Vehicle recalls cluster because OEMs wait for rivals to move first

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Many of us are familiar with the concept of the Friday night news dump, the term given to those occasions when, for example, an embattled politician announces a policy they know will be unpopular. Invariably, it happens late on a Friday afternoon, maximizing the chances that the news gets lost in the churn and forgotten by Monday. As it turns out, there's a similar phenomenon in the auto industry: recall clustering.

For example, in August 2017, Ford issued a recall for leaky fuel tank valves, which was quickly followed by a fuel tank recall from Honda and an oil hose recall issued by Chrysler.

It's not a new thing, either, according to new research published in Manufacturing and Service Operations Management. The researchers looked at 48 years of data, from 1966 to 2013, during which time they identified 3,117 vehicle recalls.

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