Rivian has told federal regulators that a pop-up notification can cover the reversing image on 98,828 of its electric vehicles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration logged the filing as campaign 26V597000 after Rivian reported it on September 16, 2026. Rivian’s internal reference for the recall is FSAM-1866.
No hardware is broken, and the summary fields read for this article include no crash or injury counts. The fault sits in software that decides what appears on the touchscreen at the moment a driver shifts into reverse, which is exactly when a backup camera has to be visible. NHTSA files the problem under the component label “Back Over Prevention: Software,” a category that tells owners the cause is code rather than a lens, cable or display panel, and that the repair will be code as well.
A notification layer drawn over the reversing image
Modern infotainment screens stack several layers of content: a map, media controls, vehicle alerts and, when the transmission selects reverse, the camera feed. The recall describes a case where one of those alerts can land on top of the camera layer. A driver backing out of a driveway would then see part of a message instead of the pavement behind the truck, with the obstruction depending on what the software chooses to display at that instant. For trucks as tall and long as an R1T or R1S, the view directly behind the bumper is where a small child or a low obstacle is most likely to go unseen, so a covered image removes the one aid designed for that blind zone.
The agency’s recall record states the defect in one line: “The rearview camera image may be obstructed by a notification when in reverse.” The record is brief about triggers. It does not name which notifications cause the problem, how often it occurs, or how long an overlay stays on screen, and none of those details should be assumed. What it establishes is that Rivian concluded the behaviour is a safety defect and that the covered population is large enough to reach nearly 99,000 vehicles. Because the cause is a software behaviour rather than a batch of faulty parts, every vehicle running the affected code is treated as carrying the defect, which is why the count spans several model years instead of a narrow production window.
FMVSS 111 and the federal rear visibility rule
The reason a pop-up becomes a recall is Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 111, the federal rule on rear visibility, which 49 CFR 571.111 sets out. The standard requires vehicles in its scope to show the area behind them to the driver, and a camera system that can be covered during a reverse maneuver falls short of that purpose. NHTSA’s record lists FMVSS 111 as the standard the vehicles fail to meet while the defect is present.
That framing matters because it separates a compliance failure from an inconvenience. A cluttered screen is a design complaint. A required safety display that a software message can displace is a violation of a federal standard, which obliges the manufacturer to file a defect report under 49 CFR Part 573 and fix every affected vehicle at no charge to the owner. Rivian’s filing date of September 16 is the date NHTSA recorded as received, and the dataset and campaign record agree on it.
The software update and the November 9 letters
Rivian’s remedy is a free software update. According to the NHTSA record, “Owner notification letters are expected to be mailed November 9, 2026,” roughly eight weeks after the September 16 filing, and the VIN lookup that tells owners whether a specific truck is included opens the same day.
The record does not say whether the update arrives wirelessly or requires a service visit, so that detail remains unconfirmed. The gap between filing and letters is also the period when the defect is still live on the road, and the record gives no interim guidance beyond the remedy itself, so any advice about glancing over a shoulder or using mirrors while backing up is common sense rather than a stated Rivian instruction. Owners who want to check sooner can enter a VIN on NHTSA’s recall lookup, though the campaign may not appear against individual vehicles until the notification date arrives.
Which Rivian models fall inside campaign 26V597000
The campaign spans three vehicles. It lists the R1S sport utility vehicle for model years 2022 through 2027, the R1T pickup for model years 2022 through 2026, and the R2 for model year 2027. The inclusion of the R2, which carries a 2027 model year, shows the same notification behaviour reaching Rivian’s newest product line as well as the original trucks. Software shared across a vehicle family is efficient for the manufacturer, since one update can serve every model, but it also means a single logic flaw can follow the code into a new vehicle before it has reached many driveways.
The filing also sits among a busy stretch of recall activity. Records in NHTSA’s recalls dataset for reports received since September 12 include this campaign alongside many unrelated filings, but its cause is unusual: most recalls trace to a part, while this one traces to a decision made by code about what to put on a screen.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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