About Recall Explained

Recall Explained is a small, independent project that tries to make US vehicle safety data easier to understand. We take official recall and complaint data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and turn it into clear tables and short explanations.

What Recall Explained is for

• Helping drivers get a quick sense of how often a vehicle has been subject to recall campaigns in the past.
• Showing complaint patterns by model year so that you can see where owners tend to report more problems.
• Pointing you back to the official NHTSA VIN lookup for concrete safety decisions about an individual vehicle.

How we work with NHTSA data

The site is powered by curated datasets built from official NHTSA sources. These datasets feed the programmatic make and model pages you see across the site. We document the data sources and methodology in more detail on the Data and methodology page.

What Recall Explained is not

• It is not a replacement for the official NHTSA VIN lookup. Only the VIN lookup and your dealer can confirm whether a specific vehicle is subject to an open recall.
• It is not legal, financial, or purchasing advice. We summarise patterns in the data but do not tell you which vehicles you should or should not buy.
• It is not affiliated with NHTSA or any vehicle manufacturer. All errors on this site are ours, not theirs.

If you see something that looks wrong or confusing, we would be grateful if you let us know through the contact page.