Cruise control failure on the 2000 Mercury Sable
2 crashes 2 injuries 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.
Only 5 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 9 reports of cruise control failure on the 2000 Mercury Sable, 5 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 16th most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 81,000 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 2 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 10 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2008, at a median of 35,000 miles, and latest on the 2001 at 120,000 miles.
By volume the 2001 carries the most reports, with 17; the 2000 has 9. 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.
While driving and without warning the electrical system failed. *nlm on several occasions, the brake lights remained on and/or came on by themselves after the engine was cut off. Defective brake light switch assembly had to be replaced. Cruise control would not deactivate at 76 MPH. *tt *jb
While driving and without warning the electrical system failed. *nlm on several occasions, the brake lights remained on and/or came on by themselves after the engine was cut off. Defective brake light switch assembly had to be replaced. Cruise control would not deactivate at 76 MPH. *tt *jb
Drove the car away from the dealer and it was running fine. Stopped and got gas. Then left gas station and proceeded onto the capital beltway. After a couple miles the car began accelerating on its own. The only way I could get the car stopped was to put it in neutral. The engine continued at 4000 rpms. The car was then shut off after getting it stopped on the side of the road. I found that the problem was the cruise control cable had backed out of the socket approximately a half inch and wedged over to one side holding the accelerator linkage open at the 4000 RPM level. Neither myself or my mechanic have no idea why this happened and especially while driving at highway speed. The cable was pushed back over from the side and it popped back into place. I can manually pull the cable back out and there is no locking device to keep it from coming out again. I have attempted to find a new replacement cable and have not been successful. I will probably have to disconnect the cruise control for peace of mind to operate this car. This car was purchased for my son to use at college. He has practically no driving experience and I hate to…
Also reported on the 2000 Mercury Sable
Strut, shock or spring failure
Other suspension problem
Other speed control problem
Other lighting problem
Other brake problem
Tail light, brake light or signal failure
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 9 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 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 cruise control failure happen on the 2000 Mercury Sable?
Across 5 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 80,000 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 2000 Mercury Sable?
9 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