Unclassified problem on the 2009 Acura TL
2 crashes 2 injuries 4 of the 7 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 4 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 unclassified problem gets reported
There are 7 reports of unclassified problem on the 2009 Acura TL, 4 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.
It is the 13th most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 71,038 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 and 2 an injury are 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.
The same failure on other years
The same failure is reported on 15 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2012, at a median of 25,000 miles, and latest on the 2002 at 145,000 miles.
By volume the 2004 carries the most reports, with 198; the 2009 has 7. 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.
Tl* the contact owns a 2009 acura tl. The contact stated that the air bag warning light illuminated while driving. The vehicle was taken to the dealer where it was diagnosed that the driver's side air bag sensor module and the clip cover were fractured. As a result, the air bag sensor module and the clip cover were replaced; however the failure was not corrected. The contact mentioned that the air bag warning light continued to illuminate. The manufacturer was made aware of the failure. The failure mileage was 50,075.
Tl* the contact owns a 2009 acura tl. While driving approximately 5 MPH, a second vehicle t-boned the passenger side of the contact's vehicle. The air bags deployed as intended. The driver sustained severe lacerations to the scalp that required 225 stitches and 5 cracked cervicle vertebrae. Medical attention was required. The contact indicated that broken glass was not present inside the vehicle and the cause of the injuries was undetermined. A police report was filed and the vehicle was towed. The cause of the failure was not diagnosed. The vehicle was not repaired. The manufacturer was not notified. The failure mileage was 30,000.
Acura is asking me to continue to drive a hazardous and perhaps fatally flawed vehicle with regards to the airbag recall thus jeopardizing my life and the life of others. I was informed by my local dealer in the orlando, fl area that I needed to bring in the vehicle in and sign a waiver that I would not drive the vehicle until repaired but that I needed to bring someone else with me that would drive the vehicle back to my home. Therefore, acura agrees that the vehicle is dangerous enough for me not to drive but that I should have 'someone else' drive it back which would be an hour drive. Not sure if that 'someone else' should be a teenager or my wife who's life I would be jeopardizing in their eyes. Because the dealer was not agreeing to store the vehicle while it waited on parts and be responsible for the vehicle, I had to contact corporate again. This time the acura client relations representative read me what sounded like a script that advised me that I could continue to drive the car because the recall letter may have sounded harsh but the only real problems were with honda civics of much older years. I found this interesting…
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 7 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 7 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 unclassified problem happen on the 2009 Acura TL?
Across 4 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 70,000 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 unclassified problem on the 2009 Acura TL?
7 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.2 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