The Effects of Automobile Recalls on the Severity of Accidents

Hugo Benitez-Silva and Yong-Kyun Bae ()

No 10-03, Department of Economics Working Papers from Stony Brook University, Department of Economics

Abstract: The number of automobile recalls in the U.S. has substantially increased over the last two decades, and after a record of over 30 million cars recalled in 2004, in the last few years it has consistently reached between 15 and 17 million, and in 2009 alone 16.4 million cars were recalled. Toyota's recall crisis in 2010 illustrates how recalls can affect a large number of American drivers and the defects connected to them can result in loss of life and serious accidents. However, in spite of the increase in public concern over recalls and the loss of property and life attached to them, there is no empirical evidence of the effect of vehicle recalls on safety. This paper investigates whether vehicle recalls reduce accidental harm measured by the severity of injuries in vehicle accidents. The results of our analysis show that if a recall for a new-year model is issued, then the severity of injuries of accidents continuously diminishes during the rst year after the recall, something we do not nd among cars not subject to recalls. This is because defects are repaired over time but also because drivers react by driving more carefully until the defects are fixed. To minimize the losses attached to having dangerously defective cars on our roads, both quick and timely recall issuance are needed and more detailed information on defects should be delivered to owners of defective vehicles. The latter can be made possible through simple but important policy changes by the U.S. government regarding recall information sharing with drivers and insurance companies.

Keywords: Automobile Recalls; Safety Regulation; Vehicle Defects; Car Accidents. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L51 L62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-10
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://ms.cc.sunysb.edu/~hbenitezsilv/RecallsandSeverity2010.pdf First version, 2010 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Can't connect to ms.cc.sunysb.edu:80 (A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond.)

Related works:
Journal Article: THE EFFECTS OF AUTOMOBILE RECALLS ON THE SEVERITY OF ACCIDENTS (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nys:sunysb:10-03

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Department of Economics Working Papers from Stony Brook University, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().