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CarComplaints.com Notes: Beware of the NHTSA complaint data for the 2004 Camry. It is almost certainly misleading.

The problem with NHTSA data for the 2004 Camry is that for months on end, the news media repeatedly told the public that several Toyota models had an unintended acceleration defect, & to go to safercar.gov (the NHTSA's website) to file a complaint.

So, the NHTSA received a disproportionate number of complaints about unintended acceleration issues because of the national news media attention, to the point where their data is unreliable taken in context with any other vehicle that did not receive national news attention.

CarComplaints.com typically receives more complaints per day about vehicles than the NHTSA does, but the news media did not repeatedly say "go to CarComplaints.com to report your Camry acceleration problems" like they did about the NHTSA -- so although we have less complaint data than the NHTSA for the 2004 Camry, our data for the Camry is a far more statistically accurate representation of the Camry's reliability than what the NHTSA data shows.

9.9

really awful
Crashes / Fires:
0 / 0
Injuries / Deaths:
0 / 0
Average Mileage:
300 miles

About These NHTSA Complaints:

This data is from the NHTSA — the US gov't agency tasked with vehicle safety. Complaints are spread across multiple & redundant categories, & are not organized by problem.

So how do you find out what problems are occurring? For this NHTSA complaint data, the only way is to read through the comments below. Any duplicates or errors? It's not us.

2004 Toyota Camry seat belts / air bags problems

seat belts / air bags problem

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2004 Toyota Camry Owner Comments

problem #1

Nov 062004

Camry 4-cyl

  • Automatic transmission
  • 300 miles

A D V E R T I S E M E N T S

The passenger side air bag of our 2004 Camry repeatedly disengages. The dealership has re-calibrated the computer five times now and the dealership service manager says this is a known problem to Toyota but their engineers have not figured out how to fix it. They refuse to replace any parts, saying that there are too many parts that could be the problem and they'd just be "throwing parts" at it. They also claim the lemon law does not apply to this problem specifically because they are not replacing parts but simply re-calibrating. I don't know what to put in here for incident date because there have been so many. I will use the last one below, but this is a repair we've had to seek again five times. The only reason we have not had to seek it more than that is that normally my wife drives this car alone and rarely has a passenger. The airbag only disengages when there is a passenger. It appears there may be some connection between seatbelt use and putting car in or out of gear. This last time it went out we were stuck in traffic for about an hour. At one point the passenger released the seatbelt. We were taking the car in and out of gear every 5-10 minutes to move just a few yards. Another time the airbag disengaged was somewhat similar. We had pulled into a rest area. I was in the passenger seat and got out. My wife later moved the car (driving) and was waiting for me to get back in with the car running, in gear. When I got back in, shortly thereafter we noticed the airbag disengage light came on.

- Anderson, SC, USA

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