What RV Owners Name in NHTSA Complaints: The Parts, by Count

Through 30 September 2026, owners had filed 5,025 RV complaints with NHTSA since 1 January 2016, about 457 a year (snapshot taken 2 October 2026). Of the five components counted below, Structure was named most often, in 1,367 of them (27%), followed by Electrical system (653, 13%), Suspension (652, 13%), Equipment (651, 13%) and Tires (467, 9%). Those are counts of reports, not a measure of which RV parts fail most.

What the part counts are

A complaint is a consumer report to NHTSA; NHTSA also takes them through Report a Safety Problem. The shares below count the top-level NHTSA component each complaint names. A complaint can name more than one component, so the shares overlap. On the model rankings, RvCrunch counts each complaint once per top-level component however many sub-parts it names, and leaves out NHTSA's catch-all "Unknown or other".

Component named	Complaints	Share of complaints
Structure	1,367	27%
Electrical system	653	13%
Suspension	652	13%
Equipment	651	13%
Tires	467	9%

Source: NHTSA's consumer complaint files, complaints received 2016-01-01 to 2026-09-30, snapshot taken 2026-10-02.

Electrical system, Suspension and Equipment sit within one complaint of each other, so the order among the three is not meaningful.

What owners report about fire, crashes and injuries

The same file records three answers the owner gives on the form: whether there was a fire, a crash, or an injury or death. Through 30 September 2026, 260 complaints reported a fire, 60 reported a crash and 61 reported an injury or death. These are the owner's own answers and NHTSA has not verified them. A fire report is not a recall, and a recall is not a complaint: a recall is a manufacturer's report to NHTSA, a complaint comes from an owner.

A worked example: one maker, two lenses

Complaints by part and complaints by maker answer different questions. By maker, Forest River, Inc. had 1,395 complaints through 30 September 2026, 81 of them reporting a fire. Grand Design RV, LLC had 570, 18 of them reporting a fire. The part table above tells you what kind of problem owners describe across all makers; the maker figures tell you who the complaints were filed against. Neither says which RV is better built.

Where the part view runs out

Through 30 September 2026, 58 makers had complaints on file and 29 had none. A maker with no complaints on file has no complaints on file; the record does not say more than that.

The limitation: nothing here is per RV built

There is no public per-brand sales-volume source, so none of these counts is a rate. Makers with more RVs on the road can be expected to collect more complaints. Structure leading the table is a fact about the raw record, not a ranking of how reliable any RV is. Read a count as a list of reports to open and read.

Where to go next

The RV Complaints by Model tool lists the RV models owners have complained about most to NHTSA since 2016, with fire, crash and injury reports and the part owners name most for each model. For how complaints differ from recalls, see RV Complaints vs. Recalls. To file one yourself, see How to File an RV Safety Complaint.

By Eric, RvCrunch founder. Informational only, not professional advice. Last reviewed: October 2026.

This guide is for informational purposes only. It is not legal, mechanical or purchasing advice, and it is not a safety rating of any RV or manufacturer. Recall and complaint counts are not adjusted for how many RVs a company builds, because no one publishes that figure. Confirm anything about a specific RV with its maker, a dealer or NHTSA before acting on it.

Last reviewed: October 2026 · Against the sources listed above.