In response to the number of vehicle recalls, technical service bulletins and complaints continuing to set records each year, J.D. Power developed a new application to help auto industry professionals analyze vehicle safety data more efficiently.

On Tuesday, the company launched what it has dubbed SafetyIQ, an online application that can integrate National Highway Traffic Safety Administration information with J.D. Power automotive data. J.D. Power highlighted the results are all searchable by vehicle make, model, year, age and component.

According to Renee Stephens, vice president of U.S. automotive at J.D. Power, “During the past 20 years, more than 428 million vehicles have been affected by safety recall decisions in the United States, with more than 51 million vehicles impacted in 2015 alone, more than in any previous year."

As the auto industry begins to take what J.D. Power described as “a hard look at vehicle safety,” the company insisted it is critical industry leaders, OEMs and dealers have a comprehensive resource that lets them quickly distill key facts from a wide range of disparate data sets.

“With SafetyIQ, we’re bringing together critical information that has been buried within piles of data to help automotive professionals analyze trends and quickly access the information they need to improve vehicle safety,” Stephens said.

J.D. Power highlighted that SafetyIQ is updated daily with the latest data on recalls, technical service bulletins, customer complaints, and investigations. All data is standardized through an easy-to-use interface, allowing auto industry professionals to spot trends, develop benchmarks versus competitors and prioritize areas of focus.  

The application also can track completion and overall recall rates to provide an industry-wide view of vehicle safety-related data. J.D. Power pointed out the information is particularly valuable for data on vehicles more than 3 years old, which typically receive the highest volume of complaints and may have fallen off the radar of manufacturers because they are no longer under warranty.

J.D. Power SafetyIQ, powered by SpeedTrack’s patented technology, was developed to help automotive professionals quickly address some of the biggest safety concerns currently facing the industry.

The following is a data snapshot of the current state of recalls and other vehicle safety-related issues, as listed by the company:

—Record number of recalls in 2015: There were 860 vehicle recalls in 2015, the highest number in history, followed very closely by 778 recalls in 2014. In the first eight weeks of 2016, there have already been 84 recalls affecting 8.6 million vehicles.

—Record number of customer complaints: There were more than 76,000 customer complaints about their vehicle in the United States in 2015, following a record 77,000 in 2014.

—Lexus, Porsche, Toyota log fewest complaints: On a sales-weighted basis, Lexus, Porsche and Toyota had the fewest complaints registered with the NHTSA during the 2015 model year.

—Electrical systems drive highest number of complaints: The electrical system has generated the highest number of complaints (more than 120,000) of any system during the past 20 years.

—Peak vehicle age for complaints: During the past five years, most customers have filed complaints when their vehicle hit 7 years of age, on average.

Find more detailed information about the J.D. Power SafetyIQ, visit www.jdpower.com/safetyiq or watch the video at the top of this page.