ABS module or sensor failure on the 1999 Ford Taurus
5 crashes 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.
Only 6 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 abs module or sensor failure gets reported
There are 32 reports of ABS module or sensor failure on the 1999 Ford Taurus, 6 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 95,000 miles. It is the 8th most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 56,500 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 crash 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 $500–$2,400 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 8 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 1997, at a median of 15,000 miles, and latest on the 2002 at 70,000 miles.
By volume the 1999 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.
Subject vehicle is a 1999 ford taurus, manufactured in september, 1998. The mileage traveled is 111,000. I was proceeding at 20 to 25 MPH behind a logging truck. We approached a stop sign. I braked. The car continued to proceed slowly forward, but the antilock brakes engaged and the car continued to roll slowly forward. I heard a roar, and thought the engine and transmission were moving the car forward, so slipped the transmission in neutral. The RPM raced to 4000 to 4500. I shut off the engine, then re-started. The remainder of the 15 mile commute was uneventful. This is the route I have traveled to work for 14 years. It is rural. I am the original owner of the vehicle. I checked recall 98v204000. The retainer clip is in place. The throttle feels normal. I am a licensed mechanical engineer. *tr the consumer stated the accelerator cable and linkage are okay at both ends. Updated 09/12/07 *tr
While braking engine started racing at a high rate intermittently. Consumer hade to pump the brakes. This caused a minor collision. Dealership was notified, but did not resolve the problem.*ak
Also reported on the 1999 Ford Taurus
Strut, shock or spring failure
Other speed control problem
Other suspension problem
Steering rack, gear or tie rod failure
Other powertrain problem
Other engine problem
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 32 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 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 abs module or sensor failure happen on the 1999 Ford Taurus?
Across 6 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 55,000 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 abs module or sensor failure on the 1999 Ford Taurus?
32 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