The Car You Rent May Not Necessarily Be As Safe As an Identical Car That You Own - Be Careful Warns Experienced Automobile and Airbag Defect Lawyer
I was in Florida yesterday and rented a car with a business associate of mine and took for granted that the same safety features present on a privately owned Chevrolet Impala motor vehicle would be standard on the rental vehicle. I surprisingly discovered that this was not so.
According to investigation by the Kansas City Star, Enterprise Rent-A-Car chose to leave side airbags from thousands of Chevrolet Impala cars in order to save millions of dollars. According to the article authored by Rick Montgomery and Ann Margolis of the Kansas City Star, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, the nation’s largest private buyer of new cars and several used ones choose to “delete” a standard safety feature from thousands of Chevrolet Impala fleet vehicles. Enterprise rented out thousands of 2006-2008 model vehicles without side curtain airbags which have been shown to dramatically reduce deaths and catastrophic injuries.
The investigation revealed that hundreds of Impalas sold by Enterprise were incorrectly advertised on the Enterprise website as having the very head protecting features that the rental company opted to exclude on the General Motors factory floor model. Sean Kane, the head of Safety Research and Strategy noted, “I have never seen a safety feature removed from a vehicle.” According to the investigative article, Enterprise rental officials defended their decision to eliminate the side airbags in roughly 66,000 Impalas claiming they did not violate any federal mandate and it should be noted that the decision saved the company approximately $175 on each Impala for a grand total of $11.5 million dollars in savings. Enterprise admitted making the mistake in its online advertising.
As an experienced Philadelphia automobile product liability lawyer who has handled defective airbag claims, I find this somewhat concerning due to the fact that I recently resolved a case involving a significant head injury and loss of sight to a young girl as a result of an airbag failure and the complete elimination of these airbags when they are standard on the Impala is greatly concerning due to the fact that 8,000 people are killed per year in side impact collisions. In 2007 studies have shown that airbags with head protection reduce highway deaths by 45% for drivers struck on the driver’s side of their vehicles.
Sean Kane, the automotive safety expert who assisted the Star in its research, claimed he identified at least five fatal accidents nationwide involving fleet purchased Impalas in side impact crashes. Obviously side and frontal airbags provide an element of protection that is highly effective in saving lives and preventing catastrophic injuries. When one rents or shops for a new car, particularly when it is noted online that the car contains such safety features, it is completely misleading and detrimental to consumer safety, buyer and rental rights to allow such a situation to exist.
