NHTSA Complaint #11591698 — 2011 FORD FUSION

The "Power Steering Assist Fault" light came on when the car was started and the steering wheel was very heavy and hard to move. Simultaneously, the "Service AdvanceTrac" light also came on. The vehicle was later scanned and an internal component failure code "U-3000:04-68" was identified for the Power Steering Motor. This is an internal system failure. The safety risk was to the driver along with other drivers on the road due to the vehicle being harder to control. The failure happened during a 600 mile drive and the vehicle was driven home carefully as no other arrangements could be made. Driver sustained wrist injury and pain at the carpals from increased effort needed to manually steer vehicle. The "Power Steering Assist Fault" had previously appeared for a couple seconds upon vehicle start up but had not previously disabled the power steering. It had been originally reprogrammed with the recall in 2016 but the recall re-programming proved ineffective.