United StatesSaferCar is your connection to automotive safety recall information directly from the official source—the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Every year, NHTSA manages millions of recalls affecting vehicles, tires, car seats and related equipment. SaferCar will notify you about any safety recalls affecting your vehicle or equipment as long as you leave it running in the background. With the SaferCar app, you can: • Enter a vehicle identification number (VIN) for as many vehicles as you own. Your virtual garage will accept VINs for cars, trucks, vans, SUVs, motorcycles and more. • Enter any related automotive products you own that could be subject to safety recalls, like tires, car seats and trailers. • Opt-in to receive notifications on your mobile device for each of the vehicles and products you’ve entered. • Know you’ll be better informed should any recall impact your vehicle or related equipment. • Check out NHTSA 5-Star Safety Ratings, and our online car seat tools that help you find the right seat, understand ease-of-use and check to make sure it’s installed correctly. • Know that NHTSA will never store or share your user data. To protect your privacy, NHTSA doesn’t store your device or VIN information on a server in order to send you a notification when a new recall is issued. This means SaferCar needs to run in the background so it can check for recall updates periodically from your device. If you force quit SaferCar, immediately reopen the app. From Apple: You should force an app to close only if it’s unresponsive.
Needs Work
I would really like to be able to search for any vehicles recalls. Not just for the ones I own. Maybe you can in the app, but I couldn’t find it.
United StatesVIN not recognized
Using this for my RV and major power train components and it works well. It will not accept my Royal Wnfield Himalayan motorcycle VIN number though. VIN is not recognized to add it. ME3FSM240NKxxxxxx
United StatesConclusion: Little Informational Value but HUGE Privacy and Security Risks
Steer Clear, Big Brother will be watching you. It’s mostly a junk app that provides little real informational value or functionality (except to allow a government agency and its third-party developers to monitor you, as well as collect, disseminate to other U.S. government and other agencies, and likely ultimately sell data about you because it forces users to keep the app ALWAYS OPEN if users want recall notifications; which notifications about recalls is the only value proposition it offers but can be easily gotten elsewhere from a non of sources). The software developer has responded w/ boilerplate statements to numerous other user complaints about the privacy and security vulnerabilities of having to keep the Federal government’s NHTSA app always open+active but, it’s abundantly clear that the developer is being disingenuous and/or doesn’t know the difference between having the app persistently open+active and actually refreshing in the background without having to keep the app open+active all the time (as many/most other apps do already). Keeping the app always open are huge security and privacy red flags. 🚩 🚩 Other issues I found in just a few minutes of use: Users cannot track more than one vehicle or item simultaneously on the app — adding vehicles or devices doesn’t exist or is so well hidden that might as well not exist. The ’Home’ icon doesn’t direct users to the app’s home page; it only displays any open recalls on the vehicle/devices users ave input. Anyone having more than one vehicle or a vehicle and a car seat, for example, and wants to track and get notified of recalls are just out of luck. So, navigation and ease is garbage. The app is mostly repurposed “resources” i.e., general information from the NHTSA.gov website. In that case, there’s no need for an app; just go to the NHTSA website. This low value-added app (which almost certainly cost taxpayers tens of millions to develop, implement, and maintain) is just a bullet point on some bureaucrat’s and/or political appointee’s résumé so they can boast about their “accomplishment” and “contributions,” as well as how they directed the creation of an app and how ‘tech forward’ and savvy they are.
United StatesWell it recognized *my* VIN...
There seem to be an awful lot of complaints on here about the app not taking people's VINs, but it took the VIN for my (not extremely common) car just fine. I wonder if it would help others to do what I did, which was to pull the car up first by year, make and model and then put the VIN in the box that appears below the car for that purpose. Anyway, so far so good. And I don't think I'm terribly concerned about the app having to run in the background because anytime I go to quit all the apps on my phone I find I have about 50 of them running in the background already, some that I haven't used in a month or more, so adding one more to that list doesn't seem a big deal to me.
United StatesBuggy
It won’t accept the VIN of my second car. Says it’s “already in use”, yet, doesn’t show up on the home page.
United StatesAdding an older vehicle nets a never vanishing red badge alert
This app is only useful if you’ve got the money to buy recent vehicles. I own and drive a 30 year old station wagon because I refuse to participate in the churn and burn of over paying for a “depreciating asset” and then doing it all over again for the “pleasure” of always having a mortgage on a car that I’m forced to own by the fact that I was born in a stupid country that is pwned by the auto industry within it.
United StatesDoesn’t accept VIN
Would love to keep track of my 2023 and 2023 new cars but all k get gif each is an error message when trying to input VIN for each.
United States
Bug fixes
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