I’m the Financial VP of the Speech and Debate team at my university, an organization with some pretty severe transportation needs. Over the course of the past year, in handling transactions with many rental car agencies, I’ve found some to be unsafe and at times flat-out dishonest.
I’m wondering: what means are there of determining the safety factor of cars prior to a rental? How would I go about investigating a given business and what in specific can/should I investigate? That done, what should be investigated about the cars themselves?
Cost is still a major concern for the organization, but above that my primary concern would still be safety. What advice can you offer?
The Consumer Reports 1999 New Car Buying Guide is a good start to look for safety records in automobiles. Most national rental car agencies rent newer cars (1998 to 2000) so that book should come in handy.
It’s certainly not foolproof, but when I rent a car, I check the mileage on the odometer. If it’s fairly low, say, under 5K miles, I’m pretty confident the car hasn’t started to fall apart yet. I try not to rent anything with more than 10K miles on it.
carfax.com can search VIN numbers for ya, its great cause you can tell if there was a odometer change. Youll have to get some books if you want to know which vehicles are safe. Most of them these days have plastic bumbers, pathetic, isnt it?
Sorry to ask, but in all the times I’ve ever rented a car, I have NEVER even thought about this, and it seems a strange question. I have gone to some pretty obscure rental places in my life, including a number of ‘rent-a-wreck’ types, but never have I thought…“Gee…I wonder if the brakes will fail on my drive home on the freeway”. I am assuming your debate team saves money by going to places that rent shabby vans and buses and that your REAL concern is in terms of brake-downs to which I would suggest checking your local Better Business Bureau office to see what they have to say about these folks.
Over my lifetime, I’ve probably rented close to 50 vehicles ranging from Yugos to vans and large trucks, and even on round trips of over 1000 miles I have not had any problems. Thus far, the worst that’s happened to me was having a windshield that was improperly sealed (got a free shower in the truck when it started raining) and another van that you had to keep putting oil in where the floor of the cab got REALLY hot.
Yarster - cars that cannot go above 15mph in poor weather without spinning out of control, cars without a functioning horn (a very unsettling thing to discover when a horn is necessary to warn other cars of your presence), cars without functioning turn signals, cars with a HOLE in the bottom such that you can see the road. Agencies that put bizarre charges on your bill and only confess that they’re bogus half of the time. Agencies that lie to you about whether you’ve paid for insurance. Also, the auto-accident-related death of a member of the speech team at a university this year (not my own university, and not a rental car) kind of put the reality of the situation into clear view. While as I said, his death was not in a rental car, and accidents do happen, I’d like to take some preventative measures so the avoidable accidents are avoided.
**vandal, ricepad, handy ** - thanks for the suggestions; I’ll look into everything you’ve suggested and pass this on to my team.