New California Bill Could Change Used Car Recall Laws For Dealers

An auto safety bill in California called AB 287 is aimed at requiring dealers to educate consumers about their used vehicle purchase. Specifically, the bill is aimed at requiring dealers to tell a consumer if the vehicle they are purchasing was subject to a manufacturer recall effort. This means that consumers wouldn’t have to worry about doing used vehicle research on a used car purchased at a California dealership because presumably the dealers would tell them all about it.

Under this law dealers would have to tell car shoppers about used car recalls, however they would not have to fix them. That comes with one caveat – franchised dealers. If franchised dealer sells used cars of its own brand it would have to both tell the consumer about the recall and repair the vehicle before a sale.

Automakers would also have to reimburse dealers for the cost of storing recalls vehicles. The pushback against this law is some consumer advocates don’t feel that requiring dealers to disclose vehicle recall history to consumers is enough. The fear is that this leaves dealership sales of vehicles that don’t share their franchised brand and rental cars open to being rented without recall repairs completed.

There are a few ways to look at the efforts of this bill. On the one hand it will surely lead to more recall repairs being completed, or at least inform more consumers about recall efforts in a used vehicle they are considering. On the other hand, there are a lot of resources available for consumers to find out if a vehicle that they are interested in is or has been subject to recall. Should the onus be on the consumer or the dealer?

The modern consumer is more informed than any other throughout history with any piece of information they want always just a swipe away on their phone. This includes going to safercar.gov and finding out about recalls while used car shopping. However the bill does require more dealer fixes of used vehicles subject to recalls. One dealer advocate feels action is needed. Bill Maas, President of the California New Car Dealer Association spoke to the Automotive News about this topic. In an interview, Maas said, “The regulation of recalls on used cars in the United States is zero. Doing something is way better than where we are today.”

Should dealers and automakers be required to inform car shoppers about their next used auto, or should the informed consumer in 2015 be able to do their own research on their next used vehicle purchase?