Loss of braking on the 2003 Toyota Camry
12 crashes 8 injuries 20 of the 23 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 loss of braking gets reported
Owners of the 2003 Toyota Camry report loss of braking at a median of 30,000 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 15,000 miles and a quarter after 60,000 miles, from 16 reports that carried an odometer reading.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 78,000 miles. It is the 11th most-reported problem on this model year.
The mileage distribution
The reported range runs from 5,000 miles at the tenth percentile to 80,000 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 75,834 miles across the middle 80% of reports.
A spread this wide points at use rather than design. Towing, climate, service history and city mileage all move a failure like this, so the median is a weak guide to any individual car.
63% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2,666 miles | 14,361 miles | 29,750 miles | 60,276 miles | 78,500 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, 12 a crash and 8 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 $400–$3,000 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 19 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2015, at a median of 5,000 miles, and latest on the 2000 at 120,000 miles.
By volume the 2007 carries the most reports, with 35; the 2003 has 23. 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.
The vehicle experienced sudden acceleration when the gear was shifted from park to drive, and collided with seven other vehicle's. *jb consumer tried to stop the vehicle by applying the brakes however the brakes failed and the engine continued to race. *tt *jb see also odi 10025068 *dsy
I parked my 2003 camry (with under 5000 miles on it) on a steep, circular driveway on a drizzly morning. When I went to leave, creeping from a dead start, my brakes failed...or my tires didn't grip the asphalt. I don't know which. I jammed my foot on the brakes and nothing happened. I went skidding down the incline. When I reached the bottom, my car finally stopped. Fortunately there was no cross traffic, so I avoided a collision. I have photos of the extensive skid marks left by my car. *nlm
Camry 2003 brake failure. Brake pedal froze when driving and would not press down at all. Frantically, while driving between 25 MPH and 30 MPH, after approximately 1500 feet, the pedal went down after repeated attempts to get the pedal down. (I had the car towed to the dealer and they could not recreate the problem and tested the brakes. Though the brakes showed that they were functioning correctly, the problem was that the brakes failed due to the brake pedal completely freezing. I had to continually try to push the pedal down and frantically warned my children in the car that the pedal was stuck and wouldn't budge, that I lost the brakes. Luckily there wasn't anyone else on the road because it was at least 1500 feet before the pedal eventually went down, with tight hesitation). *ak
Also reported on the 2003 Toyota Camry
Other speed control problem
Other engine problem
Other brake problem
Other body or interior problem
Head gasket failure
ABS module or sensor failure
How far this goes
Complaints are voluntary, so 23 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 loss of braking happen on the 2003 Toyota Camry?
Across 16 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 30,000 miles. A quarter were filed before 15,000 miles and a quarter after 60,000 miles. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is loss of braking on the 2003 Toyota Camry?
23 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.5 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