NHTSA complaint #11759064

Owner complaint summary

My wife was driving my SUV while I was a passenger. We were in the left lane, and put the left turn signal on while traveling south bound approaching an intersection to take a left turn (traveling approximately 3-5 Miles Per Hour and slowing) at the traffic light (traffic light was green). There was a car in front of us that had stopped waiting for oncoming traffic to clear and make the same left turn onto the same road as us. While traveling in this lane we hit a deep pot hole (not very visible while driving), just as we were approaching the vehicle stopped in front of us. When hitting the pot hole, our SUV seemed to leap forward a bit and when the brakes were applied to slow and stop, the braking system failed (appeared to freeze) and the brakes did not work, and because the braking didn’t work, our vehicle hit the car in front of us. Prior to and after hitting the pothole, no audible warning sounds or visible alerts appeared and no emergency braking was activated. The airbags in our vehicle never deployed. Our safety (my wife and I) as well as the safety of the 2 passengers in the other vehicle were at risk as we all could have been injured in the accident. As we needed the vehicle for transportation, we immediately began filing all the necessary police and insurance reports and brought our vehicle into an Auto Body Repair Shop to be repaired the next day. During the repair work, some of the responsible components may or may not have been replaced and the Auto Body Repair Shop also had all the car sensors recalibrated by a 3rd party, which is why we did not bring the car to a dealership to evaluate. To the best of our knowledge, the manufacturer, the police and the insurance company did not inspect the vehicle. We are not experts, but hitting a pothole might be considered an edge case, so I’m not sure that a dealership would have tried or been able to replicate the issue.