Spurred by allegations of incidents involving personal injury and death, safety officials have started an investigation to determine how long it takes car rental companies to repair vehicles that have been recalled for safety concerns. Currently, there is no federal law that ensures that rental companies fix car that have been recalled before renting them to patrons. Ford, Chrysler and GM have been asked by the National Highway Traffic Safety Association to provide updates on the repair status of 3 million commonly rented cars.
Since there is not a federal law on the issue of repairing recalled cars. Consumers have to depend on the corporate policy of rental car companies or state law. According to a former area manager that worked for Enterprise in San Francisco, Enterprise rented cars according to demand regardless of the vehicles' recall repair status in 2008 and before. The manager said that the company's corporate office looked the other way and placed profit over safety. According to other Enterprise executives a policy was not in place to keep cars that had been recalled off the road.
Other major car rental companies like Avis and Hertz also did not have recall policies in place in 2008. The companies said that they evaluated recalls on an individual basis and worked in conjunction with car manufacturers to ensure repairs were completed in a timely manner. Today, Hertz will not rent cars that have been recalled for safety issues until repairs have been made.
As of July 2010, Enterprise Holdings the company that owns Enterprise, National and Alamo still does not have a company-wide policy that addresses car recalls. The company said that it did not rent Toyota and Pontiac cars when there was a problem with those cars earlier this year and did so without an order by the government. Critics of the companies believe that rental companies risk personal injury by repairing recalled vehicles when it is convenient.
Source: abcnews.go.com, "Driving This Thanksgiving? Feds Launch Crackdown On Unsafe Rental Cars," Joseph Rhee, 11/24/10