Other steering problem on the 2006 Hyundai Elantra
2 crashes 2 of the 3 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 3 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 other steering problem gets reported
There are 3 reports of other steering problem on the 2006 Hyundai Elantra, 3 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 17th most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 32,000 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, 2 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 $350–$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 20 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2021, at a median of 400 miles, and latest on the 2009 at 77,500 miles.
By volume the 2013 carries the most reports, with 193; the 2006 has 3. 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.
Tl*the contact owns a 2006 hyundai elantra. While driving on a dirt road at 50 MPH, the contact lost control of the wheel and the vehicle began to spin. The vehicle then rolled repeatedly for a couple hundred yards until it finally crashed into a tree. The vehicle was left at the scene of the crash. The highway patrol officer was called and the vehicle was towed to the original dealer's body shop. The insurance company stated that the vehicle will be moved to a different mechanic and she believes that it will be considered a total lost. The mechanics never mentioned the cause of failure. The current and failure mileages were 1,300.
The steering wheel is peeling, after 2 years and 54,000 miles. We bought our 2006 hyundai, in july of 2007. The peeling began at about 30,000 miles and is steadily getting worse. It makes it difficult to turn smoothly, as the part of the rubber is missing and your hands cannot grip the wheel properly. Hyundai has refused to replace the steering wheel, as they said this was caused by using chemicals such as armorall on the wheel. This is not right. They have used poor quality wheel covering material that cannot withstand every day use. Everyone uses armorall to shine up their car. Now, we are putting ourselves at personal safety risk, as the wheel cannot be gripped properly, as it is peeling away on one part. *tr
While driving on the freeway at about 55mph, the car jerked to the side by itself. I attempted to correct the jerk with the wheel, at which point I was unable to do so. It appeared that the wheel was no longer controlling the movement of the car. The car jerked again, I was once again unable to do anything about it. The wheel itself could turn freely, but the movement of the car would not respond to the movement of the wheel. The car jerked again, ultimately spinning out and crashing into the median headfirst. The car was totaled, but I was luckily uninjured except for some scrapes, bruises, and what may have been a mild concussion. The car had behaved oddly twice before: about a month before the crash, the car had jerked to the side similarly, at a somewhat lower speed (about 45 MPH). I dismissed the incident as human error, or something in the road that I hadn't seen, even though it felt very strange and unlike anything I'd experienced before. I was able to correct the jerk and forgot about it. A few days before the crash, the check engine light came on, and remained on for about 30 minutes, but then went off. During that 30…
Also reported on the 2006 Hyundai Elantra
Airbag warning light or occupant sensor fault
Other lighting problem
Tail light, brake light or signal failure
Other brake problem
Airbag failed to deploy in a crash
Cruise control failure
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 3 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 3 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 steering problem happen on the 2006 Hyundai Elantra?
Across 3 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 other steering problem on the 2006 Hyundai Elantra?
3 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 15 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