Auto Recalls This Year May Surpass Record 2014, NHTSA Chief Says

Public attention on auto-safety defects likely means U.S. recalls in 2015 will surpass last year’s record of more than sixty million vehicles, the new head of the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said.

Improving the way the agency tracks potential defects and automakers recall cars will be a top priority, NHTSA Administrator Mark Rosekind told reporters in Washington on January 7. Regulators have to make sure safety problems get fixed, he said.

With greater publicity about auto-safety issues, including congressional hearings that featured executives from General Motors Co. (GM), Takata Corp., Honda Motor Co., and Toyota Motor Corp., the agency heard from more than 75,000 vehicle owners in 2014 about potential defects, Rosekind said. That’s up from about 40,000 to 45,000 a year previously, he said.

"I don’t think there’s any question that the hearings, and news reports, brought visibility to these issues, and complaints came in," he said.

Vehicle recalls in the U.S. surpassed the sixty million mark for the first time in a single year in 2014, double the previous annual record of 30.8 million set in 2004, according to an analysis of data on NHTSA’s website. The increase was largely because of the rush to prevent more deaths from defective GM ignition switches and Takata air bags.

"We’ll probably see an increase in recalls" again in 2015, Rosekind said. "This was the year of the recall, right? Put your seat-belt on, folks."

GM alone recalled about 27 million cars and trucks in the U.S. last year, a record for any single automaker. Defective GM ignition switches in small cars have been linked to at least 42 deaths and 58 injuries.