Trenton’s latest disgrace: An anti-consumer bill that compromises highway safety | Editorial

Imagine driving a used car, one that you recently purchased, and the brakes suddenly fail because the dealer never had them fixed following a safety recall.

Or perhaps it had a defect that caused the engine to catch fire. Or it could be among the tens of millions of used cars with a Takata airbag that could potentially erupt in an explosion of shrapnel in a driver's face.

Such tragedies occur when repairs mandated by manufacturer safety recalls are not completed. The unscrupulous dealers, who were responsible for making sure dangerous used vehicles with recall notices were fixed before they left the lot, never should have sold them in the first place. But they risked lives and lawsuits by doing it anyway.

This common scenario could soon change, but in the most backward way imaginable: Trenton lawmakers want to shift the responsibility of completing recall repairs onto the consumer and give used car dealers liability protection, with a bill they laughably tout as a consumer-safety measure.

This zombie bill, which consumer advocates call a "license to kill," has dozens of sponsors from both parties. It was authored by the Automotive Trade Association Executives – the powerful lobbyist for auto dealers – and it has multiple aims.

The first is to move clogged inventory, because no dealer wants to watch their products depreciate as they sit in the lot. That is why so many dealers don't share information about cars under recall until after the deal is sealed, if they disclose it at all.

But the bigger goal is to dodge accountability: The bill stipulates that if there is an active recall on the vehicle, the dealer must inform the buyer with " of the recall information" – which they should be doing anyway – and then it becomes the buyer's responsibility to follow through on the repair. We saw nothing in the bill that says the buyer must also receive a verbal heads-up.

Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin believes this will make dealers act more responsibly, by compelling them to research whether the used vehicle has a defect that requires a recall, as determined by the manufacturer or the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

It is remarkable that even though New Jersey's consumer protection laws already make it illegal for dealers to sell used cars with active recalls – many do it anyway – the Legislature wants us to believe that forcing a dealer to check the NHTSA website is a laudable commitment to transparency. Three cheers for this arduous effort, which takes three seconds .

But it's a cynical scheme. The bill only requires the dealer to print out the open recall and include it in the paperwork of the sale – which will effectively make it legal to sell damaged used cars in New Jersey.

Even worse, the bill makes it harder – some say impossible - to file a lawsuit, because the dealer has disclosed that there is an open recall that requires repair.

"It actually lifts a big legal burden off the dealer to sell safe and road-worthy vehicles," said Chuck Bell, the program director for Consumer Reports. "We think that burden should belong with the dealer, who is in a much better position to repair the vehicle or understand what's wrong with it."

Rosemary Shahan, the president of Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety ( CARS ), put it this way: "In this case, disclosure isn't meant to be about disclosure. It's legal C-Y-A," she said. "This bill seeks to foist the responsibility of fixing the car onto the consumer while shielding the dealers."

Even car manufacturers, which are ultimately responsible to fix endemic defects, hate the bill. It's partly because the bill would require them to pay dealers more per month to hold unsold used cars awaiting repairs.

Here's the bottom line from David Bright, the senior attorney for the Alliance of Automotive Innovation, the manufacturers trade group: "This bill is anti-consumer, it's anti-safety, and it creates a ton of unnecessary costs in the system," he said.

Coughlin's office, which took visits from all stakeholders earlier this week, insists the bill isn't so much about bailing out dealers as much as it is about enlightening the consumer. The Speaker believes that dealers hold "very few" vehicles under recall, and that the majority of recalls are already in consumer driveways.

But the real point is that New Jersey's roads have 1.4 million cars under safety recall, according to CARFAX, and these vehicles should not have been sold at all. Some have been sold even before the manufacturer has designed a fix.

Federal law prohibiting car dealers from selling recalled new cars. Federal law also bans the sale of rental cars under safety recall. But there is no federal law against selling recalled used vehicles, so it's up to the states to hold dealers accountable.

This "recall disclosure" bill does just the opposite. It actually makes such sales legal, while pretending to expose the industry's dirty secret. It shows a blatant disdain for consumer protection and safety, because disclosure is no substitute for repair.

Other states have rejected this bill, and New Jersey must do the same. Our drivers deserve to know that the used vehicles they buy are free from unrepaired recall issues, but they must also have reasonable expectations that they have legal protection when they are sold a ticking time bomb.