nhtsa_get_vehicle_safety
Get a comprehensive safety profile for a vehicle. Combines NCAP crash test ratings, recalls, and complaint summary into a single response. Use as the default when asked about vehicle safety, reliability, or purchase decisions.
nhtsa_search_recalls
Search recall campaigns by vehicle or campaign number. Use for specific recall lookups, recall history for a vehicle, or looking up a known campaign number.
nhtsa_search_complaints
Search consumer safety complaints filed with NHTSA for a specific vehicle. Returns a component breakdown and the most recent complaints. Use for common problems, failure patterns, or owner-reported issues.
nhtsa_get_safety_ratings
Get NCAP crash test ratings and ADAS feature availability for a vehicle. Use when the user specifically wants crash test stars, rollover risk, or wants to compare safety features across vehicles. NCAP data available from 1990+, best coverage for 2011+.
nhtsa_decode_vin
Decode a Vehicle Identification Number to extract make, model, year, body type, engine, safety equipment, and manufacturing details. Supports single VINs or batch decode (up to 50). Partial VINs accepted — use * for unknown positions.
nhtsa_search_investigations
Search NHTSA defect investigations (Preliminary Evaluations, Engineering Analyses, Defect Petitions, Recall Queries). All filters are ANDed — each additional filter narrows results. The make, model, and query filters all search investigation subject/description text (there are no structured make/model fields in the investigations dataset). First query may be slow (~10s) while the investigation index loads; subsequent queries use a cached index.