Rental and Loaner Car Rules

What It Means

The Raechel and Jacqueline Houck Safe Rental Car Act, enacted as part of the Fixing America's Surface Transportation (FAST) Act of December 2015, prohibits rental car companies with fleets of 35 or more vehicles from renting, leasing, or loaning any motor vehicle that is subject to an open safety recall until the recall remedy has been performed. The law is named for two California sisters, Raechel and Jacqueline Houck, ages 24 and 20, who were killed in 2004 when a Chrysler PT Cruiser they had rented from Enterprise lost steering control due to an unrepaired power-steering-hose recall, crashed, caught fire, and burned in the wreckage. The unremedied recall had been outstanding for more than a month when Enterprise rented the vehicle to the sisters despite internal awareness of the notification. The FAST Act rental provision closed the regulatory gap that had permitted the rental. Under the implementing regulations at 49 CFR 579, rental companies must: check every vehicle in the covered fleet against NHTSA's daily recall data feed, take the vehicle out of service within 24 hours of notice of a new recall (or 48 hours for Do Not Drive recalls), and keep the vehicle out of service until the remedy is performed at no cost by an authorized dealer. The law applies to short-term and long-term rentals, leases of 12 months or less, and dealer loaner/courtesy vehicles. It does not apply to car-sharing peer-to-peer platforms (Turo, Getaround) or to private party rentals below the 35-vehicle threshold, which remain a gap in the law. Major rental agencies (Enterprise, Hertz, Avis, Budget) now publish fleet recall compliance reports voluntarily, with compliance rates typically above 99 percent within 48 hours of recall notice.

Frequently Asked Questions