Vehicle Defect & Complaint Intelligence

Aggregate NHTSA vehicle complaints, recalls, and safety investigations for any make, model, and year. This actor queries the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) public API to retrieve consumer complaints filed against specific vehicles, along with manufacturer recall campaigns, giving you a comprehensive view of defect trends, severity patterns, and safety risks.

What It Does

The Vehicle Defect Intelligence actor pulls structured data from the NHTSA complaints and recalls databases. For any vehicle make and model combination, it returns detailed records including affected components, incident summaries, crash and injury counts, fire reports, death counts, and official recall campaign numbers. Results are sorted by date descending so the most recent safety issues appear first.

You can search across all model years or narrow your query to a specific year. Complaints and recalls are combined into a single dataset with a recordType field to distinguish between the two, making it easy to filter and analyze downstream.

Use Cases

• Lemon Law Research: Attorneys and consumers can document recurring defects for lemon law claims by showing patterns of complaints across vehicle components.
• Fleet Management: Fleet operators can monitor defect trends for vehicles in their inventory, proactively scheduling maintenance before safety issues escalate.
• Auto Dealer Risk Assessment: Dealerships can evaluate trade-in and used vehicle inventory risk by checking complaint and recall history before acquisition.
• Plaintiff Attorney Research: Personal injury attorneys can identify patterns of manufacturer negligence by aggregating crash, injury, and death statistics across complaint records.
• Consumer Purchase Decisions: Buyers researching a used vehicle can review its complete complaint and recall history before committing to a purchase.
• Insurance Underwriting: Insurers can factor vehicle defect history into risk models and pricing decisions for auto policies.

Example Input

{
  "make": "Toyota",
  "model": "Camry",
  "modelYear": 2020,
  "includeRecalls": true,
  "maxResults": 200
}

Search across all years for a specific make and model:

{
  "make": "Tesla",
  "model": "Model 3",
  "maxResults": 500
}

Example Output

{
  "source": "NHTSA",
  "recordType": "complaint",
  "odiNumber": "11456789",
  "make": "TOYOTA",
  "model": "CAMRY",
  "modelYear": 2020,
  "component": "ENGINE",
  "summary": "The vehicle experienced sudden loss of power while driving on the highway at approximately 65 mph...",
  "dateReceived": "2024-03-15",
  "crashCount": 0,
  "injuryCount": 0,
  "fireCount": 0,
  "deathCount": 0,
  "nhtsaCampaignNumber": null,
  "url": "https://www.nhtsa.gov/vehicle/2020/TOYOTA/CAMRY",
  "scrapedAt": "2025-01-15T10:30:00.000Z"
}

Pricing

This actor uses pay-per-event pricing:

• Actor start: $0.35 per run
• Per result: $0.03 per vehicle defect record returned

Tips

• Both make and model are required fields. Use the manufacturer's official naming (e.g., "Ford" not "FORD", "F-150" not "F150").
• Omit modelYear to get complaints and recalls across all years for comprehensive trend analysis.
• Set includeRecalls to false if you only want consumer complaints without official recall data.
• Crash, injury, fire, and death counts are self-reported by consumers in complaints and may not reflect official investigation findings.
• Recall records will have nhtsaCampaignNumber populated while complaint records will have it as null.
• Results are capped by maxResults after combining complaints and recalls, with most recent records prioritized.

Data Source

All data comes from the NHTSA API, the official public API of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The NHTSA maintains the most comprehensive database of vehicle safety complaints and recall campaigns in the United States. No authentication is required and the API is completely free to use.