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House Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
House of Representatives
Session of 2015 - 2016
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | June 28, 2016 12:13 PM |
|---|---|
| From: | Representative Madeleine Dean |
| To: | All House members |
| Subject: | Automobile Recall Search During Annual Vehicle Inspections |
| In the near future, I will introduce consumer protection legislation amending the vehicle code to require inspection agents to perform a VIN recall search as a part of the inspection process. If there is a recall on a particular vehicle, the inspection agent will be required to notify the owner of the vehicle. The presence of an outstanding recall notice will not necessitate failure of a vehicle to pass inspection. Beginning in 2008, the largest automotive recall in history centered on the defective Takata Corp. airbags that are found in millions of vehicles that are manufactured by BMW, Chrysler, Daimler Trucks, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Subaru, and Toyota. Since the beginning of the recall, at least 11 people in the U.S. have died from injuries suffered as a result of a defective Takata airbag. Hundreds more around the world have been injured by exploding inflators. The deaths have spurred millions of airbag recalls worldwide, including 24 million vehicles in the U.S. Thus far, fewer than 8 million airbags have been replaced, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Car dealers in the U.S. have an obligation to inform car owners of the recalls, but there will always be complications with forwarding addresses or misplaced mail that result in owners being uninformed about potentially dangerous recalls. Therefore, as a secondary source—or a reminder—an inspection agent’s recall search at the time of the annual vehicle inspection would enhance consumer protection and safety. The NHTSA offers free online VIN checks at their Safecar.gov website (https://vinrcl.safercar.gov/vin/) resulting in little to no additional financial burden on the vehicle inspector. I hope you will join me co-sponsoring this important piece of consumer protection legislation. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact my office. |
Introduced as HB2297