Either people are not getting their cars and trucks fixed as often in the past year or there are just more open recalls on vehicles, or both. Carfax said there are more than 63 million unrepaired vehicles under recall currently in use across the United States. The company says that represents an enormous 34 percent jump over the figure it measured a year ago. The vehicle-history provider gets recall information from automakers and then cross-references it with vehicles in operation.
Its latest data suggests that busy family lives could be one reason recalls are going unrepaired, because minivans and SUVs are the vehicles most likely to be left unfixed. States with the highest numbers of recalled but not repaired vehicles include California, Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, and New York. Four of those five states have the highest volume of registered vehicles on the road. The outlier is Pennsylvania, which in 2015 trailed Illinois and Ohio for total vehicles registered. But the list of states with the highest rate of recalled vehicles in use without completed repairs is led by Texas, Hawaii, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama, in that order. One in three Texas-registered vehicles is operating with an open recall, according to Carfax data. The high rate for the Gulf states and Hawaii could be related to the Takata airbag recall, which prioritizes warm, humid states. That massive recall has added millions of vehicles nationwide, most them in 2016, and the Takata recalls are t...