Safety Score

What It Means

The RecallCheck Safety Score is a proprietary 0 to 100 composite rating (translated to A through F letter grades) that evaluates a vehicle's overall safety record using publicly available NHTSA data keyed to each specific make/model/year combination. The score combines four weighted factors. Recall Severity contributes 40 percent, measuring the total count of recall campaigns and weighting each campaign by component category, safety-critical components (airbags, brakes, steering, fuel system, wheels/tires) receive higher weight than cosmetic or minor components. Complaint Frequency contributes 30 percent, normalizing the count of NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation consumer complaints by the estimated registered population of that make/model/year, so popular vehicles are not unfairly penalized for absolute complaint counts. Crash/Fire Reports contributes 20 percent, using the structured Crash, Fire, Injury, and Fatality flags in the NHTSA complaint database to weight complaints that reported real-world harm more heavily than reports of near-misses. The Trend factor contributes 10 percent, measuring whether the rate of new complaints and new recalls is accelerating or decelerating over the most recent three-year window compared to the vehicle's lifetime baseline. Grade thresholds are: A (90-100, excellent), B (80-89, good), C (70-79, average), D (60-69, below average), F (below 60, poor). Safety Score is refreshed whenever the daily NHTSA data pipeline runs, so newly filed recalls and complaints flow into scores within 24 hours. The Safety Score is intended as one decision-input among many, owners should still check the IIHS and NHTSA NCAP crashworthiness star ratings, Consumer Reports reliability data, and their own test drive, but it is the most comprehensive NHTSA-based composite available to consumers for free on a per-VIN-family basis.

Safety Score 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