How we verify
SafeYard cards are extracted from OEM Emergency Response Guides and cross-checked against secondary safety publications. Below is exactly how we work and where the limits are. Read this once.
Sources we use
Every source we cite is tagged with a tier reflecting its authority. Higher tier = stronger evidence.
- Tier 1: Authoritative. OEM official documents (Emergency Response Guides, Technical Service Bulletins, Service Information Systems) plus federal regulatory sources (NHTSA, FEMA U.S. Fire Administration, NTSB investigation reports, DOE / NREL national-lab technical reports).
- Tier 2: Industry / safety bodies. NFPA Alternative Fuel Vehicle Safety Training, EV FireSafe research, IIHS crash test reports, OARA / ARA / ARC dismantling guides, SAE published battery safety standards (J2929 / J2950 / J3147), peer-reviewed academic papers.
- Tier 3: Cross-reference. Trade publications, ERG aggregators (Energy Security Agency, Boron Extrication), spec databases (EV Database, EVSpecifications), Wikipedia. We only use these to cross-check non-safety facts like voltage class or year ranges.
When you see a chip on a field, hover or tap it. The tooltip breaks down how many Tier-1, Tier-2, and Tier-3 sources cite that specific value. A “Confirmed” field is strongest when at least two of its citing sources are Tier 1 or 2. Agreement among Tier-3 sources alone is weaker evidence because trade publications and aggregators often reprint the same upstream figure.
Per-field confidence labels
Every card carries a verification banner at the top and per-field confidence tags inline. The labels mean:
- Confirmed2 or more independent sources agree on this value. Most-trusted tier.
- 1 sourceOnly one source documents this field. Often correct, but no cross-check. Verify against the linked OEM ERG before relying on it.
- DisputedTwo or more sources disagree. The card shows the more conservative value. Read the field note for the conflict.
- VerifyNo source confirmed in our extraction pass. The card uses an industry default or a TODO placeholder. Treat as unverified.
What the card status means
Cards carry one of three honest status labels:
- Source-checked: every tracked field has been cross-checked against the OEM Emergency Response Guide and other sources, with no unresolved disputes. This is not the same as expert review: no qualified technician has signed off. Cross-check against the OEM ERG before relying on safety-critical values.
- Draft: one or more fields still need confirmation; the banner names how many. Shown anyway because partial reference beats none.
- Verified: reserved for cards a named, credentialed reviewer has signed off on (see CONTRIBUTING.md). No card holds this status yet. Our data is currently agent-extracted and source-triangulated only.
Treat the status banner and the inline confidence chips as load-bearing, not decorative.
Honest limits
- Source agreement is not proof. Three sources quoting the same incorrect industry rumor will all agree. Cross-source agreement is evidence, not certainty.
- AI-assisted extraction has blind spots. Our pipeline uses LLMs to parse PDFs and compare values. They make mistakes, especially on diagram-heavy or model-year-specific content.
- Safety-critical info may live only in OEM bulletins that aren't publicly indexed. Where that's the case we cannot triangulate.
- No human dismantler has reviewed cards yet. A named expert review will be added once we recruit one. Until then, the verification status shown is the entire trust signal. There is no additional human checkpoint behind it.
If you spot a mistake
Every card has a “Something wrong?” link at the bottom that opens a prefilled correction form. We treat user corrections as a source: a second confirming user report can promote a field from “1 source” to “Confirmed” (and we'll note it in the changelog).