Cruise control failure on the 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee
2 crashes 1 injury 3 of the 6 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 cruise control failure gets reported
There are 6 reports of cruise control failure on the 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee, 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 72,000 miles. It is the 39th most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 89,000 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 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 $200–$1,400 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 22 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2020, at a median of 1,800 miles, and latest on the 1998 at 140,000 miles.
By volume the 2014 carries the most reports, with 44; the 2002 has 6. 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.
Cruise control unit malfunctions, cruise control accelerates on its own when activating the resume feature on the steering wheel control will not resume to preset speed and accelerates, activating brake pedal disengagement switch only temporarily works it reaccelerates on its own. *nm
I was approaching a stop sign traveling about 30mph in my 2002 jeep grand cherokee. When I took my foot off the accelerator, the engine continued to accelerate. I applied the brake but could not stop the car. The harder I tried to stop the car, the engine ran harder. It was like the cruise control was on and trying to maintain the 30mph speed. The cruise was not on. I ended up inside an office building that thankfully was not occupied at the time. The car was totaled and I was injured. *tr
On march 8, 2016, while driving northbound on interstate 49 in harrisonville, mo, the engine speed raced when taken off cruise control. The jeep stayed at highway speed -- above 60mph -- and even pressing the brakes did not slow down the jeep. The only way I was able to get the jeep under control was to turn off the entire engine ignition. Only by exerting effort to overcome and compensate for the loss of power steering and power brakes was I able to coast to a safe stop off the highway. The tow operator who responded attempted to start the engine but found the same result ' runaway engine revs. The jeep was towed to dealer service department that evening. The next morning, service advisor investigated and determined that the throttle pedal was stuck down to the floor. He loosened it by manipulation. The throttle butterfly valve was found to be stuck in the open position by a shredded piece of rubber that flaked off the resonator body intake connector. Service department performed: 'rubber from intake seal stuck throttle body. Removed debris'. The technician showed me the piece of shredded rubber and gave it to me. I kept it, and…
Also reported on the 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee
Other visibility problem
Premature brake pad or rotor wear
Radiator or coolant leak
Other body or interior problem
Blower motor or climate control failure
Other brake problem
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 6 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 6 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 cruise control failure happen on the 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee?
Across 3 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 90,000 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 cruise control failure on the 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee?
6 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.0 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