You may have seen a string of car recalls in the last few weeks, including Ford recalling hundreds of thousands of F-150 pickup trucks.
Jeep, Nissan and Volkswagen have also issued recalls in 2025, to the point where many drivers are tuning out. According to Carfax, there were anywhere between 1 million and 2 million active recalls in 2024 for cars in North Carolina, and WRAL’s 5 on Your Side reported in January that more than 58 million cars across the United States had recalls issued in 2024.
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Matt Overbeck, who owns an auto repair shop in Madisonville, Ohio, says he finds cars with unrepaired recalls “every day.”
According to a study from iSeeCars, the average number of lifetime “projected” recalls for any given make and model is four. Just as alarming, many of them don’t get fixed. A main reason, Overbeck says, is that many of the notices go to old addresses associated with a previous owner of the car.
“You move, the car gets sold, you purchase the car [and then] we don’t know where it went,” Overbeck said.
So, how can you check your car to see if there are recalls listed for it?
You can enter your license plate number or your vehicle's Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) on CarFax’s free vehicle recall checker page or the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) recall checker page.
Your VIN is usually located at the bottom of your windshield on the driver’s side, and is listed on your vehicle registration card and car insurance card as well.
It will just take a few minutes to see if your car is listed under any active recalls, and it's a sure-fire way to prevent you from wasting your money.
WRAL News has reached out to CarFax for recalls in North Carolina for the first seven months of 2025 and is waiting to hear back.