Recalls and investigations

Every Car NHTSA Is Investigating Right Now

An open investigation is the earliest public signal that a regulator thinks something is wrong — and that nobody has fixed it yet.

4 min read · 163 figures, all from the federal record · rebuilt 3 hours ago

Between a complaint and a recall sits an investigation. NHTSA opens one when enough owners report the same thing that the agency decides to look itself — a Preliminary Evaluation first, an Engineering Analysis if it escalates, and a recall only sometimes after that.

5,344 investigations are on file, and 224 of them are still open. An open one is the most useful thing a buyer can know about a car, because it means the regulator suspects a defect and nothing has been fixed.

Open investigations, most recent first

Investigations with no closing date in the federal file.

Source — NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation, investigations file.