Parking brake failure on the 2015 Chrysler 200
9 crashes 1 fire 10 of the 103 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 parking brake failure gets reported
Owners of the 2015 Chrysler 200 report parking brake failure at a median of 37,500 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 15,000 miles and a quarter after 75,000 miles, from 84 reports that carried an odometer reading.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 88,000 miles. It is the 7th most-reported problem on this model year.
The mileage distribution
The reported range runs from 7,500 miles at the tenth percentile to 97,500 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 91,045 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.
46% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7,000 miles | 14,875 miles | 37,000 miles | 74,429 miles | 98,045 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, 9 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–$1,300 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 2017, at a median of 10,000 miles, and latest on the 2013 at 75,000 miles.
By volume the 2015 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.
At about 3,000 miles, whenever I would put the transmission into park, the car would roll backwards or forwards. This happened consistently until I took it to the dealer for repair at 9,300 miles. The only way to keep it from dangerously rolling was to always have the emergency brake on. When I took it to the dealer, two service writers verified the problem by rolling the car when it was in neutral, but the mechanic said they said they couldn't replicate the problem and said the car was fine. As I drove it away, while still on the dealer lot, I parked (placing the car in park, of course) and got out of the car to ask the service writer one additional question. As I walked away, the car rolled forward about 25 feet and crashed into a new chrysler can on the dealer lot ' causing damage to my car and the new dealer car. My experience fits exactly with the following chrysler recall from april of this year: april 2014 -- chrysler group llc (chrysler) is recalling certain model year 2014 ram 1500 4x4 vehicles manufactured january 24, 2014, through february 5, 2014. In the affected vehicles, the transmission case may have been improperly…
I was driving on the interstate in my brand new chrysler 200 (barely 6,000 miles on it) around 6:00 am, going about 78 MPH, when suddenly the parking brake appeared to engage, the radio went off while warning beeps were going non stop, and every warning on the dash was lit up, the car would not accelerate, and seemed to think it was in park while it was actually in drive. It still would not drive (was acting as though brakes were on when they were not) when the tow truck came 2 hours later and the driver was trying to get it onto the bed. As I was on the interstate when my car went into a swift and sudden deceleration I was almost seriously injured and, potentially, could have injured others. I was lucky it was so early in the morning and no one was hurt. I have not yet heard from the dealership as this only happened this morning, but I am terrified to ever drive that car again. I believe this should be looked into before anyone is injured or killed due to whatever caused this malfunction. *tr
I was on a slight hill (approx 10-15 degrees) stopped the car and put it into park, pressed the engine start button to shut off the engine and opened the door to exit. As I lifted my weight out of the car, it began to roll backwards, my foot slipped under the car but I was able to hit the breaks with my other foot. Thinking it was something I did wrong, I pulled the car back up and repeated the same steps and it did the same thing again (this time with out my foot). I was then thinking, this is a brand new 31k+ car - it cant be doing this so I repeated a third time and it happened again. I called my dealer who instructed me to set the emergency brake on park selection on my radio and to bring the car in immediately! Its now in the dealers shop as they are getting the hem and haw from chrysler on what to do. I want this fixed asap as I am lucky the car did not run over me and crash into the cars behind me. *tr
Also reported on the 2015 Chrysler 200
Other electrical problem
Other powertrain problem
Other engine problem
Airbag warning light or occupant sensor fault
No-start or intermittent start failure
Stalling while driving
How far this goes
Complaints are voluntary, so 103 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 parking brake failure happen on the 2015 Chrysler 200?
Across 84 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 37,500 miles. A quarter were filed before 15,000 miles and a quarter after 75,000 miles. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is parking brake failure on the 2015 Chrysler 200?
103 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 1.3 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