New Law Says Info On Wrecked And Flooded Vehicles Be Disclosed

Pamela Hewitt
August 17, 2006

The National Automobile Dealers Association, or much known as NADA, has been campaigning and moving towards keeping all roads and streets in the United States safer. They have been doing this through campaigns as well as through information dissemination. They do certainly want to protect customers and auto consumers from purchasing dangerous or useless vehicles like those that have already been flooded or have been wrecked.

However, now, they have certainly found a great help in the likes of a senior lawmaker. This person in the government has already laid out his plans through the S. 3707 legislation. Through this legislation, insurance companies are now asked and required to make information on the total loss of such mentioned vehicles available for anybody to access. After all, the numbers of consumers which have already been part of vehicles that have proved to be worthless or dangerous are quite high.

The insurance companies have already sent out a statement on the vehicles that they have declared as unusable or in common terms, ‘totaled’. Just for the previous year, there are around five million of these vehicles. These were declared as such for they have received great types of damage as well as have been flooded or were stolen. However, great as this number is, there are still thousands of these which have been rebuilt. Perhaps some just added a couple of new Lincoln Town Car parts to make it look okay and then these were later sold to customers who did not know a thing or two about vehicles.

David Regan is the NADA’s vice president for legislative affairs and he explains, “This is a double hit on the consumers: it’s a public health risk because more unsafe cars are on the road, and it’s a pocketbook risk because people could overpay for a wreck that should be in the junkyard.” He continues, “Dealers don’t want these wrecks on their lots any more than a mother would want to drive her children around in one.”