How the register is made
A program makes the register from the files of three agencies. It runs each day. This build has data through . Data sources lists the files and their licences.
The three agencies
| Agency | Records | The agency updates the file | Date of a record on the register |
|---|---|---|---|
| NHTSA | Recall campaigns, complaints and investigations | Each day | The day NHTSA received the recall report |
| CPSC | Recall notices of consumer products | With each new recall | The recall date of CPSC |
| FDA | Enforcement reports for food, drugs and devices | Each week | The first report date of the event |
The date of a record puts it on the front page and on a month page. A record can come into the agency file some days after its date.
Campaigns, complaints and investigations
Recall campaign
A manufacturer sends a defect and noncompliance report to NHTSA. NHTSA gives the report a campaign number, for example 26V578000. That is one recall campaign.
The first 2 digits are the year. The letter is the type: V for vehicles, C for child seats, T for tires and E for equipment.
The NHTSA file has a defect summary, a consequence summary and a remedy summary for each campaign. The file also names the manufacturer that filed the recall report. The register quotes the summaries word for word.
Older records are in capital letters in the file. The register shows them in sentence case and keeps every word.
Complaint
A complaint is a report that a person sends to NHTSA. The register counts complaints. It does not read or show the text of a complaint.
NHTSA describes the use of its complaint data in these words.
Complaint information entered into NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation vehicle owner's complaint database is used with other data sources to identify safety issues that warrant investigation and to determine if a safety-related defect trend exists.
NHTSA. Source: NHTSA Datasets and APIs, section Complaints.
A complaint that names 2 components has 2 lines in the file. The register counts 1 complaint and 2 component mentions.
The numbers of crashes, fires, injuries and deaths are the entries of the persons who sent the complaints.
Investigation
The NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation opens an investigation of a possible safety defect. The file gives the opening date and the closing date. The register calls an investigation open when the file has no closing date for it.
How a vehicle gets its page
The recall file has one line for each make, model and model year of a campaign. The complaint file and the investigation file have the same 3 fields. The register joins the files on these fields.
- The join ignores capital letters and punctuation. ACCORD and Accord are one model.
- A variant stays a different model line when NHTSA keeps it apart. Accord and Accord Hybrid are 2 model lines.
- A line with the model year 9999 has no model year. It is not on a vehicle page.
- A campaign that names 3 model years is on the page of each of the 3.
NHTSA writes names in capital letters. The register shows a word of a name with one capital letter, for example Civic. It keeps a model code as NHTSA wrote it, for example CR-V, F-150 and X5.
Per 1,000 component mentions
A complaint can name more than one component. Each component that a complaint names is one component mention. The figure per 1,000 component mentions shows how many of each 1,000 mentions name the component.
A vehicle page shows the figure for the model year, for all model years of the line, and for all vehicles of that model year.
The NHTSA files have no sales figures. A model line with more vehicles on the road gets more complaints. So the register does not compare one make with a different make.
Consumer products
- Firm: the first manufacturer, importer or distributor in the CPSC record. The register removes the company suffix and the address from the name.
- Category: the product type that CPSC gives to the first product of the recall. Most records before 2010 have no product type.
- Hazard name: the hazard type of CPSC. An older record has no hazard type, and the register reads the hazard words in the CPSC hazard text.
- Units: the number in the CPSC text, for example "About 43,000".
One CPSC record has a web address in the place of its title. The register shows the product name of that record as its title.
Food, drugs and devices
FDA publishes one record for each product of a recall. Records of the same recall have one event number. The register puts the records of one event on one page.
- Class of the event: the highest class of its records.
- Status of the event: Ongoing when one or more records have the status Ongoing.
- Dates of the event: the first recall start date and the first report date of its records.
- Firm: the name of the recalling firm as the FDA record spells it. A company with 2 spellings has 2 pages.
openFDA has few records before 2012, so the counts for those years are not complete.
openFDA publishes this statement about the status of a recall.
FDA does not update the status of a recall after the recall has been classified according to its level of hazard. As such, the status of a recall (open, completed, or terminated) will remain unchanged after published in the Enforcement Reports.
openFDA. Source: openFDA, Drug Recall Enforcement Reports, Disclaimer.
Which records get a page
| Page | It has a page when |
|---|---|
| Vehicle model year | 2 or more recall campaigns, or 25 or more complaints |
| Model line and make | One or more model years have a page |
| Component group | 100 or more component mentions |
| Brand of child seats, tires or equipment | 2 or more recall campaigns |
| CPSC recall | Each recall has a page |
| CPSC firm | 3 or more recalls |
| CPSC hazard and product category | 5 or more recalls |
| FDA enforcement event | 2 or more product records, or a recalling firm that has a page |
| FDA recalling firm | 3 or more events |
| Month | Each month from January 2010 |
A model year below the minimum has a row on the page of its model line, with a link to its NHTSA page. A brand below the minimum has its campaign in a table on the page of its type.
Pages kept out of search engines
Some pages tell a search engine not to list them. Each of these pages has little more than one old or small record. It stays at its address, and the links to it work.
- An FDA event with 1 product record, unless it is in Class I. The page of the firm lists the event.
- A month that is more than 24 months old. Recalls by month lists every month.
- A CPSC recall that is the only recall of its firm and is more than 10 years old.
- A list of the CPSC recalls of one year, when the year is more than 5 years old.
- A brand of child seats, tires or equipment with fewer than 3 campaigns.
- A make with fewer than 2 campaigns and fewer than 25 complaints.
- The search page and the watch list, which have no content of their own.
Damaged characters in agency text
Some agency texts have damaged characters. The register repairs a character only when one repair is possible.
- NHTSA text: some apostrophes, quotation marks and dashes came through as 2 or 3 wrong characters. The register puts back the one character.
- FDA text: some punctuation marks lost a part of their code. The register puts back the mark.
- FDA text: an inverted question mark stands for a character that the FDA system did not store. The register repairs it in a temperature, for example 34°F. It also repairs it in 19 words that have one possible letter, for example Crème, and in an apostrophe before a last s.
- After a digit, the register keeps the inverted question mark. The lost character can be a fraction, a degree sign or a micro sign, and a guess can change a quantity.
- In other places the register removes the inverted question mark.
A long agency text stops at the end of a word, with the mark "…". The link to the agency record opens the full text.
Names of persons
Some records name a person as a manufacturer or a firm. The register does not show such a name and makes no page for it. When a name can be the name of a person, the register withholds it.
What "since the last update" compares
At each data update, the program compares the new files with the files of the update before. Updates to the register is the log of the differences.
- A recall that is new in the agency file gets a line in the log. The log tracks recalls dated from 1 January 2025.
- For a vehicle model year, the log tracks 4 figures. What the log tracks lists them.
- For an FDA event, the log tracks the class.
The block "Since the last update" on a vehicle page shows the newest change of these figures for that page. It gives the value before the update and the value after it.
Editorial policy
- The words of an agency are quoted. A defect summary, a hazard, a remedy and a reason for recall have quotation marks and the name of the agency.
- The register does not rewrite a defect or a remedy, and it does not make a summary of one.
- The sentences of the register state counts, dates and names from the files. They use the terms of the agencies. The glossary defines each term once.
- The register gives no advice and no rating, and it does not rank makes, brands or firms.
- The register does not show the text of a complaint or the name of a person.
- An error of the register is corrected at the next build, and the correction log records it.
- A change by an agency shows at the next build after the agency publishes it.
Known gaps
- The register cannot show if a recall applies to one vehicle. NHTSA has the VIN lookup.
- Recalls of meat, poultry and egg products are not included. Data sources gives the reason.
- The complaint file starts in 1995. The recall file starts in 1966.
- CPSC records before 2010 have no product type and no hazard type.
- openFDA has few enforcement records before 2012.
- A count on this register can be different from a count on the agency site. The register reads the files one time each day, and it puts FDA records together by event.
Records by year
The register has 26,360 NHTSA vehicle campaigns, 10,027 CPSC recalls and 27,613 FDA enforcement events.
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