We post a lot about recalls here, and there’s good reason for it. A new study by CarFax reveals that there are 58.1 million cars on the road (or one out of five cars that you see) that have open recalls, meaning they have known faults that may be dangerous. That’s a problem, and that number is a 16-percent increase compared to two years ago. Even worse, among those vehicles, over 14 million of them have two or more unresolved recalls.
Recalls are issued by carmakers to address potential manufacturing faults, and recalls are issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration when manufacturers products are dangerous or not in compliance with the law. The Takata airbag recall, for example, is one of the biggest recalls in history. These airbags can explode and shoot metal shrapnel straight into the occupant’s heads. The recall affects over 67 million airbags, including airbags in cars as old as the 1995 model year, whose owners may not know their car is even able to be recalled. These faulty airbags have killed at least 28 people and injured over 400 more, and there are still millions of cars on the road right now with these dangerous airbags.
Last year, there were over 800 recalls issued that affected all sorts of cars of virtually all ages. Nowadays, some recalls can be addressed by free over-the-air software updates, but most recalls still require owners to bring their vehicle into a dealer for repairs. Again, all recall repairs are done for free; the car owner pays nothing, and the potentially deadly issues are fixed. It’s not common that we get anything for free these days, so take advantage of the free work if nothing else.
The CarFax study shows that California has the highest number of vehicles on the road with open recalls, with at least 6.2 million unsafe cars currently on the road. There are over 3 million cars in the city of Los Angeles alone that have at least one open recall, more than any other city in the country. Texas has the highest number of vehicles with multiple open recalls at 1.6 million, followed closely by California with 1.5 million, and Florida in third with over 900,000 cars on the road with two or more unfixed recalls.
Plug your car’s vehicle identification number, or VIN, into the NHTSA database to see if your car has any open recalls. The easiest place to find your car’s VIN is at the base of the windshield on the driver’s side, or it’s on a sticker at the bottom of the B-pillar, the pillar next to the driver’s head. It will be fixed for free, and it might save your life.