This is what you can do. Get on line and go to safercar.gov and use your Vin number of your car to search for recalls that you might have not gotten in the mail or that your dealer didn’t bother to tell you about when you bought your car. Also use my free CARFAX to find out more about the manufacturer’s stand on your individual vehicle. Used car dealers have always had a reputation for selling perhaps not so perfect cars under the shiny hoods. Now we even have to watch out for new car dealers selling cars on the recall list. Practically every new General Motors car has a recall on them in the last few years. It is bad enough they sell bad cars, we can’t trust a new car dealer too? There is no integrity left in this world anymore.

Many Americans can’t buy used cars anymore. They are all unsafe. Between all the floods ruining cars there is also salt damage to the undercarriage of cars making them corrode even faster from the new chemicals spread on streets to melt snow quickly.  Now many Americans unknowingly are buying new cars that are subject to safety recalls. The law says they should have been fixed before they were sold.  Just last year alone there were 64,000 safety recalls ranging from power steering problems to airbags defects.   By law the dealership is obligated to fix these potentially dangerous defects before a new car is sold.

Legally a dealer does not have to disclose that there has been a recall on a vehicle, they just have to fix the problems before it is sold. You go into a dealership and many will lie to you. Go to the website and check before you buy. They will try to tell you there are no safety recalls because the car is new. That can be a false statement. The website will tell you if the recall status is incomplete. This is not a problem with one bad apple in a dealership. An investigation has found that hundreds of new cars from multiple manufacturers have been sold with unfixed safety recalls in 43 states. Incredibly the National Highway Safety Commission which is headquartered in our nation’s Capital only found 2 bad dealerships in 2014.

Last night I had a nice conversation on line with a woman who read my blog on Senator Tom Cruz and thought I was harsh on him. Maybe before he throws his hat into a Presidential race, as a Senator there for only 2 years get on this problem and have our nation’s laws enforced and stop talking about religion and women’s body parts? This is a very serious problem and the only elected official talking about this problem is Senator Ed Markey who isn’t even trying to push himself out there as a Presidential Candidate. Senator Markey sits on the subcommittee on consumer protection. He agrees that NHTSA dropped the ball and is not doing enough to make sure American cars are being sold safe.

Ted Cruz should be talking about dissolving NHTSA and not dissolving the IRS just because faith based schools were audited. The National Highway Safety Commission blamed their inadequacy on budget constraints. One thing for sure, everyone has an excuse and blames the problem on someone else. Get on the website yourself and do what you can to protect your family. Not too many people care anymore.