Nissan North America today announced it will begin sharing vehicle identification numbers (VINS) on Nissan and Infiniti models with open or unperformed recalls to Carfax, a third party database provider, which tracks vehicle history as a paid service for used car buyers. Nissan is joining a growing number of automakers in providing the information to Carfax.
Generally speaking, recall repairs are made on fewer than 70% of eligible vehicles unless they involve well publicized problems such as Toyota’s infamous stuck gas pedals, a situation that federal safety regulators are not comfortable with – particularly since many recalls involve life threatening defects.
The recall information itself will be available for free at recall.carfax.com, instead of the full report, which generally sells for $29.95. The full Carfax report contains information about owners, accidents, airbag deployments, fleet use, flood damage, among other things, which can drastically affect a used car’s utility and value.
The same recall information is also available from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for free (well, it is taxpayers supported as part of DOT’s huge $79 billion budget) at NHTSA’s Vehicle Safety Hotline at 1-888-327-4236 (TTY 1-800-424-9153) or http://www.safercar.gov.
“Adding Nissan and Infiniti to the list of manufacturers providing open recall campaign information to Carfax helps notify car owners and buyers and gets these cars into dealerships to be fixed,” said Larry Gamache, communications director at Carfax.
Carfax says it receives information from more than 34,000 sources, including every U.S. and Canadian provincial motor vehicle agency, as well as many auto auctions, fire and police departments, collision repair facilities, fleet management and rental agencies.
