2012 KIA OPTIMA — Complaint #2174344
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about AIR BAGS:FRONTAL:DRIVER CLOCKSPRING/SPIRAL CASSETTE filed February 6, 2026
NHTSA complaint #2174344 (ODI reference 11716303) concerns a 2012 KIA OPTIMA and was filed on February 6, 2026. The owner reports the failure occurred on June 6, 2017. The vehicle had 60,000 miles on the odometer at the time of the incident. The report was geocoded to Alabama based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as air bags:frontal:driver clockspring/spiral cassette, 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 OPTIMA cohort independently describe similar air bags:frontal:driver clockspring/spiral cassette 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 KIA OPTIMA shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
The contact owns a 2012 Kia Optima. The contact stated that while driving at an undisclosed speed, the buttons on the steering wheel became inoperative. No warning lights were illuminated. The vehicle was taken to a dealer, where it was diagnosed, and it was determined that the clock spring assembly needed to be replaced. The vehicle was repaired; however, the failure persisted. A dealer was contacted and made the contact aware of an unknown recall, the VIN was not included. The manufacturer was notified of the failure and referred the contact to the NHTSA Hotline for assistance. The failure mileage was approximately 60,000.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 2174344 |
| ODI Number | 11716303 |
| Date Filed | February 6, 2026 |
| Failure Date | June 6, 2017 |
| VIN | 5XXGN4A7XCG |
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.