A few months ago, Mike Wisusik got a notice in the mail that his Ford Fiesta was being recalled for a transmission glitch. But because his car seemed to be shifting just fine, the father of two from Taylor, Michigan, put off a trip to his dealer.

Several weeks later, a notice of a second recall arrived, for a side-airbag problem, but Wisusik still hasn’t taken his car in yet.



There’s also a recall on his wife’s leased Ford Taurus for a problem that can affect the light illuminating the license plate. He hasn’t gotten to that one either.

“My transmission is working fine,” Wisusik said. “It’s not going to happen to me – that’s my attitude.”



And he’s glad he didn’t respond to the first recall. “Now I only have to go to the dealer once,” he laughed.

Call it recall fatigue. These days, American drivers are subject to so many recalls, often for minor issues, that many choose to ignore them, forcing automakers to scramble to lure owners into dealerships for required repairs.

So far this year, 56m vehicles have been recalled in the US, a record, and nearly three times the 9.9m that were recalled 20 years ago, in 1994, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.



The defects can be as serious as the faulty ignition switch in millions of General Motors vehicles that has been linked to at least 42 deaths. But they can also be as innocuous as a misprinted label that incorrectly states the gross-vehicle-weight rating of the Acura TXL with all-wheel drive.

Americans’ lax attitude toward recalls leaves carmakers struggling to find ways to entice owners to bring in their cars. No matter how serious the flaw, drivers are reluctant to go in to dealers, in much the same way that they avoid appointments with a dentist.

The GM ignition recall involves small cars such as the Chevrolet Cobalt and Pontiac G5, whose ignition switches shut off suddenly if bumped or jarred, disabling the airbags. The defect has sparked lawsuits, investigations and Congressional appearances by GM’s chief executive, Mary Barra.

Gift cards and tickets to the Texas State Fair

GM has sent repeated recall notices through postal mail and email, sponsored Facebook posts and even, as a measure of desperation, offered perks to car owners who overcome their reluctance. In the last few months, GM has mailed 705,000 offers of $25 gift cards to owners who bring their cars in. Last month, the company gave free tickets to the Los Angeles Auto Show to owners in southern California who had ignition switches replaced, and in September and October, it gave free tickets to the Texas State Fair, which set a new record for food and ride sales by selling more than $41m in coupons. The total number of people who took GM up on the offer: 771 people.

Big Tex, who greets visitors to the Texas State Fair. Photograph: Paul Komarek/Creative Commons

GM has set up a system for emailing owners it can identify and for targeting online ads about the switch recalls to the Facebook pages of younger owners of Cobalts and other affected models. Ads are also being targeted through other social media sites and games like Words With Friends. GM has set up a call center near Rochester, New York, with 72 operators, including Spanish speakers, to assist people who respond to the outreach.

“We are making every effort we can,” said GM spokeswoman Ryndee Carney. She added that GM believes owners who still haven’t responded to the switch recall have been contacted by GM at least six times through various channels.

So far GM has fixed 60% of the cars outfitted with the ignition switches, but 1m unrepaired cars remain and may be prone to shutting off suddenly. If this happens in a crash, the airbags won’t deploy.

Two other automakers are facing similar recall challenges. One involves airbags made by a Japanese supplier, Takata, that can inflate with too much force and spray occupants with shards of metal and plastic. Honda is most affected; it has recalled more than 5m cars that have Takata airbag inflators. Eleven other carmakers have recalled nearly 3m vehicles equipped with the defective inflators.

Although Honda has issued a recall, it doesn’t have enough replacement airbag inflators to supply all the vehicles that need to be fixed, which compounds the trouble.



“We get customers who call and want us to order the part, then they never come back for the repairs,” said Adam Silverleib, vice-president of Silko Honda in Raynham, Massachusetts. “We call then and they go, ‘I’m too busy this week.’”

Earlier this month, House Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade subcommittee member Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn. poses questions to executives from Honda, BMW, Toyota and Takata Corp of Japan, during a hearing about ruptures and recalls of defective air bags made by Takata and installed on cars driven in the US. Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP

A third major recall going on now involves older Jeep vehicles made by the company now known as Fiat Chrysler Automobiles.



Some Jeep Grand Cherokees from the 90s and Liberty models from the 2000s have gas tank designs that have been cited by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration as faulty. The agency says the tanks can split open in low- and medium-speed rear collisions, creating a fire risk. The solution is to install 30-pound steel trailer hitches that add more protection in rear collisions.

At Extreme Dodge Chrysler Jeep in Jackson, Michigan, boxes of Jeep trailer hitches are stacked in a bay normally used for washing cars. Owner Wes Lutz says his dealership installs one or two hitches a day, and has done about 120 so far. But that’s only about one tenth of the job – more than 1,100 of the affected Jeeps are registered to owners in his region.

“A lot of people don’t take it seriously,” Lutz said. He thinks part of the issue is that that many of the affected Grand Cherokees are close to 20 years old.



“If you’re driving a car that’s been on the road 20 years, there are probably all kinds of repairs that you’re not getting done and just letting go because the thing isn’t going to last much longer,” he said.

But part of the difficulty, he and other dealers believe, is that some owners are numbed by the sheer volume of recalls for apparently trivial problems. About a year ago, Mitsubishi Motors had a recall because some of its cars were shipped without a “headlight aiming port cap,” a tiny plug that seals a small hole in the headlamp, said Doug Waikem, owner of a Mitsubishi store and six other dealerships in Massillon, Ohio.

The hole is there for a tool that is inserted to adjust the headlight beam. Without the plug, water can get in. “It’s the size of the tip of your pen,” he said. “People get a recall notice for that and they think it’s nonsensical.”

Like GM, Chrysler is calling Jeep owners, targeting them through Facebook and social media and sending out notices by mail. So far, the Jeep dealers have processed 162,000 vehicles, leaving about 1.2m to go.

A new Jeep is displayed on the sales lot at Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram Marin in Corte Madera, California. Jeep has been trying to make repairs to 1.2m vehicles, but car owners are reluctant to take on the hassle. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

From focus groups and questionnaires, GM has found several categories of owners who are hard to reach or motivate. One includes younger or less affluent people who bought used Cobalts, G5s or other affected GM models. They are the second, third or sometimes fourth owners of a vehicles and typically don’t take the cars to dealers for service.

In Texas, GM has found large groups of Spanish-speaking owners who are less tuned in to the waves of coverage of the ignition-switch crisis in the English-language media. A third group is made up of older drivers who may have heard of the recall but simply aren’t sure of how to go about getting their cars fixed. Some older owners “may have been told when they first called their dealers that [replacement] parts weren’t available and are now confused,” Carney said.

Even when owners are aware of recalls that involve potentially serious matters, many find it hard to push a trip to the dealer to the top of their priority list.

About a year ago, Kevin Smith-Fagan, a development executive at a public television station in Sacramento, California, got a notice in the mail saying his 2006 Toyota Highlander Hybrid SUV was being recalled for an electronics defect.



The flaw involved a critical component that could overheat and cause the vehicle to switch into a so-called limp-home mode, in which the car can be driven but only at very slow speeds.

“I was like ‘yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ll get to it,” said Smith-Fagan, a father of three active boys. “The car was running fine so I didn’t really see a compelling reason to get it in.”

This year, he discovered he couldn’t re-register the SUV in the state of California until the repair was made, and that was finally enough to get him in gear. “It wasn’t important until it affected my daily life”, he explained.