2011 FORD ESCAPE — Complaint #2177694
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about STRUCTURE:BODY filed February 17, 2026
NHTSA complaint #2177694 (ODI reference 11718569) concerns a 2011 FORD ESCAPE and was filed on February 17, 2026. The owner reports the failure occurred on February 16, 2026. The report was geocoded to Illinois based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as structure:body, 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 ESCAPE cohort independently describe similar structure:body 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 2011 FORD ESCAPE shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
Component: Driver-side door latch and lock assembly. The driver-side door latch appears to have failed, preventing the door from opening from both the inside and outside and creating an occupant entrapment risk. The failure is fully reproducible and ongoing. The condition first occurred without any prior warning signs, messages, or symptoms and has persisted for more than a day without resolving. Although the vehicle responds to unlock commands from the key fob, keypad, and interior door controls with normal audible confirmation, the driver door frequently remains unable to open. Failure behavior includes: â¢The driver door cannot be opened from inside the vehicle, preventing occupant exit. â¢The door also cannot be opened from the outside during these events. â¢An occupant became trapped inside and had to crawl across the vehicle and exit through the passenger side. â¢The vertical lock indicator moves between locked and unlocked positions, but the latch does not release. â¢Th
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 2177694 |
| ODI Number | 11718569 |
| Date Filed | February 17, 2026 |
| Failure Date | February 16, 2026 |
| VIN | 1FMCU0E72BK |
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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.