Recalls rise as car firms get cautious

Nissan's recall of 2.5 million cars, of which an estimated 10,000 are affected in Ireland, is only the latest in a seemingly weekly exercise by the car industry.

For every major recall that garners national attention, there are countless others that get little if any notice.

Last year 117,000 Irish motorists got notification on safety issues from manufacturers, down from 122,000 the year before, but dramatically up from the 50,000 in 2000 and 45,000 in 1999.

While this may suggest a serious lapse in quality in recent years, it's more likely to be due to events in 2000 when Firestone recalled over seven million defective tyres prone to tread separation, a problem blamed for 101 deaths in roll-overs of Ford Explorer SUVs.

Ford in the US and Firestone traded barbs over responsibility, but media coverage has led many firms to recall at the first hint of a problem in order to avoid any suggestion of cover-up.

The Nissan recall concerns a sensor that may cause an engine to stall. The worldwide cost is put at €150 million, the main outlay being one hour's labour to rectify the problem. The sensors cost less than €10.

There have been claims of a reticence by Nissan to come forward and publicise the recall.

"The latest recall does seem to show the system works, but the public response by Nissan was disappointing," says Conor Faughnan of the AA. "I found myself talking to the media as nobody from Nissan was made available to talk publicly about the implications for Irish motorists."

However, Paul O'Sullivan of Nissan Ireland says that customer safety was its main concern.

"We didn't want to be alarmist," he says. "Once the details had been released to the media, there was really nothing more we could add to the debate."

Nissan should get a full list of current owners from the Vehicle Registration Office (VRO) next week, with owners contacted within days and work carried out from November 24th.

However, there are some criticisms of the current system. The official driver file is comprised of the car's details and owner's address as on the change of ownership or registration form and then updated through the road tax system. This is the same database used by gardaí.

However, there is a potential conflict between the VROs need to protect the private information of motorists and in releasing the information.

At present, the VRO releases details only when a recall relates to car safety. Security does not fall under this remit, according to one industry spokesperson.

This means that car firms have to rely on their own database of car buyers and hope they in turn will inform them of the current owner's details if the car has been sold on.

This problem arose recently with one car firm, who had a security issue with a locking system but could not contact all the registered owners through the original buyers.

The manufacturer was further restricted from publicising the recall for fear of revealing the potential security weakness in its cars.

There's also the risk that owners will have moved address and not kept their information updated, or simply don't bother to respond to a recall.

According to reports, the AA in Britain estimates that between 130,000 to 260,000 of cars recalled there each year never have the potential fault checked or corrected, either because the owner cannot be traced at the registered address or does not bother to get the problem fixed.

While there's no national list of recall notifications in Ireland, motorists can visit the AA's British website where recall notices are listed for every make and model concerned - the address is

www.theaa.com/allaboutcars/

recalls/index.jsp