First, The Basics
Welcome. Before jumping right to the heart of the problem with unfixed recalls, there are a couple of key points I want to cover to help insure that we are all starting from the same place, in terms of a basic understanding of the problem.
First, I know that many of you learned about this website from reading an e-mail that I recently sent to several of my friends and relatives. I asked them to read it, and then forward it on to their friends and relatives with a note asking that they too read and forward it, and so on. If you received and read that e-mail, you’re in the right place.
For any of you who managed to find your way here without having read that e-mail, I strongly recommend that you take a moment to read it now, before you go on. It covers some important points you should know to better understand both the problem in general, and the rest of information presented below. After you have read the e-mail, there is a link at the bottom of the page it’s on that will bring you right back here, and you will be ready to move on to the information below. Click here to go read that e-mail now.
Secondly, I want to make sure it’s clear that all recalls of vehicles, car seats and tires are for safety problems. Whenever a vehicle, car seat or tire is recalled, it is for one of two reasons. The first, and most common reason, is because a safety-related defect of some kind has been found, which makes the item unsafe in some way. The other, less common reason for a recall is because something does not meet a Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard. In either case, any item that has been recalled should definitely be taken in for the free, safety repair work that the government requires the manufacturers to offer, so that the item is made safe.
Of course, other problems, which do not affect the safety of an item, are also discovered from time to time. But no matter how widespread they might be – even if they involve every unit produced - they will not trigger a recall, because there is no safety issue involved. Some examples of non safety-related problems that sometimes affect vehicles include faulty paint jobs, body panel rust, and air conditioners and stereos that do not work properly.
Sometimes an owner can still get the manufacturer to take care of these types of non safety-related problems, even if the warranty has expired, or even if the problem involves something that was not covered by the warranty in the first place, if the manufacturer happens to have in place what is called a “secret warranty”, and if the owner is lucky enough to find out about it. However, these "secret warranties" are kept very hush-hush (as their name suggests), and they are used very, very selectively - but they are really a whole separate story, for another day.
Lastly, I want to make sure that it’s clear as to exactly what type of vehicles we are talking about. Here in the U.S., we have a total of roughly 221,500,000 registered vehicles of all types on our roads today – the only “street legal” vehicles not included in this number are motorcycles. Approximately 210,000,000 of these vehicles, or nearly 95% of them, are of the following types: Automobiles, vans, SUV’s, pickups and other light-duty trucks, which are owned either by individuals, or by companies (please note that this number does not include any government-owned vehicles of any type).
These 210,000,000 private, and commercially owned vehicles are the ones we are concerned with, because they are the personal and family vehicles that you and I, and our families ride around in every day, and they're the light-duty company vehicles that some of us drive at work.
Although we are not concerned here with the other 11,500,000 or so vehicles that make up the remaining 5% of all registered vehicles excluding motorcycles, for those of you who are curious, they account for everything else you see on the road, except for motorcycles. They include all the government-owned vehicles of any type (everything from automobiles to trash trucks and fire trucks); and all buses and all heavy-duty trucks of any type, including semi tractor-trailers, regardless of who owns them.
The Recall Process
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, is the governmental agency that gets involved with all recalls involving vehicles, child safety seats, tires and other vehicle-related equipment. For each recall, they monitor what is being recalled, and the number of units involved. They also track the number and percentage of the items that are actually repaired under the free repair programs the manufacturers are required to conduct, for each recall campaign.
NHTSA encourages consumers who believe they have a safety-related problem with a car seat, tire, vehicle or any related equipment, to report those problems to them. Once a safety-related complaint is received by NHTSA, their first step is usually to contact the manufacturer to see what they may know about the alleged problem.
At the same time, NHTSA will often launch an independent investigation of its own, to try and determine how widespread the problem might be. If they find that a problem involves more than just a few isolated cases, NHTSA will ask the manufacturer to conduct a recall, and if necessary, they can force the manufacturer to comply. This is the first of two ways that a recall can be initiated.
The other way that a recall can happen is when a manufacturer voluntarily initiates the recall on its own, before NHTSA gets involved. This happens occasionally, usually when a manufacturer discovers rather quickly that there is some sort of a problem with one of its products. However, even with these manufacturer initiated recalls, NHTSA still gets involved in monitoring the recall, and collecting their data regarding the number of units involved, and the number and percentage of units that are actually brought in and repaired.
Whichever of these two ways a recall is initiated, with all recalls, federal law requires that the manufacturers fix the problems at no cost to the owners. Manufacturers are also required to mail notification of the recall to all the owners they can locate. In addition, whenever a recall is announced, the print and broadcast media are generally very good about running news stories to try and help get the word out that there has been a recall.
The Problem With The Recall Process
Despite the fact that the critical repairs that are necessary to make a recalled item safe again cost the owners nothing, and despite the best efforts of both the manufacturers and the media to make sure that as many owners as possible get word of the recalls, one very troubling fact remains: For a typical vehicle recall today, fully 28% of the vehicle owners never take advantage of the vital repair programs, despite the fact that all the repairs are done for free.
Even more tragic is the fact that with recalls of child safety seats, the numbers are far worse - nearly 80% of all car seats that are recalled never get fixed under the free repair programs offered by the manufacturers, and there have been over 30 million car seats recalled since 1990.
Surprisingly, it seems that the reason so many owners do not take advantage of the critical, free repairs, is simply that they never got news of the recalls. Unfortunately, this problem is not a new one. I first learned of it quite by accident, back in late 1994, while thumbing through the November issue of Consumer Reports magazine. In it, was a 4-page article, all about the various types of recalls that the government monitors – consumer products; food and drugs; and vehicles, car seats, tires and vehicle-related equipment.
What caught my eye - and stunned me, actually - was what the article said about vehicle recalls. Among other things, it said that back then, there were an estimated 20 million unfixed recalled vehicles on the road at the end of 1993; and that from 1988 – 1993, only 68% of all recalled vehicles had been fixed. It also said that the reason more of the recalled vehicles were not fixed, was because it was often difficult to track down and notify the owners that there had been a recall. (If you are interested in reading the article for yourself, see November, 1994 Consumer Reports, Pg. 734, “Is The Car-Safety Agency Up To Speed?”)
When I was reading the article, I happened to know from some other research I had done recently, that 20 million vehicles was more than 10% of all the vehicles on the road at that time, and I just couldn’t believe that there could possibly be that many unfixed, recalled vehicles on the road. So I decided to do some research of my own (which ended up being quite extensive), and when I verified for myself that the problem was in fact as big as the article said it was, I decided to change the focus of a new company I had just started a few months earlier, and we began tracking and reporting data on recalls and safety defects involving vehicles, car seats, tires and related equipment.
Over the next couple of years, roughly 24 million more vehicles were recalled, and like clockwork, roughly 32% of them, or about 7.7 million vehicles, went unfixed. So by late 1995, best estimates put the total number of unfixed, recalled vehicles on the road at about 23.7 million, after allowing for the fact that an estimated 4 million of the original 20 million vehicles were no longer on the road, due to their finally wearing out and landing in the junkyard, or due to their being totaled in accidents, etc. (20 million problem vehicles in late ‘93, minus the 4 million junked in ’94 & ‘95, leaves 16 million of these original 20 million still on the road in late 1995. Then, adding the roughly 7.7 million additional unfixed vehicles from the ’94 & ‘95 recalls, gives us an estimated total of 23.7 million unfixed recalled vehicles on the road in late 1995).
Now, fast-forward to this past summer, in 2002. For the first time in quite a while, I spent considerable time researching and digging-up the latest data, to try and determine just where things stand now, in terms of a current estimate of the number of unfixed, recalled vehicles on our roads. Unfortunately, what I found is quite alarming. Using the most current government statistics available, it appears that the problem has nearly doubled since the end of 1993, growing from 20 million vehicles back then, to the point where we now have approximately 37 million of these unsafe vehicles on our roads today.
As mentioned earlier, that’s slightly more than 1 out of every 6 passenger vehicles on the road today. It also means that on average, someone from 1 out of every 3 households is regularly driving one of these unsafe vehicles, and there is little doubt that very few of these owners have any idea that their vehicles are unsafe, and that they have been recalled.
Now, I suspect that some of you will simply take my word for it that the problem today is as bad as I tell you it is, and that’s fine. However, I also clearly remember back in 1994, how difficult it was for me to believe that the problem could possibly be as bad as Consumer Reports said it was, until I did some research and saw the data myself.
So, for those of you who may feel the same way, where you just have to see the facts and figures before believing that the problem could possibly be so big, you are welcome to read a summary of the analysis I did last summer. When you have finished reading it, clicking the link at the bottom of that page it is on will bring you right back here, and then you can continue on with the information below. Click here if you would like to go read the summary now.
A Special Note on Child Safety Seats, or Car Seats
Since 1990, there have been over 30 million child safety seats recalled for safety problems. Yet a recent study done by NHTSA shows that only about 1 in 5 owners of these recalled car seats have taken advantage of the critical, free repair programs that the manufacturers are required to offer, so that the car seats can be made safe to use. This means that while some 6 million of these car seats were fixed, the other 24 million or so were not fixed, which is both quite alarming, and tragic.
Again, the primary reason so few of the car seats get fixed is because the manufacturers are unable to locate most of the owners, making it impossible to notify them of the recalls. This problem is particularly severe with car seats, because very few people who purchase new car seats ever bother to fill-out and mail in their warranty registration cards, and without them, the manufacturers generally have no way of ever knowing who the purchasers and/or owners of their car seats are.
Why The Problem Continues To Grow Worse
So, 28% of all the vehicles being recalled today go unfixed, mainly because the owners are not getting the news that their vehicles have been recalled. And as the 1994 Consumer Reports article mentioned above points out, the primary reason so many owners never hear about the recalls, is because it is often difficult for the manufacturers to track them down to notify them that there has been a recall. But why is this?
The short answer is both because we live in a fairly transient society, where many people tend to move frequently; and because many vehicles get sold and re-sold several times, to many different owners over the years, before they finally end up in a junkyard. The more times a vehicle changes hands, and the more times an owner moves, the tougher it is for manufacturers to keep track of who to notify, and where to reach them, in the event of a recall.
Looking a little deeper, there are a couple of well-established trends in place, which both help to explain why the problem has nearly doubled in the last 9 years, and suggest that the problem is likely to continue to get worse. First, the cost of new vehicles continues to rise. According to the latest data published by the National Automobile Dealers Association, the average price paid for a new vehicle in 2001was $25,800.
As a result, more people are “making due” with older vehicles, which is driving up the average age of the vehicles on our roads. The latest published data from the Federal Highway Administration, which is for 1999, shows that the average age of all vehicles on the road has risen to 8.9 years, which is about 8 years and 11 months. Their data also shows that half of all vehicles on the road are more than 8.3 years old, which is about 8 years and 4 months.
The latest data from the National Automobile Dealers Association shows this same trend, but in a slightly different way. Their data shows that over the last 10 years, the total number of registered vehicles (“vehicles in use” is the term they use) increased by about 35 million vehicles. They break the vehicles down into age categories, and in looking at the categories 0 – 6 years old, 7 – 10, and over 10 years old, what really stands out is how clearly one can see that the fastest growing category by far, is vehicles that are over 10 years old.
They show that in 1991, there were approximately 80.5 million vehicles that were from 0 to 6 years old. By 2001, there were approximately 85.1 million vehicles in this age category, which is an increase of roughly 4.6 million vehicles, or about 5.7%. For the 7 to 10 year old grouping, there were about 43 million vehicles in 1991, versus about 48.3 million in 2001, which is an increase of roughly 5.3 million vehicles, or about12.3%. But for the category, “over 10 years old”, while there were only about 58 million vehicles in 1991, the number swelled to roughly 83 million by 2001, which is an increase of some 25 million vehicles, or about 43.1%.
With the number of older vehicles growing, and the average length of time they remain registered and on the road increasing, the potential risk we face is this: The opportunity for manufacturers to loose track of even more owners also increases, because some of these vehicles are bound to change hands an additional time, and some of those owners who tend to move frequently, are bound to move yet another time.
One final trend that bears mentioning is that over the last 10 years, both the average number of recalls per year, and the average number of vehicles recalled per year, have increased significantly. Over the 5-year period from 1992 – 1996, there were an average of 233 recalls per year, and the average number of vehicles recalled each year was about 12.6 million. That’s an average of about 4.5 recalls per week, with an average of just over 1 million vehicles being recalled each month.
But over the last 5 years, from 1997 – 2001, there were an average of 367 recalls per year, which is an increase of roughly 58% over the previous 5-year period. The average number of vehicles recalled per year also increased, to 17,903,600, which is an increase of about 42%. On average, that’s just over 1 recall per day, with an average of nearly 1.5 million vehicles being recalled each month.
Think about that for a minute – this says that we have averaged just over 1 recall per day, every single day of the year, for the last 5 years. And the average number of vehicles recalled each day over the last 5 years, was roughly 49,000 vehicles per day. Since we know from NHTSA, that 28% to 32% of these vehicles never had the free safety repair work done, that means that on average, there were a minimum of nearly 14,000 more “problem vehicles” being added to the pool of unfixed recalled vehicles each and every day, for the last 5 years. Could one of the vehicles that you, or one of your loved ones is driving today be one of these recalled vehicles, without your knowing it?
With all the signs pointing towards the fact that the problem with unfixed recalls is only likely to get worse, it is vitally important that all of us take it upon ourselves to invest a little time and effort doing a bit of homework to make sure that the problem doesn’t affect us, or our families – now, or in the future.
To learn how to find out if you have any unfixed recalled items, and what you should do about them if you do, click here: Am I Effected?