Boxer Calls on Rental Car Industry to Commit to Stop Renting Unsafe Vehicles – 5/5/12

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Press Release of U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer

For Immediate Release:
May 7, 2012  
Contact:
Washington D.C. Office (202) 224-3553

Boxer Calls on Rental Car Industry to Commit to Stop Renting Unsafe Vehicles  

Senator Sends Letters Asking Companies to Pledge to Cease Renting Cars and Trucks Under Safety Recall

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) today sent letters to the four leading rental car companies – which together control 92 percent of the rental car market – asking them to commit to protecting consumers from unsafe vehicles by making the following pledge: “Effective immediately, our company is making a permanent commitment to not rent out or sell any vehicles under safety recall until the defect has been remedied.” 

According to correspondence with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Hertz has already adopted a policy consistent with this pledge. Senator Boxer’s letters urged the other companies – Enterprise, Avis and Dollar/Thrifty – to follow suit, setting a thirty-day deadline to agree to this basic commitment to protect consumers. 

After that deadline passes, Senator Boxer will make public which companies have agreed to join Hertz in standing up for consumer safety. She wrote, “I will announce at that time which companies have agreed to make this pledge and which companies have instead chosen to continue putting their customers’ lives at risk.”

Senator Boxer, along with her colleague Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), has introduced S. 1445, the Raechel and Jacqueline Houck Safe Rental Car Act, legislation that would bar rental car companies from renting vehicles under safety recall that have not been fixed. The bill is named after Raechel and Jacqueline Houck, two sisters from Santa Cruz, ages 24 and 20, who were killed when a recalled car they had rented from Enterprise caught fire and crashed into a truck. 

You can read the full text of Senator Boxer’s letters to the companies here, here, here and here.  

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