Free Press investigation into recalled vehicles: What to know

The Detroit Free Press spent months looking into one of the more vexing problems in the auto industry: the failure to get recalled passenger cars and trucks in the U.S. off the road and fixed, especially older vehicles.

Here's what we found:

• Without any federal requirement on auto companies to fix all of the potentially dangerous used vehicles, the annual repair rate rarely exceeds 65% — and much less than that for older vehicles.
• Parts to fix problems aren’t always available, even after consumers are notified about their faulty vehicles. Sometimes, no one knows immediately how to fix them.
• Vehicle recall campaigns do not place any threshold for manufacturers to reach or deadlines to fix all of the potentially flawed cars and trucks. Close federal oversight is rare.
• Proposed reforms are stalled, despite recommendations of federal officials, industry insiders and safety advocates.
• Used car retailers continue to sell potentially faulty cars and trucks with open recalls in most places while new car dealers legally can't.
• States around the country register vehicles as road-worthy despite unfixed safety defects. Most of them, though their departments of motor vehicles, have failed to sign on to a federal effort to increase awareness about recalls.

Some federal officials and safety advocates think they have solutions to bolster the repair rate, including:

• Ban dealers from selling used cars with open recalls.
• Modernize the notification for recalls beyond U.S. mail by requiring the use of email and texts.
• Require new cars and trucks to be equipped with in-vehicle recall notification systems.
• Encourage or even mandate automakers reach out beyond the dealership to complete repairs of recalled vehicles, including mobile repairs, the use of independent repair facilities, over-the-air updates for software issues and the setup of temporary repair facilities.
• Boost the availability of replacement parts.
• Develop a national vehicle database to track whether recall issues have been repaired.
• Bolster federal efforts to encourage states to match vehicle identification numbers to state registration information.
• Ask states to notify vehicle owners about their recall status when they renew their driver’s license, check their emissions and undergo state safety inspections. In the most severe remedy, they could even hold up registrations for vehicles with open recalls, citing a safety hazard.

This report received funding from the Abrams Nieman Fellowships for Local Investigative Journalism.

Have a question about vehicle recalls or a story to share? Contact Matthew Dolan: 313-223-4743 or msdolan@freepress.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @matthewsdolan