Senior Lawmakers Press For Legislation to Disclose Totaled and Flooded Vehicles to Public

Story Summary:

Each year more than 5 million vehicles are "totaled" by insurance companies. Unfortunately, thousands of these vehicles are sold each year at salvage auctions, rebuilt and re-enter the market with clean titles, so consumers, wholesale auto auctions and dealers may have no way to learn about the total loss.

Senior lawmakers, led by Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) have introduced legislation to ensure that totaled and flood-damaged vehicles—"Katrina cars" for instance--are permanently "red-flagged" so that used car buyers--consumers and auto retailers--can make more informed decisions about the safety and fair market value of a used vehicle. The National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) and a coalition comprised of automakers, service organizations and others, have been working to build bipartisan support for legislation requiring insurers to make total-loss data available to the public.

Insurance companies already collect total-loss disclosure information, but do not provide this valuable information to consumers. This information, plus the reason for the total loss (flood, collision, stolen, etc.), the date of total loss, the odometer reading on that date, and whether or not the airbag deployed, could be easily disseminated through vehicle history providers. This total-loss information would make vehicle history reports more timely and complete. For more information, please visit: http://www.NADA.org