Wasn’t there another thread on this somewhere else recently?
Anyway, I don’t think that the rental company is out of line here. By giving the rental company his credit card #, the renter is essentially putting down a deposit which the company may withdraw from as specified in the signed contract. Does your landlord not have the right to withhold some of your deposit when there is damage to a house or when you violate terms of your lease? I know my rental agreement has a provision that I am charged $25 if my dogs shit sits in the backyard for more than 24 hours. Does it ACTUALLY cost my landlord $25 to pick up the shit? No. It doesn’t matter. This is essentially a liquidated damages clause.
Not that it is especially relevant, but people who complain that it is impossible to drive less than 70 in some places are full of shit. My slow ass dad has been driving between 50-55 on the NJ turnpike between New Brunswick and New York for the past 20 years. Drives me nuts. Drives some other people nuts. But, too bad. That’s the law. Try making that keeping up with the flow of traffic argument in court.
I never did say that it was impossible to drive 50-55 MPH on the NJ Tpke. However, at that speed you are more of a target and hinderance to the fluid flow of traffic rather than being a part of it. You wanna drive that speed? Go ahead, and you are absolutely right - it is the law. I’ll be one lane to the left keeping up with traffic at a safe pace.
But to allow a company like this free reign to deduct money from your credit card is madness. Shame on him for not realizing that sooner. He should have just handed over his soul signed in blood. . .
Actually, the rental company has far more freedom than the government to monitor your behavior. Monitoring your GPS is likely to be found a form of search (like thermal imaging), which the government cannot use without a particularized suspicion sufficient to support a warrant.
I agree that I would be annoyed if this happened to me, but the company could have valid reasons for the requirement. For example, maybe they get a break on their insurance coverage, which they can pass on to the customer.
I have to weigh in here with the people who are bewildered that ANYONE thinks this guy is in the right. Of COURSE he has to abide by the terms of a contract that he signed or suffer the penalties set forth in that contract. You don’t get to decide after you agree to something in writing that you shouldn’t have to abide by it because it “isn’t fair.”
And how, exactly, is this not fair? even if, as the article quoted this putz’s lawyer as saying, he signed the one contract in the stack that didn’t have the GPS clause in bold letters at the top, he did agree not to operate the vehicle at speeds above X mph. Clearly he didn’t think they would be able to tell if he kept his word or not. They are under no legal obligation to tell him he’s going to be watched; if he agreed not to speed, and a company official observed him speeding and verified it with a radar gun, he would be just as on the hook for the penalties.
those of you who are taking this idiot’s side seem mostly to be saying that the company shouldn’t have the right to do something that the contract specifically allows it to do, simply because said action doesn’t fit your notion of good sportsmanship. Bottom line, folks: if a provision in a contract is agreed to by both sides and is not illegal, or invalidated in some other way (by one of the parties being a minor, for example, or by a party signing under duress), it is enforceable.
“It isn’t fair!” you keep wailing. As the Goblin King said to Sarah, I wonder what your basis for comparison is.
Then we must agree to disagree. On a different note, I seriously am thinking of buying the Shaggs album to see if it’s as bad as it almost has to be.
I live 100 yards from a state highway. My HS is a mile down the road, directly off the state highway. It is a 60mph, one lane, undivided highway. There has been exactly one accident involving students in front of the school in the ten years I’ve lived here. Oddly enough, that accident was my sister’s fault, and she drives like ass. She drives worse than ass. She drives like blind ass with a hangover, a harelip, and a learning disability. One accident. Ten years. Yet last year, they decided to install 45mph school zone blinkers 100 yards in each direction from the beginning of the school property. These lights blink from 7:30 am until 8:30 am, and 2:30 pm until 3:30 pm each day of the week, excluding weekends. Including summers. Including days off. Including holidays. And these lights are enforced by the hick mullet bastard ‘police’ that patrol this area, at any time when they are blinking. Thursday, June 14th, nearly a month after school’s out? Yup, they’ll ticket you. (This date chosen at random) If the fact is that these lights are only on because… well… they’re on, what’s to stop GPS enforcement of the same pigheaded, money-grubbing manner?
I must reiterate that I do agree that the man does not have the right to break the law in their vehicle, but I still cannot fathom how they would ever, ever, have the right to debit him for his actions instead of simply denying him service in the future.
What do you use to support your argument? Who’s to say that the courts won’t uphold GPS tracking as being the extrapolation of standard airplane speed measurement devices?
You could say that! I’m glad to see that it’s more of a personal preference, and not a misguided trust in the accuracy of the NHTSA’s statistic and reporting methods.
Well, if the contract says (as apparently it does) something like “you agree not to drive the rental car above x speed. Each infraction will result in payment of a $150 fine.”
and he signed it…
Then they have the right to debit him for his actions because he GAVE them the right to do so.
If the contract didn’t specify a penalty but just said that he agreed not to speed, and he did and was caught, then the rental company would have only the right to claim breach of contract and retrieve the car. However, if specific penalties are set forth as part of the contract, then they are as enforceable as ANY of the contract’s terms (assuming, as I said above, that the contract is signed and the penalty is not illegal in some way or the contract invalidated).
To me, the issue seems to boil down to contractual law. We seem to agree that signing a contract binds the signee to that contract. BUT, we all know that contracts are revised over time. The company certainly revised their contract after adding the GPS to their fleet of cars. Business contracts are revised,also, due to legal questions about statements in those contracts. Business is a two way street. Nothing is cast in stone, and most things in business are negotiable - within the boundaries of the law.
My understanding of GPS is that it allows for some variance (a small variance)+ or - square yard. I’m guessing that a small speed variance is built into the devises in the cars. Since the contract in this case IS viewed as something entirely written in stone, it states that the driver cannot go over 79 mph for 2 sustained min. It doesn’t state that the driver cannot go over ABOUT 79 mph. If the contract is based on the reliablility of the GPS, then I think it’s time for another contract revision.
Mostly the fact that GPS involves a device placed in your car. However, given the shrinking zone of privacy (twenty years ago, I doubt that the thermal imager case would have even gotten to the Supreme Court), it may well be that the case would come out the other way. This is especially true since the GPS is likely to be voluntarily placed in your car. (Although I’m guessing it would also be voluntarily removed in a big fat hurry if the government started using it to issue speeding tickets).
I mostly wanted to point out that allowing rental car companies to use GPS data in this way does not necessarily lead directly to the government doing the same. It’s astonishing how many people believe that the Constitution places limits directly on private actors, and that their right of privacy or free speech is absolute against all who would challenge it.
Especially those people who seem to think that posting here is covered under the First Ammendment. They annoy me. But that doesn’t really have much to do with GPS and/or rental cars.
I got bad news for you, Homer–the Shaggs album is TWICE as bad as you imagine. But kind of endearing, in a “Boy, they were really trying hard” kind of way.
The situation you described with the school lights is fucked up, BTW. If I know damned well there’s no school, and the lights are blinking, I ignore them.
Then, I suppose, you don’t mind getting a ticket, since that’s what happens if there’s a cop around should you go flying through any clearly marked school zone in such a cavalier manner.
Homer’s description of the vagaries and idiocies of some school zones is spot-on. Where you are *pldennison I am sure that every last school zone is marked with a big flashing light. Where *I am, sometimes they just come marked by a sign that says something along the lines of “Speed Limit 35 15 7-9 am 3-5 pm Mon-Fri”. So what if school’s out or it’s summertime? “The law is the law”, n’est-ce pas? GPS systems are more than accurate enough to mark your car’s location in relation to every minute fluctuation in the speed limit; the potential revenue bonanza to cash-strapped entities is obvious.
And to ENugent: the government ought to have the very last word in what is legal, intrusion-wise. If this were not so, and it is perfectly OK for a company to conduct what would otherwise be an illegal search and seizure, then what is to stop the government from subcontracting law enforcement - a la Robocop - in order to “make our streets safer?” (Why have “real” cops at all, if they are only going to be hog-tied by that silly Constitution?)
Of COURSE someone is obligated to fulfill a signed contract, people, but I STILL think that in this case any sensible judge will rule in the favor of the plaintiff, since the issue at hand is not whether A owes B but rather whether B did something to A which any reasonable person would sound intrusive and fishy AND whether such behavior sets a dangerous precedent, which it most certainly does.
Having experence w/ gps’s I want to say that the speed that they give is pretty accurate but could be fooled when it drops or aquires satalites. This is caused by your appearnt position switching when reading diffrent sat’s and is of very short duration.
Also gps’s measure speed by using straight line distance between 2 points and the travel time inbetween. so if you are turning your gps speed will be slghtly lower then actual.
At the risk of reviving this thread, I thought the board might be interested in this update:
The Connecticut Dept. of Consumer Protection has filed a complaint against the company, charging that the company failed to tell its customers about what the GPS devices were being used for and had violated the state’s law on unfair trade practices by charging customers when no damage was sustained.
It’s seeking reimbursement on behalf of 27 customers who complained about the charge, and subpoenaed Acme to provide a list of all customers who had been charged.
Actually, I saw a blurb about this on the news Thursday or Friday, the original guy is getting his money back. That was the extent of the moeny talks. They did make a point to say that none of the “bigger” rental companies did this.
