AtWhatMileage
Adas · 15 owner reports

Other speed control problem on the 2000 Buick Lesabre

3 crashes 1 fire 4 of the 15 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.

Reports of this failure 15
With an odometer reading 4
Reports per 1,000 built 0.2 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 25%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 4
Typical repair $250–$2,000
What it means when it happens Critical
Rank among this year's problems 12th

When other speed control problem gets reported

There are 15 reports of other speed control problem on the 2000 Buick Lesabre, 4 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 78,000 miles. It is the 12th most-reported problem on this model year.

The whole distribution

Percentiles of the 4 odometer readings owners gave.
10th25thMedian 75th90th
— — 111,000 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 and 1 a fire 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.

Putting it right typically runs $250–$2,000 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.

This mode is classified as critical, which means a failure can leave the car unable to stop, steer, or stay out of the way of traffic. It is weighted accordingly in the risk score.

The same failure on other years

The same failure is reported on 9 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 1996, at a median of 20,000 miles, and latest on the 2003 at 140,000 miles.

By volume the 2000 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.

What owners wrote

Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.

I placed the shift lever in reverse and depressed the accelerator pedal. The car accelerated rapidly. I depressed the brake pedal very hard and held it down. The car alternately stopped, accelerated, stopped, accelerated etc 3 or 4 times before coming to a full stop: total distance traveled - approximately 30 feet. I repeated the above procedure in forward gear and got the same result. Prior to this incident the throttle system did not appear sticky or off-normal. Post incident, the throttle appeared slightly sticky. Approximately 18 months ago I reported a sticky throttle to my buick dealer, they serviced the throttle system and the problem was solved. As stated above, the throttle did not give indication of a problem this time. *tr

66,000 miles NHTSA complaint 667638 filed 2008-04-29

Tl*the contact owns a 2000 buick lesabre. While the contact was driving approximately 55 MPH, the vehicle unexpectedly increased acceleration up to 70 MPH. The brake pedal was applied numerous times with extensive force and the vehicle continued to accelerate. The contact down shifted to a lower gear, followed by no response. The speed rate reduced between 10-15 MPH when the gears were shifted into the reverse position which allowed the vehicle to stop properly while the brakes were applied. The vehicle was towed to an independent mechanic for storage due to the safety issue pertaining to the acceleration malfunction. The vehicle was not diagnosed or repaired. The failure mileage was approximately 156,000.

156,000 miles NHTSA complaint 814701 filed 2010-09-16

Car won't accelerate. Sitting at a stop light on the highway and when the light turned green and the gas pedal was pressed, nothing happened for a few seconds. Then when it did respond we had to floor it to get it to 30 MPH. *tr

32,000 miles NHTSA complaint 825671 filed 2010-11-15

Also reported on the 2000 Buick Lesabre

Other visibility problem

185 reports median 60k

Other electrical problem

60 reports median 83k

Other engine problem

54 reports median 65k

Other body or interior problem

32 reports median 92k

Other wheel or tire problem

29 reports median 37k

How far this goes

This page is kept out of search results because 15 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 15 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 speed control problem happen on the 2000 Buick Lesabre?

Across 4 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 110,000 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 speed control problem on the 2000 Buick Lesabre?

15 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