How Important is that Vehicle Safety Recall Notice?

Surely you’ve received one of those recall notice cards in the mail. You probably asked yourself, how important can this really be? You thought, I bet it can wait until I have extra time to take it to the dealership. Then you never found the time or you lost the card.

Sound familiar? If it does, you are not alone! The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates there are 53 million vehicles on the road with unresolved recall issues. That is more than 1 in 4 cars on the road with urgent and serious issues posing a risk to drivers and passengers in those vehicles.

According to www.safercar.gov, a recall is issued when a manufacturer or NHTSA determines that a vehicle, equipment, car seat or tire creates an unreasonable safety risk or fails to meet minimum safety standards. When a recall is issued, manufacturers are required to fix the problem by repairing it, replacing it, offering a refund, or in rare cases, repurchasing the vehicle.

A recent program put on by the National Safety Council uncovered 159 open recall items on the 700 vehicles that were scanned. That was nearly 23% of the vehicles checked in the parking lot. Thirty of those 159 were for Takata airbags.

Checktoprotect.org and Safercar.gov are free sites for public use that can tell you if your vehicle has a recall. We encourage you to find your VIN and check it. Those results may help you avoid costly mechanical breakdowns, improve overall automobile safety, and prevent serious injury to family members, co-workers or clients.