Rental Car Company's Failure to Fix Recalled Vehicles Raises Accident Risks
Most of us will need to rent a car at some point in time. However, few will bother to determine that the car we are renting is on not a recall list. For two young women in California, that failure came at a heavy price when the rented Chrysler PT Cruiser they were driving in exploded into flames after a crash, killing them instantly. The Cruiser had been recalled by Chrysler one year earlier due to fire hazards, and been loaned by Enterprise Rent-a-Car, one of the biggest rental car companies in the country.
Now, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has announced a probe into whether rental car companies conduct repairs of recalled cars, and whether these repairs are complete. The NHTSA investigation comes after auto safety group Center for Auto Safety petitioned the federal administration to investigate recalled vehicle repairs at rental car companies.
In the Enterprise case, the parents of the two women, who were sisters, filed a lawsuit against Enterprise, and awarded $15 million in damages. However, Enterprise denied until the very last minute that it was responsible for the crash. While it's too late for the two young women who died in that accident, there is still time to prevent other deaths involving rental cars in Indiana and around the country. During the trial, former employees of Enterprise testified that the company had no firm policy in place that prevented vehicles that were on a recall list from being rented out to consumers if there were no cars available on the lot.
Indiana car accident lawyers would never tolerate auto manufacturers selling cars that have been recalled, before these were fixed. It makes no sense therefore, that we fail to prevent rental companies from renting out these same recalled cars to innocent consumers, who have no idea they're possibly driving a dangerous and defective machine. The NHTSA needs to come down harder on rental car companies that place innocent motorists’ lives at risk.
