2019 KIA FORTE — Complaint #2171655
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about EXTERIOR LIGHTING:BRAKE LIGHTS filed January 30, 2026
NHTSA complaint #2171655 (ODI reference 11714519) concerns a 2019 KIA FORTE and was filed on January 30, 2026. The owner reports the failure occurred on December 1, 2025. The vehicle had 65,000 miles on the odometer at the time of the incident. The report was geocoded to Florida based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as exterior lighting:brake lights, 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 KIA FORTE cohort independently describe similar exterior lighting:brake lights 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 2019 KIA FORTE shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
The contact owns a 2019 Kia Forte. The contact was notified by her son that the third brake light was burned and was melting. There were no warning lights illuminated. The local dealer was contacted and suggested that a diagnostic test be performed. The vehicle was not diagnosed or repaired. The manufacturer was contacted and informed the owner that there was no warranty coverage on the vehicle for the failure and referred the owner to the local dealer for assistance. The failure mileage was approximately 65,000.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 2171655 |
| ODI Number | 11714519 |
| Date Filed | January 30, 2026 |
| Failure Date | December 1, 2025 |
| VIN | 3KPF24AD7KE |
Similar EXTERIOR LIGHTING:BRAKE LIGHTS Complaints for 2019 KIA FORTE
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.