Verified government source

NHTSA complaint #11439615

This page summarizes an official U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration owner complaint. Use the verification links below to confirm the record directly with NHTSA.

Vehicle

2021 SUBARU OUTBACK

Manufacturer

Subaru of America, Inc.

Components

ELECTRICAL SYSTEM,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE

Dates

Incident: 04/01/2021
Filed: 11/07/2021

Owner complaint summary

2021 outback purchased Feb 2021. Within 2 weeks the touch screen, which controls the cruise control, heating, all eyesight controls went blank. This causes cruise control at highway speed to quit, causing sudden deceleration at highways speeds. Sometime the screen reboots, most times it requires driver to pull car over to reset. This also controls GPS and Heating/Air. There have been times when I have working canines in the car and loss of air conditioner in summer months has been extremely problematic requiring pulling car off road to open windows to ventilate. Multiple trips to dealer, and open case with SOA results in no resolution, as there apparently is no fix. Recently 11/1/21 instructed when this happens to push my front defroster button five times after reboot to record codes. How distracting while driving is this? Feel like this is severely underreported as owners frustrated. Receiving dealer instruction to look at touchscreen while driving causes the cars alert function to activate saying “keep eyes on road”. Why are they advising this unsafe action? Recent software updates as late as last week of October installed and does not fix issue, verified by dealer service manager. Multiple incidents, recorded on my phone video, last incident occurred 7/12/2021.

This is an owner complaint filed with NHTSA (ODI #11439615). It is not automatically an official recall, investigation outcome, or manufacturer admission unless the complaint text itself describes one.

Official record ID (ODI): 11439615. This page is the human-readable source link used across afterwarranty. The raw JSON link proxies NHTSA's public API for machine verification; prefer this page when reading the complaint.