NHTSA has opened an investigation into rental giant Hertz for allegedly renting vehicles with open recalls to customers in violation of a federal law which makes it illegal for rental chains with fleets of 35 vehicles or more to rent out a car with an open recall.
The agency's Office of Defect Investigations posted a notice Tuesday saying it has received information that would indicate that Hertz rented Ford and Nissan vehicles with open recalls to customers.
"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. 49 U.S.C. § 30120(i)," the statement said.
"NHTSA is in receipt of information that indicates Hertz rented vehicles to customers without having performed required recall repairs. Accordingly, we are opening this audit query to seek additional information concerning this issue," it concluded.
Renting vehicles with open recalls was made illegal by what started as the FAST (Fixing America's Surface Transportation) Act, which was passed by Congress and signed by then-president Obama in December 2015. It went into effect the following year.
Hertz has also recently been under fire for having customers arrested for allegedly stealing cars that they had already returned. The company agreed to pay out $168 million in a settlement to more than 350 people it had falsely accused of theft through what the company claimed was merely an inventory "glitch."
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