According to several news agencies and multiple articles, car dealers are trying to be exempted from a legislation that has been recently pushed to be enacted that would keep dealers from selling any used vehicles or even lending or renting cars that were recalled before all proper repairs were performed.

The small rental-car companies and car dealers have claimed that they could go out of business due to the high costs of parts and other repairs if this legislation passes. According to some of the reports, major rental-car companies have agreed on not renting, lending or selling previously recalled vehicles without repairing all defects before the transaction. After they agreed on doing so, lawmakers decided to push the legislation in order to put everyone on board. All rental-car companies and dealers would be blocked from selling or loaning recalled and non-repaired vehicles once the legislation is enacted.

The issue was addressed after it was noted that deaths and serious injuries have been attributed to accidents that involved rental cars that had been previously recalled. According to lawmakers, recalled vehicles linked to these accidents weren’t repaired and consumers paid the ultimate price as a result of this negligence. Smaller rental-car companies and car dealers will be soon required to have all recalled vehicles repaired before the vehicles can be loaned, sold or rented, which is a standard that would be supervised by the General Accounting Office. The agency has requested the authority to do so to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

According to official data, 11 million vehicles were sold in 2009 while about 600 recalls were announced. These recalls affected over 20 million vehicles.
Consumers are usually unaware of the risk associated with renting or purchasing vehicles that have been recalled and left non-repaired. In some cases, the recalls are linked to vehicular defects that could cause crucial components to fail, posing a serious accident risk to users.

According to the National Independent Automobile Dealers Association, independent dealer owners are not opposed to fixing a problem linked to recalled vehicles, however, they believe that most independent companies would face financial problems if they were to fix recalled vehicles in order to sell them. According to the reports, these companies get parts later than bigger companies, which could be partially to blame for the issues associated with repairing these vehicles.

To learn more about this legislation and what companies this law would affect, click here to read the full report.