Sweet Victory!!
New ruling will help used car buyers avoid junkers

Judge orders used car data made public

America’s used car buyers just scored a major win over shady auto dealers, unscrupulous rebuilders, and auto insurance giants.  Judge Marilyn Hall Patel, a federal judge in San Francisco, has ordered the U.S. Department of Justice to provide public access to an electronic database that will include vital information on vehicles so badly damaged they are “totaled” by auto insurers due to wrecks, floods, or other calamities.

Auto insurers, junkyards and salvage pools – that auction off smashed or flooded vehicles – will have to submit information on totaled autos to the national database by March 31, 2009, and will be required to submit updates every 30 days. By law, the public must also have access to the data, at cost.

Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety, Public Citizen, and Consumer Action brought the lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice, to end more than a decade of delays. During that time, according to a cost-benefit analysis commissioned by the U.S. DOJ itself, consumers lost between $4 billion and $11.3 billion each year due to vehicle frauds that would have been prevented if the national database system were fully operational.

In some tragic incidents, car buyers or their family members were maimed or killed when structurally unsound vehicles literally collapsed in subsequent collisions. One family that filed a declaration in the case, the Ellsworths, are members of Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety.  Their 18-year-old son Bobby was killed when a pickup truck driven by his friend was involved in a head-on collision. Unknown to them, the pickup had been totaled by State Farm after a severe frontal collision. The air bags had inflated in that crash. Then the truck was sold at a vehicle auction.

Under a California law CARS helped get enacted, whenever a vehicle is rebuilt after the air bags inflated, they must be replaced with fully functioning air bags that meet all applicable federal and manufacturer standards for that specific make and model. So when the truck collided with a BMW on a curvy road one night, the air bags should have been there to protect Bobby.

But, said Bobby’s father, what “really put the knife in our hearts” was when “the state police told us no air bags deployed in the truck because there were no air bags. Instead the compartments were stuffed with paper. Everyone on the scene – the police, EMTs, firefighters—couldn’t believe what they were seeing.” 1

Under the new rules, parents will be able to find out a vehicle is “salvage” before they buy it, or before they allow their children to ride in it. Vehicles with a checkered past will remain in the database permanently, reducing the incentive for fraudsters to engage in “title washing,” or removing incriminating brands on the vehicle title that can tip off buyers a car is a clunker.  Even if vehicle’s title has been altered or counterfeited to appear “clean,” that vehicle will still be readily identifiable as “salvage.” 

The new data from insurers will make the national database more complete and less expensive than private databases such as R. L. Polk’s Carfax and Experian’s AutoCheck.  Those tend to lack timely information and have only spotty data from insurers. That means consumers are often hoodwinked into buying dangerous vehicles before they even turn up in Carfax or AutoCheck.

The Department of Justice attacked the consumer groups’ legal standing to bring the case and also tried to have it dismissed, claiming it had not been filed soon enough. The groups, represented by Public Citizen attorney Deepak Gupta, asked the judge to dismiss the DOJ’s attacks and also to issue a strict timetable for moving forward. The judge did both. She rejected the DOJ’s attempts to have the case thrown out, and issued a strong ruling. She also indicated that if the DOJ believes it cannot meet the timetable she set, agency officials had better be prepared to show up in her court and explain why not.

“We deeply appreciate Judge Patel’s strong ruling,” said Rosemary Shahan, President of Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety.  “Finally, it will be harder for unscrupulous insurers and auto dealers to keep car buyers in the dark about unsafe junkers.”

Read more:

New York Times
Public registry for wrecks is back on track
By Christopher Jensen

http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/author/christopherjensen/?scp=1&sq=Christopher%20Jensen&st=cse

San Francisco Chronicle
Judge orders car database made public
By Bob Egelko

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/24/BA9P133NAR.DTL&type=printable

ABC ch 7, San Francisco:
Car safety database still MIA

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/video?id=6407833

 

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