Loss of braking on the 2010 Honda Civic
2 crashes 1 injury 3 of the 4 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.
When loss of braking gets reported
There are 4 reports of loss of braking on the 2010 Honda Civic, 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 21st most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 30,583 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, 2 a crash and 1 an injury 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 $400–$3,000 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 16 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2004, at a median of 5,000 miles, and latest on the 2006 at 145,000 miles.
By volume the 2016 carries the most reports, with 16; the 2010 has 4. 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.
I heard a squealing metal on metal noise on my honda civic, and so took it to the dealer to get it serviced - the mechanic who helped me told me it would probably be under warranty. They discovered the front brakes needed replacing --- at 19,800 miles. Honda refuses to cover them because they are under the "wear and tear" clause of the warranty --- but the brakes failed at 19,800 miles. Unacceptable. When I contacted honda about the problem, they were cold hearted, the operator was clearly in india and didn't understand the severity of the issue - I will never own a honda again. *tr
I leased our brand new 2010 honda civic on 05/31/2010. Primarily I used the vehicle to commute from/to work. I am a very responsible driver and took a good care of the vehicle changing oil regularly, check liquids, etc. While driving on a highway on a sunny dry day on 07/28/2011 in the left lane with average speed 40 MPH, the traffic ahead of me slowed down and I applied brakes and the brakes failed (did not work). I heard a metal sound and pushed a pedal stronger. I think the vehicle probably did not slow at all. I turned left to a shoulder in attempt to stop a vehicle and avoid a direct collision with a vehicle in front of me. I believe I could get much worse injuries if I had not done this turn. Driving in a shoulder I pushed the brake pedal as hard as I could and tried to straighten my car's trajectory and stop it in a shoulder, but my car fishtailed out of control, consistently deviating to the left where concrete highway divider was and did not stop. Very loud noise was coming out of the front of the vehicle all the time since I applied brakes, which prove that the brakes failed. I constantly tried to straighten it until my…
As a precaution, had brakes inspected 6 months ago when car had approximately 50,000 miles on odometer. Expecting some pad wear at this mileage but there was no indication of a problem. My very trusted mechanic saw no problems with the pads and sent me on my way. On next oil change 6 months later, same mechanic says that my pads have completely worn out and caused damage to the rotors - a $650 repair on both front and rear brakes. The most troubling thing about all of this is that there was absolutely no "cricketing" of the brake pads at any time! And no other typical break wear function issues. Nothing to indicate a problem with my brakes and no way for me to know, aside from a sudden catastrophic brake failure in the future. This problem is all over the internet and why the NHTSA is allowing honda to ignore this issue is completely beyond comprehension. *tr
Also reported on the 2010 Honda Civic
Other brake problem
Other visibility problem
Airbag inflator rupture
Other body or interior problem
Other engine problem
Premature brake pad or rotor wear
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 4 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 4 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 loss of braking happen on the 2010 Honda Civic?
Across 4 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 30,000 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 loss of braking on the 2010 Honda Civic?
4 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.1 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