3,443 riders reported their Harley-Davidson to the government.

Every light here is one safety complaint filed with NHTSA, the US vehicle-safety regulator, since 1995. Scroll, and they'll show you what fails, and what it costs.

Scroll

Most failed out on the road

54% describe a failure while the bike was moving. Another 36% found a defect at rest or in the shop.

Injury Crash Fire Failed while riding Other defect. One dot per complaint, filed under its most serious outcome.

One in ten ended badly

361 complaints report a crash, a fire or an injury. Together they count 283 people hurt and 25 killed.

These are complaints, not a random sample: people file when something has gone wrong, and NHTSA does not verify them. Read them as patterns, not failure rates.

I went to pass a car and while in the other lane passing I lost all throttle.
Failed while riding · FLHX · NY · 2013

It's the brakes

Each cluster is a component. Further right means more complaints name it. Higher means those complaints more often end in a crash, fire or injury.

Electrical faults are the most common, but sit low. Brakes come up almost as often, and 16% of brake complaints ended in a crash, fire or injury, against 9% of the rest.

The most serious outcomes sit at each cluster's core. A complaint naming several components is drawn once, in its rarest one, so cluster size is not the component's share.

Rare, but brutal

Wheels & tires and steering & suspension each come up in about 1 in 10 complaints. When they do, more than 1 in 10 report an injury, against 7% overall.

Handlebars went violently right and left. Could not stop them from moving back and forth.
Injury · Touring · OH · 2005
Speed wobble at highway speed. Blowouts and wobbles are rare in this file, but they rarely end well.

Same badge. Very different bikes.

Every cluster is a model family, its most serious complaints at the centre. The bigger the red core, the worse it went.

Trikes: 24% crash, fire or injury, and 1 in 5 report someone hurt. Pan America: 6%.

Touring bikes file half of all complaints, but Touring is also Harley's biggest line. Without sales figures, compare shares, not counts.

Riding season shows

Every cluster is a state. Florida riders filed 362 complaints, as many as California (366) with about half the population.

State is where the complainant lives, not where the bike failed.

Complaints peaked a decade ago

About 200 a year arrived from 2014 to 2018. From 2020 to 2024 it was closer to 60. Then 2025 picked up again.

Years are the date NHTSA received the complaint. 2026 runs to October 11.

I am lucky to be alive, someone else may not be so fortunate.
Injury · FLHTCU · OH · 2008
The throttle opened on its own in a curve. The lights still on are the complaints that ended in a crash, fire or injury.

Now find what's failing

Filter by model family, state, year and component. Every number, chart and complaint below updates as you go.

It's the brakes.

Find what's failing

Pick a model family, a state, a year range or a component. Click any dot, bar, state or family to filter by it.

COMPLAINTS 3,443 FAMILIES 9 YEARS 1995–2026 CRASH, FIRE OR INJURY 10.5% SOURCE NHTSA complaints file

Model family

State

From

Component

Which components do the most harm?

Share of complaints naming a component, against how much more often those complaints involve a crash, fire or injury than complaints that don't. Curves mark equal added harm.

Table view

How often it comes up

% of complaints in the current selection. Click to filter.

Where complaints come from

Circle size = complaints from that state. Colour = share ending in a crash, fire or injury, compared with the whole US.

Which families are real outliers?

% ending in a crash, fire or injury against complaint count.

Table view

Severity mix by year

Share of complaints at each outcome, by year received. Years outside your range are faded.

Failures that travel together

Of complaints naming the row component, % that also name the column component.

What riders say

Outcome

Sort

How this was built

Data and cleaning

Components

How to read the numbers

Outcome is the most serious thing a complaint reports: injury or death (people hurt, killed or needing medical care), then crash, then fire, then a failure while riding (a speed was given or the text says the bike was moving), then any other defect.
Added harm = share of complaints naming a component that report a crash, fire or injury, minus the same share for complaints that don't. It shows association, not cause: one crash report may name several parts.
Drag = share × added harm, in percentage points. The overall crash, fire or injury rate would be this much lower if complaints naming the component looked like the rest.
Funnel limits use Spiegelhalter's random-effects adjustment, so a family is flagged only if it stands out beyond the normal spread between families.
In the story, each complaint is one dot. A complaint naming several components is drawn once, in its rarest one; the dashboard counts it under every component it names.
Model families need 30 matching complaints to be plotted; states need 15 to be coloured. "Unspecified" (no usable model given) and "Parts & gear" count toward totals only.

Limits of this data

Complaints are self-reported and not verified by NHTSA. Some are written by NHTSA call-centre staff ("The contact stated…").
There are no sales or registration figures here, so counts mostly reflect how many bikes of a kind are on the road. Compare shares between families and states, not raw counts.
Most owners who have a problem never file a complaint, and those who do skew toward serious or unresolved problems.
Components are chosen by the person filing. Some pick several, some pick "Unknown or other".
NHTSA rewrote parts of this file in 2021 (makes, models and components can change over time), so a future download may differ slightly.