surface emerging vehicle problems. This tool queries that database for any year, make, and model, lists every complaint, and groups them by component so a pattern jumps out — invaluable when shopping for a used car or diagnosing a recurring fault.

How it works

The lookup calls one keyless NHTSA endpoint and processes the results in the browser:

complaintsByVehicle?make=&model=&modelYear=  -> array of complaints

For each complaint the service returns the affected components, a free-text summary, the crash and fire flags, any injuries or deaths, and the filing date. The tool tallies complaints per component into a summary table and then lists the individual reports, highlighting any that involved a crash, fire, injury, or fatality.

Notes and tips

Complaints are owner-submitted and unverified, so treat them as signals rather than proof. Higher-volume models naturally accumulate more reports, which means raw counts should be read alongside how common the vehicle is. Use the exact manufacturer name and base model name — Chevrolet rather than Chevy — to avoid empty results, and pair this with the recall and safety-ratings lookups for a fuller picture of a vehicle’s track record.