The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will roll into 2021 with new rules designed to make odometer tampering an even more serious offense.
The federal agency will start requiring owners of 2011 and newer vehicles to disclose whether odometers have been tampered with for the first 20 years. That means that someone selling a 2011 car in 2031 will need to disclose whether the number on the odometer has been changed.
Previously, the NHTSA required disclosure for only the first 10 years.
Odometer fraud is far less prevalent today than it was in the past thanks to digital odometers that became commonplace in the mid-1990s. Older mechanical odometers could be physically rolled back or replaced, often with little more than a few minutes of work.
Early digital odometers also tend to store mileage data themselves, while newer systems common in the last 20 years communicate with various other computers in the car. That redundancy makes it harder for an odometer to be modified.
Still, black market software hacks can modify odometers, almost always for nefarious reasons.
There are few legitimate instances when an odometer should be tampered with, though importation from Canada’s metric standard to the U.S. (and vice versa) is somewhat common. Additionally, instrument clusters can fail, necessitating replacement of an odometer — though again new cars store mileage in several systems that all talk to one another.
Cars older than 2010 are exempt from odometer disclosures.
A vehicle history report such as those offered by Carfax and AutoCheck can shed light on odometer reading history over time. These reports pull together data from vehicle registrations and inspections, as well as some repair shops and dealers. Though not foolproof — clerical errors are common and not every facility necessarily reports odometer readings — they can provide some peace of mind.
