Recalls and investigations
Which Parts Get Recalled Most
A recall is the point where a manufacturer agrees a defect is dangerous enough to fix for free. This is what they agree about.
2 min read · 32 figures, all from the federal record · rebuilt 3 weeks ago
A complaint is one owner's allegation. A recall is the point where the manufacturer or the regulator agreed the defect is real and dangerous enough to fix at the maker's expense. Comparing what gets complained about with what gets recalled shows which problems the system treats as serious.
Recall campaigns by system
Distinct NHTSA campaigns, grouped by the top level of the component string.
And what gets complained about
Complaints by part, for comparison.
The two orders are not the same, and the difference is the interesting part. Electrical faults dominate complaints and sit lower in recalls; airbags and fuel systems do the reverse. Regulators act on what can kill people quickly, not on what annoys the most owners.
Source — NHTSA recalls and complaints files.
How this was made. Nobody wrote this article and left it to age. It is generated by a query against the complaint database, and rebuilt every time the data is — so the numbers in the sentences above are the numbers as they stand today, not as they stood when somebody last had time to update them. How the grading works.