Rental Cars Making Staten Island Roads Unsafe?
As a lawyer who deals with serious and tragic injuries on a daily basis, and company bean-counter mentality, I was still shocked to read about the tragic deaths of two young sisters in a fiery head-on collision. The accident happened in 2004 while the sisters were in a PT Cruiser rented from Enterprise Rent A Car branch in Capitola, California.
The 2004 PT Cruiser had been recently recalled by Chrysler a month before Enterprise rented it to the sisters. The safety recall was for the immediate replacement of a power steering hose that could fail, leaking power steering fluid onto the catalytic converter, causing loss of steering and igniting a fire under the hood. Renting cars with a known safety defect was common practice for Enterprise. After a recall, Enterprise rented the car at least once before it was taken in for repairs, even though they may have known of the recall at least a month earlier. Couple this with a practice of routinely "over-booking" reservations and the result is that these cars were on the road all too frequently instead of being repaired.
New car dealers are not allowed to sell a car under a safety recall unless the safety issues are fixed. Rental car companies are not held to the same standard and can rent a recalled car to an unsuspecting consumer. One has to question why rental car companies are not held to the same standard? Enterprise has four branches on Staten Island. As they rent numerous cars weekly, Enterprise can be putting dozens of potentially dangerous cars on Staten Island roads. As this all boils down to a "bean-counter" argument, the risks were certainly discussed but again, in the end, company profits won out over consumer safety. If a car is not rented, it is not making money. This affects their bottom line.
Enterprise determined that it would be cheaper to pay for the injuries that their actions caused as opposed to taking these cars off the lots and repairing them immediately. Even after a jury awarded $15 million to the estate of the two young sisters, Enterprise has no plans to change their practice. We need to demand to our local representatives that the rental car companies be held accountable to the consumer and to other drivers on Staten Island roads. Even if you don't have any plans to rent a car, you may be sharing the road with a potentially dangerous vehicle.
