2012 FORD FOCUS — Complaint #1776616
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about POWER TRAIN:AUTOMATIC TRANSMISSION:CONTROL MODULE:SOFTWARE filed November 2, 2021
NHTSA complaint #1776616 (ODI reference 11439066) concerns a 2012 FORD FOCUS and was filed on November 2, 2021. The owner reports the failure occurred on October 28, 2021. The report was geocoded to Pennsylvania based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as power train:automatic transmission:control module:software, one of NHTSA's standardized taxonomy codes used to group defect patterns across make, model, and year.
The filer flagged the following severity indicators: crash: no, fire: no, injuries: 0, fatalities: 0. No crash, fire, or fatality was associated with this report, which places it in the early-warning stream rather than the priority-review stream. Because a VIN was supplied, this complaint is tied to a specific vehicle and not just a model-year cohort.
Individual complaints are consumer-submitted and unverified by NHTSA engineers — the agency's role at this stage is to collect, index, and make them searchable. What matters for federal action is the pattern: when many owners of the same FORD FOCUS cohort independently describe similar power train:automatic transmission:control module:software failures, defect investigators have grounds to open a PE and request manufacturer data. Related filings for the same vehicle and component appear below, and the detail page for the full 2012 FORD FOCUS shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
Was driving along a curvy road when it suddenly down shifted and I had no safe place to get off the road. I continued to try and get to a safe place and then it went in to neutral and couldn't move at all. Thank goodness another car didn't come it could have killed me. It then went back into gear and I did make it to a safe place to pull over and call a tow truck. The said it needs transmission control module. By the look of all the complaints on the TCM they need a recall before someone gets killed.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 1776616 |
| ODI Number | 11439066 |
| Date Filed | November 2, 2021 |
| Failure Date | October 28, 2021 |
| VIN | 1FAHP3F22CL |
Source: NHTSA Vehicle Complaints Database. Component taxonomy and severity codes are standardized by NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation.
Read our methodology — how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.