NHTSA Unveils VIN Recall Look-up Tool For Consumers
With as many as 26 million vehicles recalled by General Motors alone thus far in 2014, consumers may have a hard time determining if their vehicle needs to be repaired. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has come up with a tool to help, however.
Autoblog reports the agency unveiled on Wednesday an online VIN look-up tool, where consumers can find out if their vehicle is under recall. The tool covers all “major light vehicle and motorcycle brands,” and is part of the NHTSA’s new mandate that all manufacturers provide VIN search tools on their own sites for uncompleted recalls, updated weekly.
At the moment, however, the tool can only report on vehicles that have yet to be repaired, instead of any and all possible campaigns a VIN may fall under. That information would need to be found by combing through the agency’s database separately from the look-up tool. Customer service and non-safety campaigns are also not searchable within the tool, as well.
Seattle-based writer, blogger, and photographer for many a publication. Born in Louisville. Raised in Kansas. Where I lay my head is home.
More by Cameron Aubernon
Comments
Join the conversation
This information is already available and pretty easy to find. Ford is particularly good with info by VIN on their owners website. It would be nice if NHTSA could pull all this info together in one place
It'd be even better if NHTSA could tie this in with title information, and make this a one-stop shop for checking whether a car was previously totaled, is stolen, etc.
The number of recalls this year have been ridiculous. I'm interested in seeing some numbers of the percentage of cars currently on the road have been affected by this year's recalls, and how the trend has progressed over the last few years. Just because there are big recall numbers doesn't mean different cars are being recalled. It would be amazing if you could point to any random car in a parking lot and know that there's a 1-in-10 chance (for example) that it had been recalled this year.
Nice, just discovered a recall on mine which was issued exactly two weeks after I bought it, and thus has not been done.