Category: Vehicles

Most recalls come with an unhurried instruction: schedule a free repair when convenient. Two kinds do not — the do not drive recall and its park-outside sibling. A do-not-drive advisory means the vehicle shouldn’t be driven at all until it’s fixed. A park-outside advisory means it shouldn’t be parked in your garage — because the…

You fill out a government web form about your car’s steering. It disappears into a database. Did anything just happen? Here is what the data says: yes. NHTSA complaints are the public’s half of the recall system, and in our analysis of 109 recalls across 11 popular vehicles, 63% were preceded by ten or more…

About one in five vehicles on U.S. roads is driving around with an open safety recall — 58.1 million vehicles with at least one unrepaired recall as of 2025, according to CARFAX. Here is how to check your car for recalls — by VIN, free, in about two minutes. The repair, if you need one,…

Everyone who files a complaint with NHTSA wonders the same thing: does this actually do anything? Put differently: how many complaints before a recall actually happens? We measured that question with public data. Across the 11 popular vehicles in our study — every combination of vehicle and component system, 242 pairings in all — we…

The complaints describe the same moment again and again: the pedal goes hard, the truck keeps moving. Backing a boat down a ramp. A deer in the headlights on a two-lane highway. A panic stop that takes too long. In the fall of 2019, the 2014 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 received two brake recalls seven weeks…

The problem, as hundreds of owners described it, was a light that wouldn’t behave: the indicator showing the front passenger air bag was OFF — with a full-grown adult sitting in the seat. Behind that light is the occupant classification system (OCS), the sensor package that decides whether the passenger air bag should deploy. On…

Fifteen of the complaints mention fire. Owners of the 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee described smoke pouring from the hood, alternators burning, a dashboard glowing orange around a USB port — and filed it all, report by report, into NHTSA’s public database. By May 17, 2018, when FCA reported campaign 18V332 — the fifth Jeep Grand…

The complaints read like small emergencies: smoke curling out of the driver’s door panel, a melted switch, a driver pouring water on the armrest at the side of the road. For years, owners of the 2007 Toyota Camry filed reports like these with NHTSA about the power-window master switch — the control cluster on the…

Few defects sound as mundane — or read as frightening in owners’ own words — as a worn bushing on a shifter cable. When it degrades or detaches, the transmission may not actually be in Park when the indicator says it is. No warning message, no chime. The driver walks away; the vehicle rolls. The…

The longest warning window in our study of 109 recalls belongs to the 2008 Honda Accord and its air bags: 4,020 days — eleven years — from the first air-bag complaint filed with NHTSA to the final recall in the series. By the time campaign 19V502 — the final Honda Accord Takata recall — was…