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Recalled vehicles 'go untraced'

Manufacturers failed to trace more than 100,000 potentially defective vehicles last year, government figures reveal.

The Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (Vosa) said one in 12 vehicles called back after manufacturers found safety concerns had failed to turn up.

Recalls have followed worries over brakes, steering and seatbelt systems.

Vosa, which enforces vehicle recalls, said it was making progress on raising success rates, but the RAC Foundation said: "Lives could be at risk."

Making progress

Recalls are issued when a manufacturer discovers a problem which was not apparent when the vehicle was released into showrooms.

The DVLA database is used to track down owners - but difficulties arise when this is incomplete, such as when an individual has moved house but not told the DVLA their new address.

Some of these vehicles do carry serious faults
Edmund King
RAC Foundation

According to Vosa, there were 1.3m recalls last year and the recall rate was about 92%. That left about 108,000 vehicles which were unaccounted for when Vosa considered all had been done to trace an owner.

RAC Foundation's executive director Edmund King said it was a worry that vehicles with potentially serious faults were on the roads.

He added: "Some of these vehicles do carry serious faults.

"If a motorist doesn't get that warning, if they don't take their car into an authorised dealer, it's very unlikely that those faults will be picked up."

But Jeff Sweeting, Vosa's head of Vehicle Safety, said the agency was making progress to improve the success rate.

He said: "Ideally for any safety recall we would wish to have a 100% success rate, but we have been working very closely with the trade associations.

"Those that are left out there unattended to are of concern to us, but we often know that some may be written off, some may be stolen or scrapped or exported."

He added that the agency was not aware of any accidents caused by faulty cars that should have been recalled.

And these are legit vehicles only recently sold NEW to owners who are not deliberately avoiding the DVLA!!
Imagine the potential if you actually didn't WANT to be found!

Oh, and how come I go to buy a part for my van and the dealer looks it up on the shop pc...and then tells me there is a braking recall notice on the part.... ?