2000 MERCEDES-BENZ ML430 — Complaint #884881
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about PARKING BRAKE:DRIVELINE:HYDRAULIC filed October 12, 2011
NHTSA complaint #884881 (ODI reference 10429573) concerns a 2000 MERCEDES-BENZ ML430 and was filed on October 12, 2011. The owner reports the failure occurred on August 13, 2011. The vehicle had 112,000 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 parking brake:driveline:hydraulic, 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 MERCEDES-BENZ ML430 cohort independently describe similar parking brake:driveline:hydraulic 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 2000 MERCEDES-BENZ ML430 shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
THIS CAR HAS ALMOST WRECKED ME OVER 6 TIMES. THE BRAKES WOULD COME ON AND STOP THE CAR AND YOU COULD NOT GO FORWARD UNTIL YOU TURNED THE ENGINE OFF AND RESTART. THIS EVEN HAPPENED ON THE INTERSTATE ONCE. EACH TIME THE BAS/ESP LIGHT WOULD COME . THE DEALER SAID IT WAS THE YAW SENSOR AND WOULD COST AROUND $1,000 TO REPLACE. THE MERCEDES DEALER ACTED LIKE THEY DIDN'T KNOW OF OTHER CARS LOCKING UP WHILE DRIVING BUT WHEN I SEARCHED THE INTERNET THERE WERE MANY STORIES OF PEOPLE EXPERIENCING THE SAME NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE ON THE INTERSTATE. HOW CAN MERCEDES GET AWAY WITH THIS DEFECT. IF A SENSOR FAILS IT SHOULD NOT LOCK THE BRAKES UP AND GET YOU WRECKED OR START A CHAIN REACTION WRECK ON THE INTERSTATE. ON THE WAY TO THE DEALER ON A TWO LANE ROAD THE BRAKES LOCKED UP AND WENT OFF THE ROAD LUCKY NO YOU WAS HURT. *KB
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 884881 |
| ODI Number | 10429573 |
| Date Filed | October 12, 2011 |
| Failure Date | August 13, 2011 |
| VIN | 4JGAB72EXYA |
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.