Terms of Use
Use of Data
PlainCars draws vehicle safety records from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) complaint and recall databases. These government datasets may lag behind real-world conditions, contain incomplete filings, or reflect data entry inconsistencies. No warranty of accuracy, timeliness, or completeness accompanies any information displayed.
Limitation of Liability
PlainCars shall not be liable for any decisions made based on the data presented on this site. Always verify safety information directly with NHTSA, your vehicle manufacturer, or a qualified mechanic.
No Professional Advice
Nothing on this site constitutes professional automotive, legal, or safety advice. If you believe your vehicle has a safety defect, file a complaint at NHTSA.gov.
Data Accuracy and Verification
PlainCars aggregates and reformats information that originates from public government agencies, regulatory filings, and other openly available sources. While we take reasonable steps to ingest, normalize, and refresh this data, upstream records may contain clerical errors, lag behind real-world changes, or omit relevant context. You are solely responsible for verifying any fact that influences a legal, medical, financial, educational, safety, or similarly consequential decision. Cross-reference the official source before acting on anything you read here.
Acceptable Use
You may browse, read, and share PlainCars content for personal, journalistic, academic, and non-commercial research use. You may cite specific records with attribution and a link back to the page on plaincars.com. You may not (a) systematically scrape, crawl, or download the dataset in bulk without prior written permission; (b) resell, sublicense, or redistribute derived data products that compete with PlainCars; (c) use our pages to harass, defame, or misrepresent any individual or organization appearing in the data; (d) remove, obscure, or mislabel source attribution; or (e) attempt to bypass rate limits, security controls, or authentication mechanisms.
Plain-Language Transformation and Editorial Role
PlainCars combines raw public data with plain-language summaries, explainers, and comparisons. Some narrative sections are written by our editorial team from source data following our documented editorial standards. We do not alter underlying numbers — those are read directly from the upstream NHTSA source by a continuous editorial pipeline. If you spot a summary that misreads the data, please email the correction link on our contact page.
Intellectual Property
The underlying public records surfaced on PlainCars are in the public domain or otherwise freely licensed by the issuing agency — you are free to use those raw facts. However, our site design, layout, navigation structure, original editorial copy, category taxonomies, comparison tables, and curated rankings are the copyrighted work of Kiznis Studio. These creative elements may not be reproduced in whole or substantial part without permission.
Changes to These Terms
We may update these Terms of Use from time to time to reflect changes in our data sources, product features, legal environment, or advertising relationships. When we make material changes, we will update the "Last updated" date above and — when appropriate — surface a brief notice on the homepage. Continued use of the site after an update constitutes acceptance of the revised terms. We encourage you to revisit this page periodically.
Governing Law and Disputes
These terms are governed by the laws of the United States and the jurisdiction in which Kiznis Studio is domiciled, without regard to conflict-of-law principles. Any dispute arising from or relating to your use of PlainCars will first be addressed through good-faith informal negotiation. If that fails, both parties agree to resolve the dispute in the courts with jurisdiction over Kiznis Studio's principal place of business. Nothing in these terms limits your statutory consumer-protection rights under applicable local law.
Legal Notices
For formal legal notices, DMCA takedown requests, subpoenas, law-enforcement requests, or correspondence regarding these terms, email legal@plaincars.com. General questions, data corrections, and feedback should use the contact page so they reach the editorial team promptly.