Loss of braking on the 2016 Toyota Corolla
3 crashes 3 injuries 6 of the 8 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 7 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 loss of braking gets reported
There are 8 reports of loss of braking on the 2016 Toyota Corolla, 7 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 78,000 miles. It is the 13th most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 20,000 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, 3 a crash and 3 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 14 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2014, at a median of 1,000 miles, and latest on the 2002 at 140,000 miles.
By volume the 2010 carries the most reports, with 38; the 2016 has 8. 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.
On june 24th 2016 I purchased a 2016 toyota corolla s. I had 3 minor brake fialures with grinding sounds. I called the dealership on those 3 occasions.the 4th brake failure was a lot worse and I ended up applying the e brake and slide into county line dividing pasco & hernando county florida. Enough was enough I called the dealership and said " I need to bring my car in asap because now I have had four brake failures and this one could have killed me if anyone had been coming. This was the 21st of july, I had brought the car in for inspection of my brakes. All they did was take it for a test drive, brought it back and said everything was normal. On september tenth 2016 I got into the right hand turn lane, when I applied the brakes nothing had happened. I continued to apply more and more pressure and still no brakes. I was able to veer enough to the right so I didn't impact the driver side door however the lady behind that car was not as lucky and I impacted her front left pretty much head on. I have called over and over I have sent pictures of my car and the road where there was not even 1 skid mark. I have 9 bulging disc 4…
This is a report of brake failure that caused a vehicle collision with injuries. On october 29, 2016, I rented a 2016 toyota corolla from a betterway rent-acar, inc. D/ba budget rent a car of atlanta, at 6509 roswell rd, atlanta, ga 30328. The toyota had 21,619 miles at the time of the rental. At approximately 12:30pm I was driving southeast on jimmy carter blvd in norcross georgia. The weather was clear and sunny and the road was dry. Upon departing a traffic light, I accelerated to approximately 20 MPH in moderate traffic towards vehicles waiting at the intersection of jimmy carter blvd and rockbridge school road one block away. I began applying the brakes long before reaching the vehicles waiting at the next intersection, however the car's brake action was minimal. As I completely depressed the brake pedal, I heard a clicking sound similar to the engagement of an anti-lock braking system (ABS), however there was no significant deceleration. When I fully depressed the brake pedal, I did not hear an increase in engine RPM, the automatic transmission did not downshift, and the vehicle did not accelerate. As a result of the…
This is a report of brake failure that caused a vehicle collision with injuries. On october 29, 2016, I rented a 2016 toyota corolla from a betterway rent-acar, inc. D/ba budget rent a car of atlanta, at 6509 roswell rd, atlanta, ga 30328. The toyota had 21,619 miles at the time of the rental. At approximately 12:30pm I was driving southeast on jimmy carter blvd in norcross georgia. The weather was clear and sunny and the road was dry. Upon departing a traffic light, I accelerated to approximately 20 MPH in moderate traffic towards vehicles waiting at the intersection of jimmy carter blvd and rockbridge school road one block away. I began applying the brakes long before reaching the vehicles waiting at the next intersection, however the car's brake action was minimal. As I completely depressed the brake pedal, I heard a clicking sound similar to the engagement of an anti-lock braking system (ABS), however there was no significant deceleration. When I fully depressed the brake pedal, I did not hear an increase in engine RPM, the automatic transmission did not downshift, and the vehicle did not accelerate. As a result of the…
Also reported on the 2016 Toyota Corolla
Seat belt or retractor failure
Airbag failed to deploy in a crash
Other brake problem
Other steering problem
Other speed control problem
Other engine problem
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 8 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 8 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 2016 Toyota Corolla?
Across 7 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 20,000 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 loss of braking on the 2016 Toyota Corolla?
8 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