Dangerous delays to recall rectification, says report

The vast majority of vehicles subject to recall have not yet gone in for repair, which means there are millions of potentially dangerous cars on the road.

Recalls topped 51 million in 2015 alone, but the number of owners taking their cars in for repair falls well short of that figure.  In fact, more than 45 million cars recalled between 2013 and 2015 have still not been repaired.

These figures have been supplied by JD Power and Associates following their analysis of the data. Vice president Renee Stephens said, ‘The fact that there are all these vehicles on the road, it poses a possible danger both to the driver and the other drivers that are around.’

However, their research established that it wasn’t all the responsibility of drivers, since parts were often in short supply for large recalls – JD Power found that for recalls of over a million units, less than half are repaired.

This is certainly the case for recalls of Takata airbags, which now includes more than 70 million vehicles. Waiting times for replacements are up to three months.