NHTSA complaint #319459 (ODI reference 562840) concerns a 1996 WESTERN STAR 496 and was filed on October 24, 2001. The owner reports the failure occurred on April 26, 2000. The report was geocoded to Alabama based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as suspension:front:springs:leaf spring assembly:hanger,bracket, 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: 1. A complaint that flags a crash, fire, or fatality is escalated on NHTSA's internal review queue and factors more heavily into any Preliminary Evaluation decision on this make and model. 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 WESTERN STAR 496 cohort independently describe similar suspension:front:springs:leaf spring assembly:hanger,bracket 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 1996 WESTERN STAR 496 shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.