ABS module or sensor failure on the 2008 Nissan Versa
1 crash 3 fires 1 injury 5 of the 5 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 abs module or sensor failure gets reported
There are 5 reports of ABS module or sensor failure on the 2008 Nissan Versa, 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 95,000 miles. It is the 18th most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 51,000 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, 1 a crash, 3 a fire 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 $500–$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 3 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2017, at a median of 35,000 miles, and latest on the 2015 at 60,000 miles.
By volume the 2015 carries the most reports, with 12; the 2008 has 5. 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 was driving a 2008 nissan versa hatchback [xxx] at 50mph in a 50mph zone in the left lane of a two-lane westbound street at 5:03pm on a day in september, 2009 when a car in front of me came to a complete stop in order to make a left hand turn (where there was no turn pocket). I did not notice that the vehicle was stationary until it was too late - I hit the brakes as hard as I could. The vehicle was equipped with anti-lock brakes, but I immediately went into a very straight, wheels-locked skid, decelerating to a speed of approximately 20mph at the moment of impact. The two occupants of the vehicle I hit were injured, at least one of them was hospitalized. My car was totaled since the repair estimate came in at the same amount as the loan payoff amount. The anti-lock brakes had worked well in two emergency stops earlier in the year. The accident left a 30+ foot long set of skid marks at the accident scene. Information redacted pursuant to the freedom of information act (foia), 5 u.s.c. 552(b)(6). *tr
I was driving down the highway, when I saw sparks fly on the left hand side of road beside my car, the ABS light and another light came on the dashboard and immediately went away when I braked and pulled off highway. I checked tires and everything appeared okay. Drove approximately 10 more miles, heard a loud pop under the hood, car and lights shut down completely. Pulled off the highway, opened hood and battery was on fire. Vehicle has original battery and mileage around 51,000. Called fire department to extinguish fire and they said something like that shouldn't have occurred on a vehicle that was pretty new. *tr
I was driving down the highway, when I saw sparks fly on the left hand side of road beside my car, the ABS light and another light came on the dashboard and immediately went away when I braked and pulled off highway. I checked tires and everything appeared okay. Drove approximately 10 more miles, heard a loud pop under the hood, car and lights shut down completely. Pulled off the highway, opened hood and battery was on fire. Vehicle has original battery and mileage around 51,000. Called fire department to extinguish fire and they said something like that shouldn't have occurred on a vehicle that was pretty new. *tr
Also reported on the 2008 Nissan Versa
Airbag inflator rupture
Strut, shock or spring failure
Other suspension problem
Fuel pump failure
Other wheel or tire problem
Other engine problem
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 5 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 5 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 abs module or sensor failure happen on the 2008 Nissan Versa?
Across 4 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 50,000 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 abs module or sensor failure on the 2008 Nissan Versa?
5 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