Campaign numberCAMPNO

NHTSA's identifier for a recall, and the one to quote to a dealer. Nine characters: two digits for the year, a letter for the type, then six more. 20V314000 is the 314th vehicle recall opened in 2020. The letter is V for vehicle, E for equipment, T for tire and C for child restraint.

Do Not Drive advisoryDO_NOT_DRIVE

The strongest warning NHTSA and a manufacturer issue to owners: stop driving the vehicle until the recall repair is done. Added to the public recall record in May 2025 and rare — it applies to roughly 0.7% of campaigns on record.

Park Outside advisoryPARK_OUTSIDE

A warning that the vehicle can catch fire while parked with the engine off, so it should be kept away from buildings and other vehicles until repaired. Also added in May 2025, and rarer still than Do Not Drive.

Potentially affectedPOTAFF

How many vehicles the manufacturer believes could carry the defect. It is a production-batch estimate, not a count of confirmed faults, and not a count of vehicles that actually failed. A large number here does not mean a large number of incidents.

Manufacture windowBGMAN / ENDMAN

The build-date range the recall covers. If a vehicle was built outside it, the recall does not apply — which is the fastest way for an owner to rule themselves out. The manufacturer publishes it on about 65% of campaigns; where it is missing, the model and year list is the only guide.

Report received dateRCDATE

When the manufacturer filed its Part 573 defect report with NHTSA. This is the date a recall becomes public, and the one used to order recalls by recency on this site.

Owner notification dateODATE

When the manufacturer began writing to registered owners. It usually follows the report date by several weeks, because parts and dealer instructions have to be in place first. An absent date means letters have not gone out yet, not that they never will.

Part 573 report

The defect and noncompliance report a manufacturer must file with NHTSA within five working days of deciding a safety defect exists. Every recall in this record began as one.

FMVSSFMVSS

Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard. Where a recall is a noncompliance rather than a defect, this is the standard the vehicle failed to meet — FMVSS 208 covers occupant crash protection, 110 tire selection and rims, and so on.

Recall initiated byINFLUENCED_BY

Who started the recall. MFR means the manufacturer opened it voluntarily, ODI that it followed an NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation inquiry, and OVSC that it came out of NHTSA compliance testing. Most are manufacturer-initiated; roughly one in six follows federal pressure.

ODI

NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigation. It reviews owner complaints, opens investigations, and can push a manufacturer into a recall it did not open voluntarily.

Remedy completion rate

The share of affected vehicles a manufacturer reports as repaired. Filed quarterly, so it lags reality by up to three months, and it only exists for recalls open since 2015 — about 39% of the record.

UnreachableTTLUNREACH

Vehicles the manufacturer could not trace to a current owner. They are counted separately from unrepaired vehicles, because no amount of dealer capacity will fix a car nobody can find.

VIN

Vehicle Identification Number: 17 characters unique to one vehicle, on the dashboard by the windscreen and in the driver's door frame. It never contains the letters I, O or Q, so they are not mistaken for 1 and 0.

vPIC

NHTSA's public VIN decoder. It turns a VIN into make, model and year, which is how a VIN lookup on this site identifies a vehicle. It does not know anything about recalls.

Equipment recall

A recall on a part rather than a whole vehicle — a tire, a child seat, a tow bar, an aftermarket component. The campaign number carries E, T or C instead of V, and the recalling manufacturer is often the part maker rather than the vehicle brand.

Technical service bulletinTSB

A repair instruction a manufacturer issues to its dealers. A TSB is not a recall: it is not safety-mandated and the work is not automatically free.