Every NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation consumer complaint since 1995 where someone was killed, injured, the vehicle caught fire, or was involved in a crash — 213,093 records out of 2.2M total complaints, filtered to the highest-signal subset. Includes consumer narratives describing the defect. Pairs with nhtsa_recalls (the formal recalls already in catalog): complaint narratives often surface defects months before any recall. Top manufacturers by complaint volume: Ford (34,159 — 1,394 deaths, 12,444 fires), Chevrolet (22,103), Toyota (18,428), Dodge (14,679), Honda (11,486), Jeep (10,032).

Live API

This dataset is served via a live REST API at api.ai-analytics.org. The card you're reading exists so HuggingFace's index can route AI agents + researchers to the canonical source.

API endpoint: https://api.ai-analytics.org/api/v1/nhtsa/complaints/recent
Dataset landing page: https://api.ai-analytics.org/datasets/nhtsa-complaints
DataCatalog (JSON-LD): https://api.ai-analytics.org/.well-known/dataset.json
DCAT-US (data.gov-compatible): https://api.ai-analytics.org/data.json

Quick start

# Recent records (JSON)
curl 'https://api.ai-analytics.org/api/v1/nhtsa/complaints/recent?limit=10'

# Browse on the web
open 'https://api.ai-analytics.org/datasets/nhtsa-complaints'

MCP (Model Context Protocol)

This dataset is also accessible via MCP at https://api.ai-analytics.org/mcp — Claude, ChatGPT, and other MCP-compatible agents can call it directly.

Source

Agency: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration — Office of Defects Investigation
Primary source: https://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/downloads/
License: CC0 1.0 Universal (derived data). Underlying federal works are US public domain under 5 USC 105 / 17 USC 105.
Update cadence: Per agency (most refresh daily via Cloudflare Cron Trigger)

Keywords

NHTSA, ODI, vehicle complaint, auto defect, crash, fire, fatality, recall predictor, automotive safety, defect investigation

Citation

@misc{ai_analytics_nhtsa_complaints_2026,
  title  = {{name}},
  author = {AI Analytics},
  year   = {2026},
  url    = {https://api.ai-analytics.org/datasets/nhtsa-complaints},
  note   = {Derived from National Highway Traffic Safety Administration — Office of Defects Investigation. License: CC0 1.0.}
}

Maintained by AI Analytics. Data is CC0; please cite the upstream agency.

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NHTSA consumer complaints (high-severity: 213k records · 8,544 deaths)