NHTSA Complaint #11493978 — 2012 FORD F-150

After arriving at work, when I went out to my truck to drive to lunch I started the truck and it was fine, for about 3 seconds. As I started to drive it the power assist steering failed and the error code displayed on the dash. The steering as you might expect become very heavy and hard. Luckily I was not at speed, and there was not a vehicle near me to hit. Turned off the truck and inspected under the hood. No apparent damage and nothing appeared broken. Closed hood and restarted truck. Same sequence occurred. Could steer initially just enough to start moving, then complete steering assist failure with the error code popping up on the dashboard display. Turned off again. Restarted and left running and popped hood to see if anything looked bad. Nothing bad. After idling for about 5 minutes while I poked around, tried again and for some reason the power assist had restarted itself and was working. After carefully testing in the parking lot, decided to drive to a local auto repair shop I use. They are assessing the error codes and trying to figure out what happened. If this had happened at speed and without warning, I guarantee I could have hit something or someone before I could wrestle the truck to a safe place.