2014 FORD EXPLORER — Complaint #1909326
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about STEERING:COLUMN filed July 12, 2023
NHTSA complaint #1909326 (ODI reference 11531892) concerns a 2014 FORD EXPLORER and was filed on July 12, 2023. The owner reports the failure occurred on July 7, 2023. The vehicle had 118,000 miles on the odometer at the time of the incident. The report was geocoded to Connecticut based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as steering:column, 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 EXPLORER cohort independently describe similar steering:column 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 2014 FORD EXPLORER shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
The contact owns a 2014 Ford Explorer. The contact stated that while driving at an undisclosed speed, the steering wheel seized. The contact was able to safely stop the vehicle. The vehicle was towed to the dealer and diagnosed as having a fractured steering column rack that needed to be replaced. The vehicle was not repaired. The manufacturer was not made aware of the failure. The failure mileage was approximately 118,000.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 1909326 |
| ODI Number | 11531892 |
| Date Filed | July 12, 2023 |
| Failure Date | July 7, 2023 |
| VIN | 1FM5K8GT3EG |
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.