Hertz investigated for renting out recalled cars
NHTSA is currently auditing the rental company
Car rental company Hertz is under investigation after claims it has been renting recalled cars. US safety regulator NHTSA has opened the look into the company to see if Hertz is running afoul of federal motor vehicle regulations.
The document was released by the Office of Defect Investigations, a division of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (via Autoblog). It states that “NHTSA is opening this audit query to investigate whether The Hertz Corporation (Hertz) has complied with the requirements of the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act (Safety Act). The Safety Act requires, among other things, that a rental company shall not rent a vehicle subject to a safety recall unless the recall remedy has been performed.”
The ODI document says that NHTSA is “in receipt of information that indicates Hertz rented vehicles to customers without having performed required recall repairs.”
Currently, this is an audit query. This means NHTSA investigators are looking to get more information about what was being rented and when. The audit covers Nissan and Ford vehicles over a time period from 2018 through 2020.
The law banning rental agencies from renting vehicles with open recalls was passed in 2015 and came into effect the next year. It also increased the fines against automakers not complying with NHTSA recall requirements.
