Recalls by Component

By the US Vehicle Safety Data Editorial Team
Last updated: October 2026

NHTSA has issued 1,106 recall campaigns across the tracked model-years. Grouped by the component named in each campaign, the ranking is dominated by one story: air bags account for 38 campaigns, a figure still shaped by the Takata recalls — the largest recall event in U.S. history — which swept in most major manufacturers. Behind air bags come fuel-system, electrical, service-brake and powertrain campaigns.

Component names are NHTSA's own classifications, reproduced exactly. A campaign counts once here regardless of how many vehicles it covers. On each model-year page you can read the full campaign text — the manufacturer's description of the defect, what can happen if it is not repaired, and the free remedy offered.

The tail of the ranking matters too: beyond the twenty components above sit dozens of narrower categories — latches, visibility equipment, trailer hitches, child-seat anchors — each with a handful of campaigns. Those small rows are often the most vehicle-specific recalls in the database: a latch or visibility campaign usually belongs to one platform and one supplier run, unlike air-bag campaigns that swept the whole industry. When researching a specific car, the narrow-component rows on its own page are frequently the ones that decide whether its production run was affected.