We indexed all 39 states in our network on the public factors that actually break garage doors: housing age (and with it, the odds an opener predates the 1993 federal auto-reverse law), freeze exposure, wind-code exposure, and owner-occupancy. Every number is reproducible from the downloadable dataset.
Count-asserted at 39 of 39 states before publication; no state is reweighted or estimated over missing data. Higher index = greater failure risk.
| # | State | Risk index | Median home built | Owner-occupied |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New York | 78.4 | 1966 | 53.6% |
| 2 | Massachusetts | 76.5 | 1969 | 63.2% |
| 3 | Connecticut | 74.2 | 1971 | 66.5% |
| 4 | Pennsylvania | 72.3 | 1962 | 68.1% |
| 5 | Maine | 67.4 | 1978 | 70.4% |
| 6 | Missouri | 63.7 | 1981 | 67.7% |
| 7 | Ohio | 62.0 | 1971 | 66.8% |
| 8 | West Virginia | 60.4 | 1973 | 71.1% |
| 9 | New Jersey | 59.6 | 1965 | 62.2% |
| 10 | Michigan | 58.5 | 1975 | 73.5% |
| 11 | Vermont | 58.5 | 1975 | 73.6% |
| 12 | Illinois | 57.5 | 1975 | 66.4% |
| 13 | Indiana | 56.8 | 1976 | 69.6% |
| 14 | Wisconsin | 56.2 | 1976 | 65.8% |
| 15 | Rhode Island | 55.2 | 1969 | 63.0% |
| 16 | District of Columbia | 53.8 | 1956 | 41.0% |
| 17 | Minnesota | 53.7 | 1979 | 71.6% |
| 18 | New Hampshire | 51.2 | 1981 | 73.1% |
| 19 | Maryland | 49.9 | 1981 | 67.8% |
| 20 | Kansas | 44.4 | 1979 | 65.8% |
| 21 | Alabama | 40.1 | 1990 | 69.9% |
| 22 | Oklahoma | 39.8 | 1983 | 65.1% |
| 23 | Colorado | 39.3 | 1991 | 65.6% |
| 24 | Idaho | 38.2 | 1993 | 72.8% |
| 25 | Delaware | 37.5 | 1992 | 71.0% |
| 26 | Virginia | 36.7 | 1986 | 66.8% |
| 27 | Georgia | 36.2 | 1993 | 66.1% |
| 28 | South Carolina | 36.2 | 1987 | 71.4% |
| 29 | California | 35.7 | 1974 | 55.3% |
| 30 | North Carolina | 35.4 | 1987 | 66.3% |
| 31 | Florida | 34.4 | 1988 | 66.9% |
| 32 | Oregon | 31.5 | 1985 | 60.2% |
| 33 | Kentucky | 30.8 | 1986 | 66.4% |
| 34 | Washington | 29.7 | 1987 | 63.3% |
| 35 | Texas | 28.0 | 1993 | 61.8% |
| 36 | Tennessee | 27.1 | 1990 | 68.2% |
| 37 | Utah | 17.8 | 1992 | 71.0% |
| 38 | Arizona | 15.9 | 1998 | 66.0% |
| 39 | Nevada | 14.6 | 1994 | 57.1% |
The Garage Door Failure Risk Index is computed entirely from public data sources; no proprietary, self-reported, or paywalled data enters the model. It combines four components for each geography. First, opener-era exposure: we use U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey data on median year structure built and the year-built distribution of the housing stock to estimate the share of homes likely built before the federal opener entrapment protection requirements took effect on January 1, 1993 (16 CFR 1211). This is a probability proxy, not a count of actual pre-1993 openers, since openers are replaced more often than houses. Second, freeze exposure: we use NOAA climate normals to score how many days per year each area typically spends at or below freezing, reflecting the documented seasonal clustering of spring failures in cold months. Third, wind exposure: we score locations by published hurricane wind zones and wind-borne debris regions derived from FEMA guidance and model building code wind maps. Fourth, owner-occupancy: ACS owner-occupancy rates serve as a rough proxy for maintenance responsibility patterns, since owner-occupants and landlords face different repair incentives. Each component is normalized to a common scale and combined with fixed, published weights into a 0-100 index. Honest limitations: this index estimates relative risk conditions, not actual failure rates, which no public dataset tracks; year built is an imperfect proxy for opener age; climate normals smooth over local microclimates; and owner-occupancy is at best a weak signal of maintenance behavior. Where a component is missing for a geography, we report the index as incomplete for that area rather than reweighting the remaining components, because silent reweighting would make incomplete scores look comparable to complete ones when they are not. The index ranks conditions; it cannot diagnose any individual door.
Weights: pre-1993 housing-age exposure 45% · freeze exposure 25% · wind exposure 15% · owner-occupancy 15%. Sources: U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2023 (B25035, B25003), state building codes as compiled on our state pages, CPSC public materials. Licensed CC-BY 4.0 — journalists and researchers may reuse with attribution to GarageDoorCallHQ.
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