vehicle-safety-mcp

An MCP server that connects Claude to NHTSA vehicle safety data — VIN decoding, safety recalls, NCAP crash-test ratings, and consumer complaints. Ask Claude "does my car have any open recalls?" and get a real answer from the US government's own data.

Built on the free NHTSA public APIs — no API key required.

Why

Vehicle safety data is public but painful: it lives across several government APIs, each response carries 100+ mostly-empty fields, and safety ratings require a two-step lookup nobody remembers. This server does the plumbing so the conversation stays natural:

You: Is a 2020 Honda Civic safe? Anything I should know before buying one?

Claude: (calls get_safety_ratings + get_recalls + get_complaints) The 2020 Civic scored 5 stars overall in NCAP testing… it has 5 recall campaigns, most notably the fuel pump recall… the most complained-about component is…

Tools

Tool	What it does
decode_vin	VIN → make, model, year, engine, plant, safety equipment
check_vin_recalls	VIN → decoded vehicle + its recall campaigns, in one step
get_recalls	Recall campaigns for a make/model/year (defect, consequence, remedy)
get_safety_ratings	NCAP crash-test star ratings per body-style variant
get_complaints	Consumer complaints, grouped by component, with recent narratives

Responses are deliberately trimmed for LLM consumption — raw NHTSA payloads are noisy, so the server keeps the fields that change an answer and drops the rest. Less context burned, better answers.

Quickstart

Requires uv (it manages Python ≥3.11 for you).

git clone https://github.com/basit-khan-abdul/vehicle-safety-mcp.git
cd vehicle-safety-mcp
uv sync

Claude Code

claude mcp add vehicle-safety -- uv run --directory /path/to/vehicle-safety-mcp vehicle-safety-mcp

Claude Desktop

Add to claude_desktop_config.json (Settings → Developer → Edit Config):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "vehicle-safety": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": ["run", "--directory", "/path/to/vehicle-safety-mcp", "vehicle-safety-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop; the tools appear under the 🔌 icon.

Try asking

• "Decode this VIN: 5UXWX7C5BA"*
• "Does the 2020 Honda Civic have any recalls?"
• "Compare crash-test ratings of a 2021 Toyota RAV4 and a 2021 Honda CR-V"
• "What do owners complain about most on the 2019 Ford F-150?"

Tests

Live smoke tests against the real APIs (the upstream contract is the product):

uv run pytest

Design notes

• Trimmed responses over raw passthrough. Each NHTSA record is filtered to a curated field list (nhtsa.py). An LLM doesn't need 140 vPIC fields to say "it's a BMW X3".
• Composite tool for the common question. check_vin_recalls chains decode → recall lookup because "does my car have recalls?" is the question real people ask — one tool call instead of two round trips.
• Bounded output everywhere. Ratings capped at 5 variants, complaint narratives truncated at 400 chars, complaint list limited — tool output that scrolls forever helps nobody.

Data source & disclaimer

Data comes from the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration public APIs and covers vehicles sold in the United States. This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by NHTSA. Always verify safety-critical information with official sources.

License

MIT © Basit Khan