Al Ruechel, Your Technology

Al Ruechel says if you are thinking about buying a new or used car, don't forget about safety.

Uncle Sam wants to help you buy the safest car possible. There's a Web site that's dedicated to giving you just the facts about how safe your car may or may not be.

The name of the Web site is Safercar.gov. It's put together by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. It's a one-stop car safety, recall, mileage and crash test site of information.

The left-hand column is for resources. Here you can find out which vehicles have side impact air bags. You can get also detailed crash ratings reports using the standards established by the NHTSA and other independent crash ratings.

If you are buying tires, there is a complete section on tire safety that includes what tire ratings means and how tires play a part in the electronic stability control devices on new cars and trucks.

There is also a section on hybrids.

If you have a particular brand car or truck you are interested in, you can look up crash and rollover test results by make, model, year and class.

On the right are defects and recalls. This not only includes the defects and recalls issued by the manufacturers but other problems with the vehicles which may not have prompted a full recall but are still important to know about.

If you have a vehicle you think has some defects, there is a place to complain here, and yes the government does listen.

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