Other steering problem on the 2009 Acura TL
2 crashes 2 of the 2 reports for this failure mention a crash, a fire, an injury or a death. Those are the owner's words on the complaint form, not a verified finding, and one report can mention more than one.
Only 2 reports for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.
When other steering problem gets reported
There are 2 reports of other steering problem on the 2009 Acura TL, 2 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 95,000 miles. It is the 9th most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 10,050 miles | — | — |
Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.
What a percentile can and cannot tell you here
These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.
What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.
Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.
What happens, and what it costs
Of these reports, 2 a crash is mentioned. Owners write their own complaints and the agency does not verify them, so read this as what the reports say happened rather than as a confirmed count.
Putting it right typically runs $350–$2,400 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.
The same failure on other years
The same failure is reported on 9 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2012, at a median of 60,000 miles, and latest on the 1999 at 170,000 miles.
By volume the 2013 carries the most reports, with 23; the 2009 has 0. A mode that appears across most years of a model is usually a design choice rather than a bad batch.
If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.
Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens
What owners wrote
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.
While driving my 2009 acura tl with 10,000 miles on it the steering wheel locked up. Before I could stop the car I sideswiped a guardrail causing minor cosmetic damage. The car was towed to devan acura in norwalk ct. They could not figure out what was wrong so the engineers from honda were called. They disassembled the steering system part by part. The parts were sent out to california to the honda engineers. After "careful inspection" they could not find anything wrong with the parts. They are saying the steering was damaged as a result of the accident. That is exactly the opposite of what actually happened!! They are trying to cover up a serious safety issue! I asked them to replace the parts and to pay for the damage to the car but they refused. Instead they gave me a bill for $3500.00 american honda corporation is not standing behind their product and letting the customers down. I suggest thinking twice about buying a honda or acura because this is the way you will be treated if you have a problem! So much for the safety of their customers. *tr
While driving my new 2009 acura tl the steering wheel locked up. I was driving in the snow in ct at about 6:00 pm on feb 17th. I was traveling down a hill in my hometown that I have driven on literally thousands of times. I know the hill is fairly steep so I was going very slow (about 10 MPH) at the bottom of the hill the road curves to the left. As I approached the turn my steering wheel locked in place and I slid into the guardrail doing only minor cosmetic damage to the right from bumper and fender. The car had to be towed from the scene because the steering wheel was still locked solid. The acura dealer in norwalk ct has had the car on a lift for almost 2 weeks and still does not know why that happened. Needles to say I don't want the car back! *tr
Also reported on the 2009 Acura TL
Airbag inflator rupture
Other body or interior problem
Other visibility problem
Torque converter failure
Excessive oil consumption
Other powertrain problem
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 2 reports is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.
Complaints are voluntary, so 2 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.
Questions this page answers
At what mileage does other steering problem happen on the 2009 Acura TL?
Across 2 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 10,000 miles. A quarter were filed before — and a quarter after —. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is other steering problem on the 2009 Acura TL?
2 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.1 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.
What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars
Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed