State profile
New York vehicle complaints
53,111 NHTSA complaints filed by New York drivers across 50 vehicle models — the models your neighbors flag most.
- Complaints
- 53,111
- Crashes
- 3,410
- Models
- 50
New York drivers have submitted 53,111 safety complaints to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration across 50 distinct vehicle models. Those filings include 3,410 crash reports , 1,108 fire incidents , and 170 reported fatalities — every one of those events self-reported by the vehicle owner through NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigation intake form.
FORD carries the highest cumulative complaint volume in New York with 11,915 filings, a concentration that typically reflects both registered-vehicle share and component-specific defect clusters already tracked in federal investigations. The single most-complained vehicle in New York right now is the JEEP GRAND CHEROKEE (2,793 complaints, model years 1989–2025). Concentration is a useful first lens, but a high-volume make in one state usually signals that the brand is popular there — not necessarily more defective. The crash, fire, and fatality counters in the table below isolate the filings that rose to a serious safety event.
State-level NHTSA data is geocoded from the owner's self-reported ZIP, so climate, road salt exposure, tow-load patterns, and emissions-testing regimes in New York all shape which defects surface here versus elsewhere. Use this page to triage which models your neighbors flag most often, then drill into each model's component breakdown and recall history on its detail page. Filings stay public for the life of the database, which means you can track a given nameplate's complaint curve against New York's fleet turnover over time — the same dataset federal regulators rely on when they open Preliminary Evaluations.
Severe outcomes reported in New York
Most-complained vehicles in New York
Ranked by NHTSA complaints filed by in-state owners
- JEEP GRAND CHEROKEE
JEEP GRAND CHEROKEE
2,793 complaints
- FORD EXPLORER
FORD EXPLORER
2,321 complaints
- HONDA ACCORD
HONDA ACCORD
2,109 complaints
- FORD TAURUS
FORD TAURUS
2,057 complaints
- FORD WINDSTAR
FORD WINDSTAR
1,614 complaints
- FORD ESCAPE
FORD ESCAPE
1,573 complaints
- TOYOTA CAMRY
TOYOTA CAMRY
1,558 complaints
- HONDA CR-V
HONDA CR-V
1,541 complaints
- CHEVROLET MALIBU
CHEVROLET MALIBU
1,535 complaints
- FORD F-150
FORD F-150
1,497 complaints
What this shows The JEEP GRAND CHEROKEE draws the most NHTSA complaints from New York drivers. State-level volume reflects how common a model is locally as much as its defect rate.
Full ranking: top 50 most-complained vehicles in New York
Most-Complained New York Vehicles
Sources: NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) complaints database, with fatality-linked filings cross-checked against NHTSA FARS and crash-test ratings drawn from NHTSA NCAP. State is self-reported by the vehicle owner.
How New York compares to the national picture
State-level complaint counts in the NHTSA database are heavily shaped by population, registered-vehicle density, and reporting culture. Larger states like California, Texas, and Florida sit at the top of the ranked list almost regardless of model mix, because the absolute number of vehicles on the road there dwarfs smaller jurisdictions. To use New York's totals fairly, consider the per-capita complaint rate against the U.S. average — and check whether a specific model's share of New York complaints is significantly higher than that model's national share. When the local share is disproportionate, that's a stronger signal of a regional defect pattern (weather-related corrosion, fuel-formulation interactions, terrain-related wear) than a generic country-wide design flaw.
Other PlainCars data for New York
Beyond this state-level vehicle complaint roll-up, PlainCars surfaces national-level views you can use to triangulate a model that caught your eye:
- Most-complained models nationally
- Most-recalled models nationally
- Safest models by NHTSA NCAP
- National repair-cost CPI trends
- Browse all car models alphabetically
A note on self-reported state data
The state field on each NHTSA complaint is supplied by the consumer at the time of filing — there is no mandatory validation that the owner is filing from their state of registration, nor that the incident occurred in that state. In practice this means a complaint filed by a New York resident about a vehicle they purchased in a neighboring state is still tagged to New York; conversely, an out-of-state visitor whose vehicle developed an issue while driving through New York but who filed from their home state will not appear in this view. NHTSA does not deduplicate by VIN across years, so multi-year complaints from the same vehicle accumulate in the totals. When using this page as a starting point for buying-decision research, treat New York's ranking as directional, not absolute, and pair it with the model-level rankings linked above.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many vehicle complaints have been filed in New York?
What are the most complained-about vehicles in New York?
Where does the state vehicle complaint data come from?
Can I file a vehicle complaint for my state?
Read our methodology — how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.