WASHINGTON – Timothy Michaud died in May after falling from the tailgate of a Chevrolet pickup and suffering head injuries.
The 19-year-old from Maine never knew that General Motors Corp. had recalled the pickup two months earlier because the tailgate cables could corrode and snap. At the time of the accident, Michaud’s employer – who owned the 2000 pickup – hadn’t received a recall notice, said Stephen Schwarz, an attorney for the Michaud family.
The pickup was one of the millions of recalled vehicles that go unrepaired each year. Sometimes, vehicle owners are at fault for not getting the repairs.
But some safety experts say automakers and federal regulators share the blame because they haven’t developed a better system to track whether a vehicle has in fact been repaired.
“California requires that whenever you go in for registration, they check what emissions recalls have been done,” said Clarence Ditlow of the Center for Auto Safety, an advocacy group. “If you can do it for emissions recalls, you can do it for safety recalls.”
Kathy DeMeter, director of defect investigations for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said around 72 percent of recalled vehicles are repaired each year. That means that in 2003, when 19.1 million vehicles were recalled, about 5.3 million vehicles weren’t repaired.
While the repair rate is lower than the agency would like, DeMeter said it’s up from a decade ago, when the average was 65 percent. She also said it’s higher than other auto-related products. Only 35 percent of recalled tires and 45 percent of recalled child seats are repaired, because it’s harder to track the owners.
“People are becoming more aware of safety, and manufacturers are doing a better job of notifying them,” DeMeter said.
Automakers are required to give the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration repair data for six quarters after they send a notification letter to owners. If repair rates are exceptionally low, DeMeter said, the agency will occasionally require an automaker to send a second notice.
Ford Motor Co. has one of the highest repair rates – around 80 percent – because it sends multiple letters to owners instead of the one letter the federal agency requires, DeMeter said. Charlie Kopeika, Ford’s manager of recalls, said the company will send up to five letters and postcards over two years.
Ford buys registration data from states to track down vehicles even after they have changed owners. Despite those efforts, a certain percentage of owners are never found, Kopeika said. The oldest Ford recall that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is still tracking, a 1999 recall of Windstar minivans with a fuel tank problem, shows 3,253 of the 83,052 owners were never reached. Automakers don’t have to contact owners if the vehicles have been moved abroad.
Repair rates for newer vehicles are generally higher. As of Sept. 30, one year after they were recalled because of a fuel tank defect, 90.6 percent of 2004 Toyota Sienna minivans had been repaired. By comparison, the repair rate for older models of the Volkswagen New Beetle was 56.7 percent on Sept. 30, a year after they were recalled because of faulty brake lights.
Federal law has required automakers to provide free repairs for safety-related defects since 1966. Since then, more than 366 million vehicles have been recalled in the United States.
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