The same defect, in the same vehicles, filed by the same manufacturer under the same internal code, is recorded in more than one country. How far apart?
No regulator can answer that. Each publishes its own filing date and only its own, and the registers share no identifier. They share one thing: the manufacturer’s own number for the campaign. This site holds the join, so this page can answer it.
The United States and Canada
1,825 recalls carry a usable filing date in both registers. The median gap between them is nought days.
| Gap between the two filings | Recalls | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Filed on the same day | 926 | 51% |
| Within a week either way | 1,633 | 89% |
| More than thirty days apart | 87 | 5% |
| More than ninety days apart | 38 | 2% |
Half are filed on the same day and nine in ten within a week. On this evidence North America is one recall market with two postboxes. When the two do differ, they differ almost evenly: Canada was first on 544 and the United States on 535.
The United States and Europe
The same comparison against the European Safety Gate looks nothing like it. 130 recalls can be matched, and the median gap is 64 days.
Not one of them is recorded on the same day. The middle eighty per cent land between 22 days and 217 days after the American filing, and 104 of the 130 are more than a month apart.
That contrast is the finding of this page. Two countries that share a border file in step, to the day, half the time. Europe records the same defect about two months later, and never on the same day as America.
What these dates are, and what they are not
A filing date is not the day owners were written to. The American register publishes both, and the gap between them is measured on how long before they tell you. This page is about when each register recorded the recall, which is a different question and a narrower one.
The European date is the Safety Gate alert date, which is a different administrative act again. An alert is published after a member state notifies the Commission, so part of that 64 days is Brussels rather than the manufacturer. It is reported because it is what the registers actually say. It should not be read as the day a European driver was told.
What was set aside
Manufacturers reuse short campaign codes. Canadian recall 1983009 and American campaign 25V505 both carry the code 3A06, and they are forty two years apart. That is one code used twice, not one defect recalled twice.
50 pairs sit more than two years apart and are excluded from every figure above. They are not deleted: they are published in the files below with the span that disqualified each one, so the judgement can be checked rather than taken on trust. The rule cost eighteen of the fifty five recalls this site previously reported as more than ninety days apart between America and Canada, which is why it is worth stating plainly rather than burying.
Where the numbers come from
- Matched on the manufacturer’s own campaign code, normalised identically on every side and matched exactly. Nothing is paired on brand and date.
- 2,009 matched recalls carry a usable date in at least two registers.
- Sources: NHTSA, the Transport Canada Vehicle Recalls Database, and the European Commission Safety Gate. The filings are theirs. The matching, the counting and any mistake in them are ours.
Every figure on this page is read from the register when the page is built, not typed in. The data is downloadable: CSV and JSON, and the engine reports itself at /wp-json/cmvlead/v1/status.
Built 15 September 2026. Corrections go on the corrections page.
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