NHTSA Complaint #11507769 — 2019 FORD ESCAPE

We bought this new Ford Escape at Malloy Ford in December 2019. It now has just under 21,000 miles. We have never had any prior wiper problem. Our Escape is a Titanium model with intermittent wipers that adjust automatically to whatever speed is needed to clear whatever amount of rain is hitting the windshield. On January 31, 2023, we made a trip from Falls Church, VA to our home in Slanesville, WV. The trip started out with intermittent rain, so our wipers were on – sometimes in the intermittent position and sometimes on full time at regular speed. As we passed through Winchester, VA, the rain had stopped but the wiper control was still in the intermittent position. We proceeded north on 522 and headed west on 127 toward Slanesville for several miles. At that point the wipers had not moved for a number of miles, with the control lever still in the intermittent position. Suddenly, without me touching the wiper control at all, the wipers jumped up especially quickly and especially far and stayed in the up position. The driver’s side wiper actually moved past the windshield post so the tip of the wiper was off the windshield and flapping in the wind. After remaining in this extreme up position for several seconds the wipers moved back down to the cowl and then back up to the same extreme up position where they held in place. At this point I moved the wiper control from the intermittent position to the “off” position, at which time the driver’s side wiper moved back down to the cowl and the passenger side wiper remained up in the extreme upright position. The wipers remained in these different positions for several more miles until we arrived home, and they stayed in these positions when I shut off the car. I called my mechanic who told me I could move the passenger side wiper by hand to its down position and restart the car to see what happened. When I did this the wipers stayed down at the cowl because the control was still “off.” When I moved the contr