Unclassified problem on the 1999 Buick Lesabre
3 crashes 4 injuries 1 death 8 of the 11 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 3 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 11 reports of unclassified problem on the 1999 Buick Lesabre, 3 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.
It is the 47th most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 58,000 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, 3 a crash, 4 an injury and 1 a fatality 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 10 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2005, at a median of 20,000 miles, and latest on the 1997 at 115,000 miles.
By volume the 2002 carries the most reports, with 41; the 1999 has 11. 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.
Air bag design flaw - a life threatening design flaw. I am the original owner of a 1999 buick lesabre custom (purchased at the end of the model year). The car often spends time in the bright florida sun. Although I use a reflective windshield sun screen, the car still gets hot inside (as do most florida cars). Recently, the horn began to honk continuously. I took it into the orange buick and gmc dealer in orlando fl. The problem is that the air bag has swolen up and compressed the horn relay. The air bag is broken and needs to be replaced. This is apparently a flawed air bag design, which must also endange people with this steering wheel/air bag design, living throughout the hot southern united states. The cost to replace the poorly designed air bag (with another one having the same poor design) is over $700 (difficult for me to do since I recently lost my job, which has moved off shore to india). It seems that the buick manufacturer should be required to correct their life-threatening flawed air bag design. I hope to hear back from the d.o.t. About this life-threatening safety issue.*ak
Tl* the contact owns a 1999 buick lesabre. The contact stated that the air bags deployed inadvertently once the engine was started. The contact sustained injuries to the head and neck as a result of the failure. The vehicle was inspected by an adjuster sent by the manufacturer, who determined that the failure was caused by the floor mats, which had become saturated and corroded the air bag wiring over a time. The VIN was not available. The failure and the current mileage was 100,000. *tr
Tl* the contact owns a 1999 buick lesabre. The contact stated that the air bag deployed independently while the vehicle was parked. The contact took the vehicle to a certified mechanic who diagnosed that the air bag and air bag sensor needed to be replaced. The manufacturer was made aware of the failure and opened a case on the contact's behalf. The approximate failure mileage was 58,000. ....updated 0711/16 *bf *cn
Also reported on the 1999 Buick Lesabre
Other engine problem
Other fuel system problem
Other electrical problem
Other powertrain problem
Other suspension problem
Other body or interior problem
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 11 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 11 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 1999 Buick Lesabre?
Across 3 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 60,000 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 1999 Buick Lesabre?
11 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