2001 MERCURY SABLE — Complaint #745889
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about EXTERIOR LIGHTING:TAIL LIGHTS:SWITCH filed November 27, 2009
NHTSA complaint #745889 (ODI reference 10293689) concerns a 2001 MERCURY SABLE and was filed on November 27, 2009. The owner reports the failure occurred on September 22, 2009. The vehicle had 85,000 miles on the odometer at the time of the incident. The report was geocoded to Kansas based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as exterior lighting:tail lights:switch, 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 MERCURY SABLE cohort independently describe similar exterior lighting:tail lights:switch 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 2001 MERCURY SABLE shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
2001 MERCURY SABLE VIN: (SEE OTHER PART OF COMPLAINT) I STOPPED AT A BUSINESS PUT CAR IN PARK GOT OUT. UPON RETURNING THE CAR WOULD START BUT NOT COME OUT OF PARK. I FOUND I HAD NO TAIL LIGHTS. I LATER FOUND ALSO THERE WAS NO CRUISE CONTROL. I PARKED THE CAR A COUPLE DAYS TRYING TO FIND OUT WHAT WAS WRONG WITH IT AND WHEN I GOT IN THE CAR I FOUND THE BATTERY HAD GONE DEAD. I JUST GOT DONE RESEARCHING THIS AND FOUND RECALL 01S08 AND NHTSA # 01V078000 SAYING THE RECALL WAS ON A BREAK SWITCH DUE TO GREASE COMPROMISING THE SWITCH. THE DESCRIPTION OF THE MALFUNCTION MATCHES MY PROBLEM EXACTLY! UPON CALLING THE DEALER THAT SOLD THE VEHICLE THEY SAID THEY COULDN'T FIND A RECALL OF THIS BASED ON MY VIN. FORD CUSTOMER SERVICE ALSO STATED THEY COULDN'T FIND A RECALL OF THIS BASED ON MY VIN. WELL OBVIOUSLY THE RECALL SHOULD HAVE INCLUDED MY VIN AS THE SAME THING HAS HAPPENED TO MY CAR. NOW WITH THE PROBLEM OF NOT BEING ABLE TO SHIFT THE VEHICLE PROPERLY THE TRANSMISSION IS GIVING AN
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 745889 |
| ODI Number | 10293689 |
| Date Filed | November 27, 2009 |
| Failure Date | September 22, 2009 |
| VIN | 1MEFM55S91A |
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.