Tail light, brake light or signal failure on the 2002 BMW 325I
5 fires 5 of the 32 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.
When tail light, brake light or signal failure gets reported
Owners of the 2002 BMW 325I report tail light, brake light or signal failure at a median of 100,000 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 60,000 miles and a quarter after 127,500 miles, from 27 reports that carried an odometer reading.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 85,000 miles. It is the 1st most-reported problem on this model year.
The mileage distribution
The reported range runs from 52,500 miles at the tenth percentile to 147,500 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 94,880 miles across the middle 80% of reports.
When the reports scatter this far, the mileage is telling you about how these cars were driven more than about the part itself.
7% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 51,400 miles | 61,000 miles | 100,000 miles | 127,000 miles | 146,280 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, 5 a fire 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 $100–$900 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 5 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2005, at a median of 55,000 miles, and latest on the 2001 at 175,000 miles.
By volume the 2002 is the worst of them, which makes this a problem of this specific year rather than of the model as a whole.
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.
Brake light ground wire has burned up and is no longer working due to a factory defect. This has also melted the plastic brake light bulb housing and burned out the brake light. This has the potential to cause fires and/or wrecks to occur. Bmw is aware of the problem but is not willing to fix the issue. Please see the link to the bmw technical service bulletin below. Http://www.bmwtis.com/tsb/bulletins/bulletin_graphic_temp/b630306g.htm. *tr
Rear tail brake light intermittently works on and off, have replaced the light and this didn't fix it. Haven't had an accident yet, but are taking it in to the dealer to be repaired asap . Saw that bmw has a service bulletin out regarding this problem. *tr started failing 2 months ago and each time I open trunk and remove bulb -it seems to work for a while then out again. *tr
Brake light failure came on in my 2002 bmw325i. I went out to look for the failed bulb, but the brake lights were all working. I noticed that the left side, rear lights were much dimmer than the right side. I went to the mechanic and he showed me a burnt wire and molten plastic connector from the rear light cluster. He said that this is a known problem with this car because bmw did not provide enough ground to the cluster and overtime the extra heat generated by the current will burn the wire and connector. At other times, he said, the connector will short the gnd pin to the pins around it and causes small fires. Bmw has a sib number 63 03 06 out for this problem and they have the guts to charge customers $400 to repair their own mistake. I think this is a serious safety violation and I believe that bmw should be held accountable by fixing all the cars out there with this known defect. Today, I saw the same thing happening to a 2008 bmw 550 at this link: http://forums.5series.net/index.php?showtopic=90746&st=0&p=1073957&#entry1073957 please investigate and keep people safe. Thank you.*tr
Also reported on the 2002 BMW 325I
Airbag inflator rupture
Other lighting problem
Other electrical problem
Window regulator or power window failure
Other body or interior problem
Other visibility problem
How far this goes
Complaints are voluntary, so 32 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 tail light, brake light or signal failure happen on the 2002 BMW 325I?
Across 27 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 100,000 miles. A quarter were filed before 60,000 miles and a quarter after 127,500 miles. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is tail light, brake light or signal failure on the 2002 BMW 325I?
32 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 1.7 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