Network / About & Methodology

About & Methodology

Recall Tracker Network is an independent operating picture of vehicle safety recalls. We pull recalls straight from primary government regulators, rewrite them in plain language, rank them by real-world risk, and put every market in one feed.

Where the data comes from

Every recall is ingested directly from the responsible national regulator — no intermediaries and no scraping of third-party sites. Currently live:

United States — NHTSA
Canada — Transport Canada

Additional markets are marked “in build” on the homepage until their regulator feed is wired in and verified. We show real counts only for markets that are actually ingesting; an “in build” market never displays invented numbers.

How a recall becomes a page

Each regulator publishes a bulk data file that we re-download on a schedule (United States daily; Canada daily, picking up Transport Canada’s monthly refresh). We request the file conditionally, so an unchanged file is skipped cheaply. New or changed campaigns are parsed, grouped by campaign number, normalized, and stored. Steady-state syncs only write what actually changed.

For each campaign we derive a make/model-first headline, a readable component label (the raw regulator taxonomy is kept as a separate chip), the affected model-year range and unit count, and a vehicle class used by the scope filter.

How severity is derived

Regulators do not publish a single severity score, and nearly every consequence notice says a defect “increases the risk of a crash,” so that boilerplate is deliberately not treated as a high-severity signal. Instead we apply a conservative, rules-based classifier to the regulator’s own hazard text and component, sorting each recall into one of four levels:

Critical — catastrophic / stop-using-it-now signals (fire, do-not-drive orders, airbag rupture or inadvertent deployment, loss of steering or braking, wheel separation).
High — a concrete dynamic failure mechanism (stall in traffic, reduced braking, steering fault, fuel leak, restraint that may not deploy).
Moderate — a real but non-catastrophic safety recall (the baseline).
Low — purely informational or paperwork (labeling, owner’s-manual, placard).

This is a scannability aid, not a regulatory finding. When in doubt, read the hazard and remedy text on the recall page and follow the official regulator link.

Manufacturer grouping

Regulators file recalls under many legal-entity names for the same company (for example a US arm and a Canadian arm of one automaker). We map those variants onto a single editorial brand so a manufacturer’s recalls read as one story across markets. Companies outside our curated glossary still get their own page, derived from the regulator’s name.

No AI in the data pipeline

All recall data on this site is produced by deterministic code — heuristics, curated maps, and rules. No language model writes, rewrites, translates, or classifies any recall shown here.

Not a government agency. Recall Tracker Network is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by NHTSA, Transport Canada, or any other government body. Always confirm a recall and its remedy with the official regulator or your dealer before acting. Information here is provided “as is,” without warranty — see the Terms.

Last updated July 2026 · build v0.0.29