SaferCar 4+

Vehicle Safety & Recall Info

NATIONAL HIGHWAY TRAFFIC SAFETY ADMINISTRATION

    • 2.6 • 73 Ratings
    • Free

iPhone Screenshots

Description

SaferCar 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.

What’s New

Version 1.2

Bug fixes

Ratings and Reviews

2.6 out of 5
73 Ratings

73 Ratings

Skylais1 ,

Open in background for notifications?

What a joke. Makes me think they are collecting some other sort of data. Shouldn’t be that difficult to send a notification without the app needing to be running in background. Many other apps do it just fine.

Edit: developer responded stating this was for security purposes, and thus I’ve bumped up my stats as I value security.

This makes sense to me as all the personal information can be kept on the client-side (iPhone).

It would be cool I think to have a server-side system that can check once a day for any users that subscribe to such system. For privacy considerations, I’m sure an randomly generated
unique id for each app user and hashed values may offer some protection.

Developer Response ,

Keeping SaferCar open in the background of your device allows it to automatically check for recalls. This process happens about once a day and only takes seconds. The reason SaferCar operates this way is so that we can protect your privacy; your vehicle, VIN and equipment information is only stored on your device, not at NHTSA.

plaintiger ,

Well 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.

Developer Response ,

To add more than one vehicle or equipment, from the app home screen, tap the plus sign in the bottom right. Then tap the search bar that appears. You’ll be prompted to select the next product to add.

Keeping SaferCar open in the background of your device allows it to automatically check for recalls. This process happens about once a day and only takes seconds. The reason SaferCar operates this way is so that we can protect your privacy; your vehicle, VIN and equipment information is only stored on your device, not at NHTSA.

harley&me ,

Unable to enter a VIN as promised. Deleting app.

Update: There’s more at stake when having to keep an app operating in the background than how often it communicates with home. And the excuse the developer gives for requiring keeping the app open doesn’t hold water. Also, the VIN entry fail is persistent and calling them as instructed by the error popup was a waste of time bc I had to leave a message and no-one returned my call.

Original: I’m also not interested in an app that requires that it constantly be open and running in the background for it to work. By the way, it doesn’t work then either. A waste of time for the user and an example of what gives government agencies an image of ineptitude.

Developer Response ,

Keeping SaferCar open in the background of your device allows it to automatically check for recalls. This process happens about once a day and only takes seconds. The reason SaferCar operates this way is so that we can protect your privacy; your vehicle, VIN and equipment information is only stored on your device, not at NHTSA.

App Privacy

The developer, NATIONAL HIGHWAY TRAFFIC SAFETY ADMINISTRATION, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy.

Data Not Linked to You

The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:

  • Usage Data
  • Diagnostics

Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More

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