Recall Campaign

What It Means

Every recall campaign is assigned a unique nine-character NHTSA campaign identifier following the format YYVXXXXXX, where YY is the two-digit calendar year, V indicates vehicle (E for equipment, T for tire, C for child seat), and XXXXXX is a sequential number (for example, 21V554000 was Ford's rear-view camera recall of 2021). The campaign file, publicly available through NHTSA's Recalls API, includes the defect description, the consequence to safety, the corrective remedy, the component category, the reported manufacturing date range, and the estimated population of affected units. Manufacturers file a "Part 573 Defect and Noncompliance Report" within five business days of deciding that a defect exists and must begin owner notification within 60 days. The campaign also includes a "Chronology of Events" explaining how and when the manufacturer became aware of the defect, a disclosure that is often used by investigators and plaintiffs to evaluate whether the manufacturer delayed reporting in violation of the TREAD Act. Recall campaigns range in size from a handful of prototypes to tens of millions of vehicles; the GM ignition switch recall of 2014 ultimately covered about 30 million vehicles across multiple campaigns and resulted in a $900 million deferred prosecution agreement and 124 confirmed deaths. RecallCheck pulls every campaign that lists a given make/model/year combination from NHTSA's public feed, displays the full defect summary and remedy, and links directly to the Part 573 PDF so users can read the primary source. Campaigns are refreshed daily so newly filed recalls appear on vehicle pages within 24 hours of NHTSA posting.

Recall Campaign is one of the NHTSA or vehicle-safety concepts that recurs across RecallIndex. The definition above is the technical answer; below is how the concept connects to the NHTSA data that drives every vehicle page on the site.

In the RecallIndex Safety Score, this concept feeds one of the four factor weights — recall severity (40 percent), complaint frequency (30 percent), crash and fire reports (20 percent), or trend direction (10 percent). The methodology page on the site walks through every input in detail.

Frequently Asked Questions