Unclassified problem on the 1997 Dodge Dakota
19 crashes 1 fire 11 injuries 3 deaths 34 of the 36 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 7 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 36 reports of unclassified problem on the 1997 Dodge Dakota, 7 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.
It is the 62nd most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 100,000 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, 19 a crash, 1 a fire, 11 an injury and 3 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 16 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2009, at a median of 15,000 miles, and latest on the 1997 at 100,000 miles.
By volume the 2005 carries the most reports, with 83; the 1997 has 36. 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.
My husband and I were in a wreck 01/02/06 with his 97 dodge dakota slt club cab, we hit 2 deer at 50-55 MPH head on. Our airbags did not deploy. We notified chrysler about this matter. They sent out a special investigator to go over the truck to see why they did not deploy, we were advised by my husbands insurance company to be present at the time of inspection, we told this to chryslers special investigator. My husband went to the dealership the truck was to be taken to the si didn't show up my husband came home, I called the body shop that had the truck and they informed me that the si had come and looked at the truck there and then was wanting it taken to a local dealership. I told the body shop not to allow the truck to be moved without us present, they went ahead and did it anyway. Along with contact over the airbags with chrysler I was made aware of 1 recall, that we had not been notified of. Now in my research I have found 5 recalls that we were not notified of. I was injured in the accident because of the airbags not deploying, I am still having problems. We have no vehicle at all, chrysler is dragging their feet about…
Also reported on the 1997 Dodge Dakota
Control arm, ball joint or bushing failure
Other body or interior problem
Other engine problem
Other brake problem
Other suspension problem
Other fuel system problem
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 36 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 36 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 1997 Dodge Dakota?
Across 7 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 100,000 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 1997 Dodge Dakota?
36 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.3 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