Recalled Rental Cars Pose a Danger to Texas Consumers

If you have driven a recalled rental carwithin the past decade, chances are you were not told about any recalls on the car or whether any defects in the car had been fixed.
The scary reality is that many recalled cars go unfixed by rental car companies. Rather than take the time to fix the defects, rental car companies continue to rent out these defective vehicles to unsuspecting consumers without warning.
But Senator Charles Schumer hopes to change this. This past July, he introduced the "Raechel and Jacqueline Houck Safe Rental Car Act of 2011" that would ban rentals of recalled, unrepaired automobiles.
Raechel and Jacqueline Houck were sisters who had rented a defective Chrysler PT Cruiser from Enterprise Rent-A-Car. The car had been recalled nearly a month before the sisters rented the car because flammable power steering fluid could leak onto hot engine surfaces or catalytic converters, resulting in a fire.
The sisters were killed in a fiery crash while driving the recalled rental car. Their parents brought a lawsuit against Enterprise, and after six years, Enterprise finally admitted responsibility for the sisters' deaths.
Despite horrific stories like these, the rental car industry opposes the proposed legislation, arguing that some safety defects do not need to be fixed immediately. Instead, the industry proposes a two-tier recall system in which some cars that pose less dangerous safety hazards would be rented out before being fixed.
Consumer advocates argue that the rental car industry is putting profits over consumer safety, which leads to deadly Texas car accidents like the one involving the Houck sisters.
To ensure that rental car companies do not go free of liability for failing to warn their customers of safety defects, contact your U.S. congressperson and ask him/her to pass the Safe Rental Car Act.
If you were injured by a defective part in a recalled rental car, call the experienced car accident attorneys at Van Wey Law today at (214)329-1350 or (800)489-5082.