In an effort to help insurance companies curb fraud, the National Insurance Crime Bureau has created a database that will let car buyers search for unrecovered stolen cars before buying. But one industry association says the program could do even more with the help of insurers.

The Unrecovered Stolen Vehicle database logs the vehicle identification number (VIN) from every stolen vehicle reported by its 100+ member insurance companies. The information is then searchable by the public, free of charge. With an annual average recovery rate of just 63 percent, the NICB said several million vehicles remain unaccounted for and could possibly end up being purchased by unsuspecting consumers.

NICB took similar action following Hurricane Katrina when it created a flooded-car database. That program helped prevent hundreds of thousands of flood-damaged cars that had been declared totaled by insurance companies from being sold to the public.