Is Your Car One of 46 Milllion with an Active Potentially Deadly Recall??

PORTLAND (WGME) - There's a good chance that you or someone in your family is driving a vehicle with a potentially deadly safety recall. We discovered hundreds of thousands of cars here in Maine have recalls that haven't been fixed.

Vehicle manufacturers issued 70 recalls in just the past month, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. In fact, Ford recalled about a million cars and trucks in the past week. One of the recalls is because Ford said there's a door latch defect that can cause doors to fly open while cars are driving down the road.

NHTSA tracks all recalls, but if you're trying to keep track of them, it can be a rough and confusing ride.

"It's a huge issue. We're talking about 46 million cars across the country that have an unfixed recall," Carfax's Chris Basso said.

We teamed up with Basso. He told us his database shows 1 in 5 cars in Maine has an open recall.

Carfax offers a free app. It lets you easily see if your vehicle has a recall that hasn't been fixed.

The first three cars we checked had open recalls. Some were for airbag recalls, others seat belt, and corrosion.

Last year was a record year for recalls in the United States. There were 803 recalls involving 64 million vehicles.

"Many of these cars here will have an open recall; they pose safety danger for passengers in those cars and others on the road," Basso explained.

Basso said the most alarming trend is that family oriented vehicles, like minivans and SUVs, are at the highest risk of having an outstanding recall.

Carfax estimates about 200,000 vehicles in Maine that are on the road or up for sale with an unrepaired recall issue.

If you want to see if your car has an open recall, there are two easy ways to find out. You can search on NHTSA's website or just download the My Carfax app that we used.

Car makers are required to mail owners a recall notice within two months of a recall decision telling them they need to get their vehicle fixed for free, but people either ignore those notices or they've sold their car and information didn't get updated.

Federal regulators are now meeting with car makers to try to come up with new ways to let people know that when there's a recall, you really need to get the problems fixed.