Three in 10 Recalled Vehicles Aren’t Fixed

Every year, millions of cars, vans and pickups are recalled for safety-related repairs under a federal law designed to cut the toll of injuries and deaths on the nation’s highways.

But 30% of these vehicles never get fixed, staying on the road, safety defects and all.

Such defects are not always life-threatening, and often do not lead to failures, but not correcting them can and does lead to serious injuries, as James Jerra can attest.

In October 1997, the 40-year-old Lomita resident suffered second- and third-degree burns when the heater core in his ’84 BMW blew up, spraying scalding coolant on his legs. Only later did Jerra learn that his car was among hundreds of thousands recalled to fix the cooling system. But he had not been notified.

The flood of unrepaired vehicles reflects the purely voluntary nature of the recall program, and the tendency of car owners to procrastinate or avoid repair shops.

But at least a few owners, like Jerra, don’t find out their vehicles have been recalled. And safety advocates accuse federal safety officials and auto makers of being nonchalant about the poor response, arguing that much more can be done to slash the number of unrepaired vehicles.

A review by The Times shows that federal officials, who can require a manufacturer to issue a second recall notice if the initial response is poor, do not always take this step.

“When one out of every three defective vehicles stays on the road, that’s . . . a failure,” said Clarence M. Ditlow, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety, a consumer group based in Washington, D.C. It means that “one out of three people who have a safety-related problem still ride at risk.”

“I think anything less than 90% [correction of defects] is low,” said Ralph Hoar, an auto safety consultant in suburban Washington, D.C. “People don’t knowingly drive around cars that have declared hazards in them, and risk their life and the lives of friends and family.”

At the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, which oversees the recall program, associate administrator Ken Weinstein said the agency is “not satisfied” with the response to safety recalls. “We’d like it to be 100%,” Weinstein said, but “realistically, that’s probably not likely [to] happen.”

Since 1966, when Congress passed the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act, more than 6,800 recalls have been performed, involving nearly 250 million vehicles, government figures show.

The law requires manufacturers to recall and repair, free of charge, all vehicles with safety-related defects, ranging from failure-prone steering and brakes to leaky fuel systems and breakable seat belts. The same mandate applies to producers of related equipment, such as tires and child safety seats.

After three decades of fine-tuning the program, the proportion of recalled vehicles that gets repaired--known as the “completion” or “correction” rate--is at an all-time high of about 70%. Even so, the figures paint too rosy a picture.

Inflating the numbers are occasional recalls that involve simply mailing safety advisories to vehicle owners. Correction rates on these are nearly 100%. Also boosting the rate are recalls of new or nearly new vehicles, many of them still on dealers’ lots and easily fixed.

For larger recalls involving older vehicles the response is often dismal. Consider:

* A 1995 recall by Nissan of nearly 750,000 model year 1989-95 Maximas and Stanzas to fix two defects--a corrosion problem that could result in fuel leaks and fires and a defective rear seat belt that could fail in an accident. According to NHTSA records, the correction rate was 29.5%.

* A 1993 recall of 356,000 model year 1992-93 Geo Metros with hoods that could fly open. Correction rate: 48.2%.

* A 1992 recall of 555,000 1983-87 Renault Alliances and Encores to fix a defect that could result in hot coolant burning the feet of drivers or clouding up windows. Correction rate: 24.6%.

* A 1993 recall by General Motors of more than 600,000 1985-91 Chevy trucks and vans with defective seat and recliner mechanisms that could cause seats to flop back and drivers to lose control. Correction rate: 41.9%.

* A 1993 recall by Mazda of about 250,000 model year 1988-91 passenger cars--626s and 929s--with doors that could fly open. Correction rate: 38.9%.

For these and other recalls, manufacturers rely on R.L. Polk Co., which has a vast database of 230 million vehicle registration records from all 50 states. An auto maker initiating a recall gives the Southfield, Mich., consulting firm a list of vehicle identification numbers, or VINs, to be matched with names and addresses of current vehicle owners. The manufacturer then mails owners notices that explain the defect and the need to contact a dealer to schedule repairs.

The reasons for failing to respond are many and varied.

Some owners simply don’t read the notices or accidentally discard them as junk mail. Others never get word of the recall, because the notices go either to prior addresses or to former owners--as happened to Jerra.

After his accident, Jerra learned that his car was one of 375,000 that BMW had recalled in 1993. His car had been unregistered for a while, and the recall notice had been mailed to its original owner in Ohio.

Jerra has filed a lawsuit over the accident; his case is being tried in Los Angeles County Superior Court in Torrance. BMW says it is not liable for Jerra’s injuries, which it says resulted from his failure to maintain the car properly.

The BMW recall achieved a correction rate of just 48%, and among owners whose cars weren’t fixed, Jerra is not the only one to suffer.

A New Jersey owner who also wasn’t notified and who suffered third-degree burns when his heater core blew up won $886,000 in damages from the firm in April.

Many owners elect not to respond to recall notices, reasoning that if the suspect component has functioned well so far, it probably always will.

Indeed, while defective components are susceptible to failure, often only a small percentage actually does fail.

If failure could mean catastrophe (for instance, sudden loss of steering or brakes), more people respond to the recall. If the danger would not be immediate (such as seat belts prone to jamming), many owners would rather monitor the problem than make a trip to the dealer.

Response is also lower for vehicles that are old or in bad shape. The defect that caused the recall “may not be as bad as the other issues [the owner] is already concerned with,” said Jonathan White, chief of NHTSA’s recall analysis division.

Fear of being suckered into needless repairs also lowers the response. Auto makers provide dealers with modest amounts for labor for recall repairs. This can heighten a shop’s impulse to look for other problems, prompting some mechanics to see “things that aren’t there,” said Steve Johnson, who runs an automotive shop in San Bernardino County.

Also dampening the response is the long interval that can separate a recall announcement from the availability of replacement parts. When auto makers announce a recall but say it will take weeks or months to obtain parts, owners reason that the problem must not be great.

Yet the results of such delays can be dire.

Ryan Campbell, a Thousand Oaks youth, suffered severe injuries in the crash of his family’s Chrysler minivan in September 1995.

In March of that year, the auto maker had agreed to replace the rear lift-gate latches on 4.3 million of its minivans, following reports that passengers had been ejected when the lift-gates popped open in crashes.

But Alvin Campbell, Ryan’s father, said that when he called a local dealer to get the sturdier latch for his ’88 Dodge Caravan, he was told that the new latches were not yet available and that Chrysler “would be notifying us when they had the ability to install the parts.”

A few months later, while en route to a family event, Linda Campbell, Ryan’s mother, allowed the van to drift and over-corrected, causing it to veer off the road and crash.

The lift-gate popped open and Ryan, then 17, was ejected through the back, suffering serious head injuries that for several weeks left him in a coma. He is much improved since, but according to his parents, continues to suffer memory impairment and limited use of his right arm and leg.

Alvin Campbell said he was astonished a few months after the accident to get a notice that his replacement latch was now available. Without admitting liability, Chrysler agreed to an out-of-court settlement of a lawsuit stemming from the accident, and Alvin Campbell said the money will help deal with some of Ryan’s special needs, though it “doesn’t heal our son.”

Faced with a weak response to a recall, NHTSA can direct the manufacturer to mail a second notice. But an NHTSA official acknowledged the agency does not always do so. BMW, for example, wasn’t asked to renotify owners about the cooling system recall, despite the low correction rate.

The decision to require renotification depends on “whether anyone believes that renotification is going to make a difference,” as well as “on the amount of risk” associated with the defect, the official said.

In interviews with The Times, representatives of several manufacturers said they often send second notices without prompting from NHTSA and sometimes go beyond requirements by running ads or taking other steps to alert owners.

“Not all recalls are equal,” said DaimlerChrysler spokeswoman Sheila Gruber McLean, adding that the severity of the risk dictates the amount of extra effort.

Some companies have better correction rates than others. In recalls completed in recent years, Ford has led the way with a correction rate of 80.4%, according to NHTSA figures. Among other major producers, GM has a correction rate of 74.9%, followed by Nissan at 71.6%, Chrysler and Volvo at 71.5%, Volkswagen at 71.1%, BMW at 68.6%, Honda at 67.5%, Toyota at 66.2% and Hyundai at 57.6%.

Such comparisons can be misleading, according to some Japanese manufacturers, who say their vehicles are rarely in the shop for service or warranty work, which is when recall repairs are often done. “Typically, we don’t have a lot of things that go wrong,” so “our customers don’t deal with the dealer as often,” said Toyota spokesman John Hanson.

But the superior record of GM’s Saturn unit--which boasts of treating customers like family--suggests that all other companies can do better.

Saturn claims a correction rate of 95%. It helps that most Saturns are fairly new (1991 was the first model year). But according to Mark Ray, Saturn’s director of service and parts operations, it also helps that Saturn sets a goal of completing 90% of recall repairs within 90 days and offers inducements to owners--such as free barbecue meals and movie tickets--to meet the goal.

Industry critics say Saturn’s record should not be the exception but the rule.

Among changes some critics propose is having dealers offer loaner cars to induce more owners to take their vehicles in. “It is a nuisance to take your car in . . . and either wait around or leave it while it gets fixed, and what do you do for transportation in the meantime?”said Hoar, the safety consultant.

“When manufacturers acknowledge that . . . there’s a hazard and they need to repair it . . . they ought to” provide transportation.

Others say correction rates would soar if owners could not register their vehicles without clearing outstanding recalls. With a somewhat different focus, the approach has been successfully tried in California, where vehicles cannot be re-registered unless owners respond to any outstanding recalls on their pollution control systems.

Before 1991, when the California Air Resources Board put the rule into effect, fewer than 30% of owners heeded emission control recalls, said ARB spokesman Jerry Martin. Today, he said, the correction rate tops 95%.

“Virtually everyone does it [gets the repairs] for the obvious reason that you can’t re-register the car until you do,” Martin said.

NHTSA could not impose a similar requirement for safety repairs. Legislation would have to pass in Congress if not in individual states.

The idea has “definitely been kicked around within the agency . . . throughout the ‘90s,” said an NHTSA official who would not speak for attribution. He said that because auto makers and the states would strongly object to the costs, NHTSA has not pushed the idea.

Not known for boldness, the agency nonetheless has come under attack for taking safety advocacy too far. In 1997, for example, during hearings before a House Commerce subcommittee, NHTSA came under harsh attack for improper lobbying because an agency official had urged Illinois lawmakers to pass a motorcycle helmet law.

Despite pressure to maintain a low profile, safety advocates say the agency should show more backbone.

“NHTSA should be telling the Congress . . . that the recall completion rate is way too low and we ought to be doing more,” said Ditlow of the Center for Auto Safety. “That is their mission.”

About This Series

Yesterday: Delaying tactics by auto makers and a toothless regulatory agency weaken the nation’s vehicle recall system, allowing potentially unsafe vehicles to remain on the road.

Today: Even when potentially unsafe vehicles are recalled for repair, nearly a third are never taken in to be fixed.

On the Web: The complete series can be read online at https://www.latimes.com.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration maintains a Web site where a consumer can type in the make, model and year of a vehicle to see if a recall has been issued. Go to https://www.nhtsa.dot.gov and click on “Recalls.”