Other speed control problem on the 2005 Kia Spectra
3 crashes 1 injury 4 of the 9 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.
When other speed control problem gets reported
Owners of the 2005 Kia Spectra report other speed control problem at a median of 105,000 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 80,000 miles and a quarter after 140,000 miles, from 8 reports that carried an odometer reading.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 78,000 miles. It is the 4th most-reported problem on this model year.
The mileage distribution
The reported range runs from 50,000 miles at the tenth percentile to 190,000 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 139,765 miles across the middle 80% of reports.
When the reports scatter this far, the mileage is telling you about how these cars were driven more than about the part itself.
13% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 47,826 miles | 81,968 miles | 105,000 miles | 138,374 miles | 187,591 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, 3 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 $250–$2,000 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 6 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2004, at a median of 20,000 miles, and latest on the 2005 at 105,000 miles.
By volume the 2005 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.
Dt*: the contact stated while driving 40 MPH on normal road conditions the odometer failed intermittently. And in some cases, the speedometer increased to 110 MPH while driving 60 MPH. The vehicle was been taken to the dealership four times who has been unable to duplicate the problem.*ak
I was at a complete stop when my tachometer for no explainable reason shot up over 7000 RPM's causing my vehicle to accelerate beyond the breaking point and causing me to be involved in three separate traffic accidents all within a two hour time period on the same day. Two weeks earlier, my car had done the exact same thing slowing down coming around a bend causing me to hit a cement barrier which luckily only caused minor damage to my driver side mirror and wheel well. I had the car towed to the kia dealership after the three consecutive accidents where they claimed the cause of this phenomenon was caused ?by my floor mat being in a bad position. As a result, I removed the drivers side floor mat only to have this same unexplainable acceleration happen to me again at a red light across from a very dangerous intersection approximately two weeks later. This time I had to throw the car into park to get it to stop before completely entering the intersection. Even after stopping the vehicle, the tachometer continued to race above 7000 RPM?s for approximately 2 to 3 more seconds before leveling back off. This time no accident occurred…
I was making a three point turn. I moved to the wall braking to stop to back up, when applying the brakes the car went forward speeding up and into the block wall. Still with my foot on the brakes I turned the car off. *tr
Also reported on the 2005 Kia Spectra
Control module (ECM/PCM/BCM) failure
Seat belt or retractor failure
Other body or interior problem
Instrument cluster or gauge failure
Airbag warning light or occupant sensor fault
Other electrical problem
How far this goes
Complaints are voluntary, so 9 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 speed control problem happen on the 2005 Kia Spectra?
Across 8 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 105,000 miles. A quarter were filed before 80,000 miles and a quarter after 140,000 miles. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is other speed control problem on the 2005 Kia Spectra?
9 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.6 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