(Bloomberg) — The U.S. Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee unveiled a plan that may roll back protections consumers get when renting cars with potentially lethal safety defects.
Under a comprehensive safety bill introduced Thursday by Senator John Thune, a S.D. Republican, rental-car companies would be able to offer vehicles with unresolved flaws as long as they disclose the defects in writing to the renter.
Consumer groups have pushed for laws to prevent rental of defective cars. Legislation such as the Raechel and Jacqueline Houck Safe Rental Car Act was considered by the Senate committee as recently as 2013 but never became law. The panel this year switched to Republican control.
"This is going backward," said Rosemary Shahan, president of Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety, a safety group based in Sacramento, Calif. "This would be worse than existing practices for 95% of the industry."
The Senate Commerce plan would let rental-car companies ignore the steps taken voluntarily by the largest companies, like Hertz Global Holdings Inc., Avis Budget Group Inc. and Enterprise Holdings. The companies have pledged to complete all recall repairs before renting their cars.
The National Automobile Dealers Association and the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers have opposed legislation that would block the rental of any vehicles subject to a recall.
Industry opposition
In a May 2013 hearing, NADA argued that less than 10% of recalls sought by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration were deemed serious enough to recommend that consumers stop driving until their cars are repaired.
Alliance Chief Executive Officer Mitch Bainwol, who lobbies on behalf of General Motors Co., Toyota Motor Co. and 10 other automakers, said legislation to stop renting defective cars would be harmful to consumers because dealerships would repair the rental cars before their customers' vehicles.
The Houcks — Raechel, 24, and Jacqueline, 20 — died in a 2004 crash involving a rented Chrysler PT Cruiser. The car had been subject to recall for a defective power-steering hose that hadn't been repaired. The women lost control after the hose caught fire and the car collided with a tractor-trailer.
"The promise of life my talented daughters held was snuffed out in a matter of seconds," Cally Houck, the women's mother, told the commerce committee in 2013. "Why didn't the rental car company fix this defect before renting out a vehicle that was a ticking time bomb?"
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