NHTSA Defect Investigations — Tracked US Vehicles, MY 2005–2025

Every NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) action touching a tracked vehicle — open and historical. The leading indicator of a recall: a Preliminary Evaluation (PE) can escalate to an Engineering Analysis (EA) and then a recall. Includes the recall campaign number for investigations that became recalls. Contents: 586 investigations. Method: Parsed from NHTSA's ODI investigations flat file (FLAT_INV) and matched to our vehicles by year/make/model. One row per NHTSA action number. "status" is open when the federal record carries no close date; "recall_campaign" holds the NHTSA campaign number when the investigation led to a recall. An investigation is NHTSA examining a pattern — not a confirmed defect. NHTSA complaints are unverified consumer reports. Source: U.S. NHTSA owner complaints and recalls (public record), model years 2005–2025. Canonical version and full methodology: https://problemsbyvin.com/data/ . Released under CC BY 4.0 — attribution to ProblemsByVin (https://problemsbyvin.com).