On Oct. 29, 2026, we saved NHTSA's public API answers for every Honda Accord complaint, recall campaign and crash rating for the 2001 to 2024 model years: complaints/complaintsByVehicle and recalls/recallsByVehicle with make HONDA and model ACCORD, one query per model year, plus recalls/campaignNumber for each campaign and the SafetyRatings records. We also saved NHTSA's investigations file (FLAT_INV.zip, Accord rows only), the investigation resumes and letters, Part 573 recall reports, Honda's service bulletins filed with NHTSA, 49 CFR 573.15 from eCFR and Honda's Accord timeline. A Python script, analysis.py, computes our counts from those saved files and can be re-run without a network connection; figures we quote from NHTSA records and Honda's filings are given as those documents state them. Each row of the by-year file carries its query URLs.

Our years-to-avoid verdict names the top three model years by raw complaint count, ties included; these are owner reports that NHTSA has not verified, not adjusted for sales or age.

NHTSA files 2023 and 2024 Accord complaints under the model name ACCORD SEDAN; ACCORD returns none for those years, so we merged the two names and counted each complaint once. Recalls for 2023 and 2024 stay under ACCORD (ACCORD SEDAN returns none). NHTSA keeps the Accord Hybrid (ACCORD HYBRID, ACCORD FHEV, ACCORD PLUG IN HYBRID) and the Crosstour (ACCORD CROSSTOUR, CROSSTOUR) under their own model names. We left them out: a complaint counts only if its vehicle record names the Accord. Complaints the ACCORD query returns whose vehicle record gives the model only as HONDA are kept, 48 in all (10 for 2001, 12 for 2002 and 26 for 2003). That removed 30 complaints the ACCORD query returns for 2005 that name only the Accord Hybrid, and 8 for 2012 that name only the Crosstour. The model name ACCORD V6 (2012) adds no complaint the ACCORD query lacks. The coupe is filed under ACCORD.

A complaint is one NHTSA ODI number. Older complaints can appear as several rows with one number, one per component (NHTSA's CMPL.txt, field 2); we merged them, so 2001 and 2002 show 932 and 1,062 complaints where the API's count field says 943 and 1,066. A complaint counts once for each component it lists, so component counts add up to more than the total. Crash and fire mean the owner answered yes to NHTSA's crash or fire question; injury and death count complaints reporting at least one injured person or one death, not people. These are owner reports that NHTSA has not verified, and they are not adjusted for how many cars were sold or how old they are.

A complaint is recent if NHTSA's filing date (dateComplaintFiled) is Oct. 29, 2024 or later, 24 months before our query. A recall campaign counts in every model year NHTSA lists it for. We count V numbers (vehicle recalls) as recall campaigns and list E numbers (equipment campaigns, mostly aftermarket headlamps sold for many cars) separately. Unit counts are NHTSA's figure for the whole campaign, across every model it covers, and are never added up per year. Honda's earliest driver inflator recalls named in NHTSA's RQ09-004 file, 08V-593 and 09V-259, have no record in NHTSA's recalls API or recalls flat file, so they are not in our counts.

Description counts search each owner's description, ignoring case, with the regular expressions below; a match means the owner used those words, not that a defect was confirmed, and we do not quote owners. Transmission: \b(?:transmission|tranny)\b. Transmission failure, slipping, replacement or rebuild: \b(?:transmission|tranny)\b[^.!?]{0,60}?\b(?:fail\w*|slip\w*|replac\w*|rebuil\w*|broke\w*|went out|gone out)\b|\b(?:fail\w*|slip\w*|replac\w*|rebuil\w*|new|second|third|2nd|3rd)\s+(?:\w+\s+){0,2}(?:transmission|tranny)\b. Rotors or brake pads: \brotors?\b|\bbrake\s+pads?\b. Starter: (?<!remote )\bstarter\b. Power steering: \bpower[\s-]*steering\b|\bsteering\s+assist\b|\bEPS\b|\belectric(?:al)?\s+(?:power\s+)?steering\b.

Oil consumption or burning oil: \boil[\s-]+consumption\b|\bconsum(?:es|ing|ed|e)\s+(?:\w+\s+){0,4}?oil\b|\bburn(?:s|ing|ed|t)?\s+(?:(?!transmission\b)\w+\s+){0,3}?oil\b|\boil[\s-]+burn(?:ing|er)\b. Fuel in the oil, oil dilution or a rising oil level (widened on Nov. 1, 2026 to catch fuel or gas dilution, "fuel % in oil", oil that smells of gas within the same sentence and an oil level that is up or over full; it is no longer the pattern our Honda CR-V guide uses): oil[\s-]*dilut|dilut\w*\s+(?:of\s+)?(?:the\s+)?(?:engine\s+|motor\s+)?oil|(?:fuel|gas|gasoline)[\s-]+dilut|(?:fuel|gas|gasoline)\s*%\s*(?:in|of)\s+(?:the\s+)?(?:engine\s+|motor\s+)?oil|(?:fuel|gas|gasoline)\s+(?:(?!oil\b)\w+\s+){0,3}?(?:in|into|with)\s+(?:the\s+)?(?:engine\s+|motor\s+)?oil\b|oil\b[^.!?]{0,80}?\b(?:smell|smells|smelled|smelling|smelt|smelly|odor)\s+(?:\w+\s+){0,2}(?:gas|fuel|gasoline)\b|(?:rising|increasing|increased|elevated)\s+oil\s+level|oil\s+level\s+(?:\w+\s+){0,3}?(?:rising|rose|rises|increas\w*|grew|(?:is|was|goes|went|going|gone|keeps|kept|been)\s+up\b|over\s+(?:the\s+)?(?:full|max)|above\s+(?:the\s+)?(?:full|max|upper)). Head gasket: \bhead[\s-]+gasket.

Honda's own notices come from the manufacturer communications NHTSA lists for each Accord model year (api.nhtsa.gov vehicles/byYmmt). We searched their summaries, not the full documents, for transmission, oil consumption, piston ring or VCM, oil dilution, starter, power steering and head gasket words, and read the bulletins we cite, with four exceptions: we cite 02-062 and 04-020 from NHTSA's summaries only, and Accord Hybrid bulletins 26-006 and 26-007 only from their titles in Honda's Aug. 26, 2026, dealer message. Investigation years, opening and closing dates come from NHTSA's investigations file; the API gives some dates a day later because it stores them in UTC. Overall star ratings are the OverallRating values in NHTSA's SafetyRatings records, written as NHTSA writes them: every Accord before 2011, and the 2011 and 2012 two-door Accords, show "Not Rated"; the records give no reason. No data from any commercial source is used.

NHTSA's park-it (do not drive) flag is a field in its recall campaign records; an unset flag is not a statement that a car is safe to drive, and we could not confirm from NHTSA whether these cars appear on its do-not-drive list, because its Takata pages did not load for us.