🚗 NHTSA Recalls, VIN Decoder, Ratings & Investigations, PunkRecordsData

🚀 Pull NHTSA recalls, complaints, crash-test ratings, VIN decode and safety investigations for any vehicle, in one run. A 2020 Honda Accord query returns 5 recalls, 356 consumer complaints, a 5-star crash-test rating with real photo/video URLs, a 44-field VIN decode, and matching NHTSA safety investigations, straight from the government's own APIs.

Scrape NHTSA vehicle safety data straight from api.nhtsa.gov and vpic.nhtsa.dot.gov, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's own public APIs: recall campaigns, consumer complaints, crash-test safety ratings, VIN decoding, and open safety investigations. No login, no session, no HTML scraping, just NHTSA's own structured data returned as clean rows.

Built for the Apify platform: schedule a run per make/model to catch new recalls the week they're issued, decode a fleet of VINs in bulk, or feed crash-test ratings straight into a buying-guide app.

📋 What the NHTSA Vehicle Safety Scraper does

Give it a Make + Model + Model Year (like "honda" / "accord" / 2020) and it returns every recall campaign NHTSA has on file, every consumer complaint filed against that vehicle, and the official crash-test safety rating for every trim NHTSA tested: overall stars plus front/side/rollover breakdowns, driver-assist tech (ESC, forward collision warning, lane departure warning), and direct links to the real crash-test photos and videos. Give it a VIN instead (or as well) and it decodes the full vehicle spec sheet: engine, transmission, body class, plant of manufacture, GVWR and more. It also scans NHTSA's 500 most recent safety investigations for any that name your make or model.

💡 Why it matters: most NHTSA scrapers on the Store return recalls only, and stop there. This one combines 5 separate NHTSA data sources into one dataset (recalls, complaints, crash-test ratings, VIN decode, and investigations), so you're not running 5 different tools to build one vehicle safety profile.

📊 Output

Real sample fields from a verified run on a 2020 Honda Accord, one of 5 record types identified by recordType.

recall-record (primary, one row per recall campaign):

Field	Type	Example
🏷️ campaignNumber	string	20V771000
🔧 component	string	ELECTRICAL SYSTEM:BODY CONTROL MODULE:SOFTWARE
📅 reportReceivedDate	string	10/12/2020
📝 summary / consequence / remedy	string	full recall text, verbatim from NHTSA
🚫 parkIt / parkOutside	Yes/No	do-not-drive / park-outside safety flags

complaint-record (one row per consumer complaint):

Field	Type	Example
🆔 odiNumber	number	11762567
🧩 components	string	FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE
📝 summary	string	the driver's own complaint text
💥 crash / fire	Yes/No	incident flags
🤕 numberOfInjuries / numberOfDeaths	number	0 / 0

safety-rating-record (one row per crash-tested trim):

Field	Type	Example
🖼️ imageUrl	string	real crash-test photo URL
⭐ overallRating	string	5
🚗 overallFrontCrashRating / overallSideCrashRating / rolloverRating	string	5 / 5 / 5
🛡️ electronicStabilityControl / forwardCollisionWarning / laneDepartureWarning	string	Standard
🎬 crashTestMedia	object	6 real photo/video URLs (front, side, pole)

vin-decode-record (one row per VIN):

Field	Type	Example
🔑 vin	string	1HGCM82633A004352
🏭 manufacturerName / plantCity / plantCountry	string	AMERICAN HONDA MOTOR CO., INC. / MARYSVILLE / UNITED STATES (USA)
⚙️ engineCylinders / displacementLiters / fuelTypePrimary	string	6 / 2.998832712 / Gasoline
🧾 additionalSpecs	object	every other non-empty decoded field NHTSA returns (24+ more on a typical VIN)

investigation-record (one row per matching open/closed safety investigation):

Field	Type	Example
🆔 nhtsaId	string	EA26006
📌 subject	string	Electronic Brake Module Component Failure
📄 description	string	full ODI investigation narrative
🚦 status	string	O (open) / C (closed)

✨ Why choose this Actor

• 5 real NHTSA data sources in one dataset, not just a recall list: recalls, complaints, crash-test ratings, VIN decode, and safety investigations.
• Real crash-test media URLs. safety-rating-record includes direct links to NHTSA's own crash-test photos and videos, something recall-only competitors don't touch.
• VIN decode with a catch-all. 20 curated named fields plus additionalSpecs for everything else NHTSA's vPIC decoder returns, so nothing gets silently dropped.
• Investigation matching, a data source most competitors don't expose at all: scans NHTSA's 500 most recent open safety investigations for your make/model.
• Government data, directly sourced. Every field comes straight from api.nhtsa.gov / vpic.nhtsa.dot.gov, no login or API key required anywhere.

📈 How it compares to alternatives

Measured against the closest published NHTSA actors on the Apify Store:

Actor	Primary price	Billable events
Recall/complaint monitoring tool (strongest competitor)	$0.08 / alert	3 (alert, digest, report; a monitoring product, not raw data export)
Other NHTSA recall scrapers (5+ actors)	Free–low cost	1-2 each, recalls only
This Actor	See Store pricing	5 (recall, complaint, safety rating, VIN decode, investigation), all raw NHTSA source data

🚀 How to use

1. Create a free Apify account. New accounts get $5 in free credit.
2. Open the NHTSA Vehicle Safety Scraper and enter a Make, Model and Model Year (e.g. "honda" / "accord" / 2020), a VIN, or both.
3. Click Start and wait for the run to finish.
4. Download your data as CSV, Excel, JSON or XML, or pull it via the API.

💼 Business use cases

Automotive marketplaces & classifieds Show recall status, crash-test ratings and open investigations next to every used-car listing.

Insurance & fleet management Screen a fleet's VINs for open recalls and safety investigations before renewal or acquisition.

Consumer & buying-guide apps Pull crash-test star ratings and driver-assist tech availability to power a vehicle comparison tool.

Journalism & consumer advocacy Track complaint volume and investigation status across a manufacturer's lineup for accountability reporting.

🔌 Automating NHTSA Vehicle Safety Scraper

Connect this Actor to Make, Zapier, Slack or Airbyte to push new recalls or investigations into a spreadsheet, database or channel automatically. Schedule a weekly run per make/model to catch new recalls the week NHTSA issues them.

🌟 Beyond business use cases

Research: academic transportation-safety and public-health research using real NHTSA recall and complaint data. Personal projects: check your own car's recall status and crash-test rating before a road trip. Non-profit: consumer-advocacy and road-safety accountability projects. Experimentation: train defect-prediction or NLP models against real complaint and investigation text.

🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

Paste this Actor's Store page into ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity and ask: "Does this NHTSA scraper include crash-test ratings and VIN decoding, or just recalls?" The README and input schema are structured so AI assistants can answer accurately from the page alone.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Does this only return recalls, or also complaints and ratings? All 5: recalls, consumer complaints, crash-test safety ratings, VIN decode, and safety investigations, in one run.

Do I need a VIN, or is Make/Model/Year enough? Either works alone. Make + Model + Model Year returns recalls, complaints, ratings and investigations. A VIN alone returns the full decoded spec sheet. Provide both for a complete profile.

Do I need an API key for NHTSA? No. Every field comes from NHTSA's own public APIs; no login, session or API key required anywhere.

What does the crash-test media include? Direct URLs to NHTSA's own front, side and pole crash-test photos and videos for that specific trim, when NHTSA has tested it.

Why do investigation results sometimes look approximate? NHTSA's investigations endpoint has no official vehicle-name filter (undocumented, no public filter parameter). This Actor scans the 500 most recent investigations and keyword-matches your make/model against the subject and description text, a stated ceiling, not the full historical archive.

What happens if NHTSA hasn't crash-tested my exact trim? The Actor returns ratings for whatever trims NHTSA actually tested for that model year; untested trims simply don't produce a safety-rating-record, they aren't invented.

Can I decode multiple VINs in one run? This version decodes one VIN per run alongside the make/model search. Run it once per VIN for a batch, or reach out for a custom bulk version.

How fresh is the data? As fresh as NHTSA's own APIs, recalls and investigations typically appear within days of being filed with the agency.

What does additionalSpecs contain on a VIN decode? Every field NHTSA's vPIC decoder returned a real value for for that VIN, beyond the 20 curated named fields, so no decoded spec is ever silently dropped.

Does a numberOfDeaths or numberOfInjuries field mean the complaint is verified? No, these are self-reported by the person filing the complaint with NHTSA, not independently verified by the agency or by this Actor.

🔌 Integrate with any app

Every run's output is available as CSV, Excel, JSON or XML, or through Apify's API and client libraries for Python and JavaScript.

🔗 Recommended Actors

Browse the rest of the PunkRecordsData catalog for more scrapers covering government data, sports data, prediction markets and social media intelligence.

💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete PunkRecordsData collection.

🆘 Need Help? contact.punkrecordsdata@gmail.com

⚠️ Disclaimer: This is an independent tool, not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. It collects only publicly available data from NHTSA's own APIs.