Editorial policy and corrections
Whose words are on each page, what the site won't publish, and how mistakes get fixed.
Whose words you're reading
Every Diagsheet page mixes three kinds of text, and it's worth knowing which is which.
Owners' words. Quotes in italic serif type with a rule down the left are owner complaints exactly as NHTSA published them. The site only tidies the spacing. It doesn't fix spelling or trim sentences, and it doesn't hunt for the most alarming report. It takes recent complaints short enough to read in full, favors ones that give a mileage, skips ones typed entirely in capitals, and on a symptom sheet uses only reports that match that sheet's own word pattern. NHTSA removes names before it publishes a complaint, and the site never shows the partial VIN that comes with it.
NHTSA's words. Recall summaries, the risk and remedy text, and investigation summaries are NHTSA's own, shown as the agency published them.
The site's words. Headings, the one-line answers under them, the notes on each chart and the explanations on pages like this one are written for Diagsheet. Where one of those sentences states a number, the number is computed from NHTSA's files on the day the page was built.
What the site won't publish
- Repair prices that no owner quoted. The price strip only shows figures owners wrote into their complaints.
- Failure rates or reliability scores. The files don't contain sales figures, so the site can't make them honestly. Where a page does set one car beside others, it compares complaint counts and says so.
- A diagnosis of your car, or a call on whether it's safe to drive.
- Claims about what a manufacturer knew or intended. A recall page says what was recalled and when; it doesn't guess at the rest.
- Material from forums, social media, dealers or repair shops. If it isn't in NHTSA's files, it isn't in the counts.
Independence
No carmaker, dealer, parts seller or repair chain pays for anything on Diagsheet or gets a say in it. The site doesn't take sponsored placements or affiliate links. It's paid for with Google display ads. Google picks which ads run, and advertisers never see a page before it's published or have any way to change one. Ads are kept away from the parts of a page you came for. A vehicle page's first ad sits below the mileage track, and symptom and recall pages hold theirs until after the tick sheet or the recall list. The make listings and the contact page have none.
Corrections
Mistakes on a site like this come in two kinds, and they get fixed in different places.
A mistake in how the site reads the data gets fixed at the source. That covers a wrong count, a complaint in the wrong group, a model filed under the wrong name or a sentence that says more than the numbers support. The fix goes into the code or the rules that produced the error, so the next daily rebuild corrects every page that had it, including the ones nobody reported. Anything that changed a number people could have relied on goes into the log below with the date.
A mistake in NHTSA's record has to be fixed by NHTSA. If you filed a complaint and something in it is wrong, contact NHTSA directly (the contact page has the details). Once NHTSA changes its record, the change reaches this site on the next daily build.
To report either kind, use the contact page. A link to the page and one sentence on what looks wrong is plenty.
Corrections log
- The Subaru Crosstrek model page undercounted its 2014 and 2015 model years. NHTSA files many early Crosstrek complaints under "XV CROSSTREK", and the site hadn't matched that name to the Crosstrek, so the two years showed 16 and 17 complaints instead of 92 and 95. Both names now count as one model, and the page's year-by-year comparison uses the full counts.
- Some Toyota Sienna Hybrid complaints were missing. NHTSA files part of them under a code reading "REDUNDANT SIENNA"; they're genuine complaints, each with its own number. The site had been dropping them, so the 2021 Sienna Hybrid showed 43 complaints instead of 208 and the 2022 showed 20 instead of 139. Those records now count toward the Sienna Hybrid, and several other models gained a few dozen complaints each from the same fix.
- The Chrysler Pacifica Plug-In Hybrid's recall lookup fell back to a model name NHTSA doesn't use, so it could come back empty. It now looks up the base Pacifica when NHTSA has nothing under the plug-in name, and any page that shows the base model's recalls says so.
Sources
The data sources are NHTSA's complaint, recall and investigation files, described on how the numbers are made. Definitions on the glossary come from NHTSA's own pages, federal law and the Department of Transportation's Inspector General, and each one names where it's from.