NHTSA is the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration
You should look up your vehicle(s) to see if there’s an issue you may not be aware of.
While investigating vehicle safety data, important parameters include crash testing, recalls, AND complaints. The NHTSA website is a useful tool for inspecting this information.
For example, look up the ratings on a “1998 Toyota Corolla”. The results of the search has three details that I would like to point out.
- Notice the “PRE 2011” label above the filter.
- The star rating is qualitative for performance of the vehicle under various tests. The important detail to remember with qualitative rankings is, for example, 5 smiley faces could be a completely full mug of coffee, while 4 smiley faces could be a mug of coffee with a single gulp in it. The difference from one to the next can be large/small, it’s not like a ruler.
- If you scroll down slowly, a basic introduction to the types of tests conducted is provided.
Now go back to the search field and enter “2023 Toyota Crown”. Notice something a little different? This vehicle has a “Not Rated” note. What that means as described in NHTSA-2006-25772 is the vehicle has not been or will not be New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) tested.
Returning to the search, enter ” Toyota Corolla”, and the output will be all the versions in the database. This is useful, if you would like to look up a vehicle in which the year you have on file may be a little off. For example, if you search for “1997 Honda CR-V”, there will be no result. Searching for ” Honda CR-V” will show a 1998 version.
To inspect recalls and complaint information, click on the active link for the 1998 Honda CR-V. This will bring up another part of the database where the details on 3 recalls and 143 complaints can be accessed. If you scroll down, the complaints are organized by keyword. So if you are particularly interested in a component of the system, you can select the applicable keywords and review the complaints. Does any system particularly stand out? For comparison, go to the top of the page and enter “2022 Honda Civic”. Then select the first option “Hatchback“. Scroll down to the “COMPLAINTS” section. Notice that 377 of 461 complaints regard “Steering”.
To view the recalls (and investigations), this can also be accessed from this page. Look above the total number of complaints, and there will be tabs that can be selected after “COMPLAINTS”, which include “RECALLS”, “INVESTIGATIONS” and “MANUFACTURER COMMUNICATIONS”.
The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration has an excellent database and interface for users seeking safety information on vehicles.