Do You think your Rental Car is Safe?

It is alleged that the rental companies wait until it is convenient for them to get safety recall repairs. If the car is not on the road, the rental car agencies lose income and they schedule its safety recall repairs to suit their own convenience. In the wake of reports of injuries and deaths in rental cars, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has begun investigating whether the rental cars are getting fixed for any safety recalls and problems.
The NHTSA called this investigation the 'audit query' into the recall-remedy completion by rental car companies. Such 'audit query' investigations by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) are rare. There was only one 'audit query' in 2010 and two, in 2009.
In the wake of one particular rental car accident that cost two young people their lives and the car rental company, $15 million the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has launched an investigation to check if rental car companies are allowing safety recall repairs on their vehicles religiously. According to the NHTSA, there was a steep spike in fatal crashes involving rental vehicles listed for safety recalls.
As part of its investigation, the NHTSA requested:
Information on recall notices issued for the 29 US vehicle models most commonly favored by rental-car fleetsr
Chrysler, Ford and General Motors to provide information on all their three million vehicles favored by rental companies in wake of recalls
Information on the models Chevrolet Malibu, Ford Fusion and Chrysler Sebring that are listed for safety recallsr
A report from the auto makers as to how long it took them to complete their safety recall repairs
Information on how the top ten rental car companies in the US reacted to recall notices and complied to safety recall repairsr
According to the NHTSA:
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was asked to prohibit rental car agencies if they have not complied to the safety recalls by allowing safety repairs on their cars
No car rental company should risk injury, death or lawsuit by continuing to put a recalled vehicle on the road for rentalr
A car rental company should not ply any recalled vehicles until the safety repairs are mader
A rental company should not let its corporate greed precede the safety of the consumersr
The auto makers also should send the safety recall notices to the car rental companies in a timely manner.
Federal traffic safety officials are investigating to check if rental car agencies respond to recalls promptly or let their convenience precede in having their vehicles fixed.
Under the federal law, no dealership should sell vehicles that are subject to open safety recallsr
An auto maker should notify all the rental car companies to take the recalled vehicles out of service and repair them before returning them to servicer
There should be laws that make rental car companies repair recalled vehicles mandatory before they put them back on the roadsr
The NHTSA recall database offers information to consumers about vehicle recalls. This kind of information would help consumers make an intelligent decision on the use of rental cars.