Sources and methods
How the recall and complaint figures are counted
8,889 year-make-model pages and 7,708 recall campaigns, read from NHTSA's recall and owner-complaint files.
Sources and data dates
- Recalls — the vehicles and campaign texts (defect, risk, fix) come from NHTSA's recalls API, walked by model year, make and model from 2000 (cars) and 2010 (RVs, motorcycles, trailers); only versions with at least one recall have a page. Report dates, units affected, build dates, owner notification dates and who initiated each recall come from NHTSA's flat recall files of October 26, 2026.
- Owner complaints — NHTSA's complaints file (FLAT_CMPL), every vehicle safety complaint received since January 1995: 1,483,202 complaints, received through October 22, 2026. Only counts are used. Complaint narratives, VINs, cities and names are not copied.
- Crash-test stars — NHTSA's 5-Star Safety Ratings (NCAP) API, loaded on September 14, 2026. Where a model year has several tested versions, the best-rated one is shown.
- Crash-test photos, rollover risk and safety technology — the same API, retrieved October 28, 2026, for every tested version of a model year. Photos are NHTSA's own, shown from static.nhtsa.gov and not copied here. In the frontal test the vehicle hits a rigid barrier at 35 mph; in the side barrier test a moving barrier hits the driver's side at 38.5 mph; in the side pole test (2011 models on) the vehicle slides sideways into a pole at 20 mph. Rollover risk is NHTSA's estimate of the chance of a rollover in a single-vehicle crash, from the vehicle's stability and a dynamic maneuvering test. Stability control, forward collision warning and lane departure warning are listed as NHTSA records them: standard, optional or not offered. Comparisons with other model years and other vehicles use the rated vehicles on this site. Shown first on the pages with the most search visits.
- Model names — NHTSA's vPIC catalogue, for spellings such as CR-V, RAV4 and BMW.
- Terms — NHTSA's Terms of Use state that information on its site is public information that may be distributed or copied. NHTSA makes no guarantee of accuracy or completeness; neither does this site, which is not affiliated with NHTSA.
How complaints are counted
A complaint is one NHTSA reference number (ODI number) for one model year, make and model, counted once however many components it names. The component groups are the first level of NHTSA's component names ("AIR BAGS", "POWER TRAIN"); one complaint can name several, so their shares add up to more than 100%. Crashes and fires are the complaint's own yes/no fields; injuries and deaths are the numbers the owner reported. Mileage is the median of the complaints that gave one.
Complaints are unverified reports from owners. A model sold in large numbers collects more of them than a rare one, and NHTSA's file holds no sales figures to divide by.
How the years to avoid are ranked
Each model year is measured over the same window of its life: complaints NHTSA received from January 1 of the year before the model year to December 31 of the third year after it (2018 model: 2017–2021). A newer model year whose window has not closed by the date of the complaints file is not ranked.
NHTSA receives more or fewer complaints overall from one period to the next, so each year's count is divided by the complaints NHTSA received about all vehicles of that model year in the same window. Each year is then compared with the median year of the same model.
A model is ranked when at least 5 model years from 2000 have a closed window and at least 10 complaints in it. A year is listed to avoid when it reaches 2 times the median year and has at least 50 complaints in its window. The best-measured years are the three lowest. Recalls per year are shown beside the ranking and break ties; they do not move a year into or out of the list. These thresholds were set before the ranking was computed.
284 of 1,971 models qualify for a ranking. 191 of them have at least one year to avoid, 492 model years in all. The ranking describes complaints, not reliability: a year with many complaints may have had one well-publicised defect that a recall has since fixed.
Which pages are offered to search engines
Every page stays online and linked. Pages with little data of their own carry noindex, follow and are left out of the sitemap. The thresholds were set before the pages were counted:
- a year-make-model page is listed with at least 50 owner complaints in NHTSA's file: 3,084 of 8,889;
- a model page is listed when it has a years-to-avoid ranking: 284 of 1,971;
- a campaign page is listed when NHTSA counts at least 100,000 potentially affected vehicles: 1,208 of 7,708;
- a make page is listed when one of its year or model pages is.
Pages readers have landed on stay listed whatever the thresholds say (6 year pages, from Cloudflare Web Analytics, September 1 to October 26, 2026). The sitemap date of a page is the date of the newest record it shows, and moves when that content changes.
Corrections
October 26, 2026:
- Recall report dates were read month-first from NHTSA's day-first API dates: some showed the wrong month and many showed none. They now come from NHTSA's recall file.
- Complaint counts came from an API query that also matched related models (a hatchback page counted the sedan's complaints). They now come from the complaints file, by exact model.
- Model pages named a "cleanest year"; every page on the site has at least one recall, so the claim is gone.
- Pages no longer call a recall "open": whether a repair is still outstanding shows only on a VIN check.
- Make and model names follow NHTSA's spelling (BMW, GMC, CR-V).