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GM Car Owners With OnStar Now Can Be Their Own Rental Agencies
The Los Angeles Times reports that the world of micro-rentals just got a whole lot more crowded, with the introduction of a nationwide partnership between GM and ride-sharing company RelayRides. RelayRides has been arranging short-term car sharing in just a few cities for several years; car owners can sign up to make their own cars available for short-term rentals to others, so their expensive investment (especially in cities where parking is like a second apartment's rent) isn't sitting idle. Now, the two companies are rolling out that system in a much larger market: the rest of the U.S. Owners of GM cars new enough to be equipped with OnStar monitoring systems will be able to sign up to take part with the OnStar system providing the ability to unlock and track those cars remotely, which might make the bargain more attractive to many owners who'd like to earn money from their cars (and reduce the total number of cars needed in a given area), but reluctant to hand the keys to a stranger. (Cars without the system can still be enrolled, but will require a key hand-off.)
Even though this seems like a good thing, there is a corporation involved so I'm sure there is evil involved.
Gentlemen of Slashdot, affix your tinfoil hats and let's start dissecting this!
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Erm...no, it's covered by RelayRide's car insurance.
RelayRides will take a 40% cut and provide a $1-million insurance policy for the owner and $300,000 for the renter.
Great news for people who want the shit beat out of their cars by random strangers.
Really? Because on their web page, they say the provide a $1 million liability insurance.
You don't sue cars, you sue people. That old woman crossing the street can sue the driver of the car, not you. It is him who has been negligent by running her over, not you. Otherwise it'd be sort of like lending your brother your gun and then being liable for any damage he did with it.
And you can also sue the driver of the car for negligence in damaging your car.
How much you'll get out of him is another question, of course. You might like to check that he is insured before you rent your car to him.
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There are a few questions that would need to be cleared before I would even consider such an idea. Burden of proof on damages, specialized insurance (I'm pretty sure your normal car insurance won't cover it), wear, cleaning, smokers, tickets...
The point is rental companies see their cars as an investment that is supposed to bring in some profit before being phased out. Private owners consider their own cars as "my precious" and renters as "who cares, it's not my car" and hope the rental company doesn't note the new scratches.
If you think rent a car places are bad about dents just wait for this.
Better take a video of the car before pick up so you don't pay for old dents.
My closet is full of clothing just hanging there unworn.
And my sock drawer is a virtual gold mine!
So when my car is rented by someone who slips the clutch like a driver's ed student and puts five years worth of wear on the clutch plates in two days, I'm supposed to be happy about this because hey, Onstar?
No thanks.
You don't have an automatic, unlike 94% of cars sold? That's easy, this program is not for you. I bet they wont even enroll a standard transmission car, it's not worth the hassle of requiring another check box on the web form.
I wouldn't rent my car out if I had to pay for the gas. If your car gets 35 mpg and they drive it responsibly on the highway, you would only make $2 an hour. But realistically, they won't drive responsibly, they're going to drive it like it's rented, probably even worse because of the free gas.
The best case scenario still works out to " can I thrash your car for an hour? I'll give you $2."
better to stage a fake accident with the rented car and have the deep pockets of GM / on star / RelayRide pay out.
You're right, driving is the driver's responsibility and that's who should be insured. One question though: If the car is not maintained in a roadworthy way, or has a dangerous fault known to the owner but not something the person renting the car would be able to detect then I would have thought the owner would be liable. I don't mean things that a reasonable inspection of the car would uncover (Like the BOLTSS bikers get told to do: Brakes, Oil, Lights, Tyres, Steering, Suspension), but things that are known to the owner and potentially dangerous to a renter. I presume most rental agencies keep up with maintenance partly for this reason, to not do so would surely be seen as negligent. So if you're renting out your own car it doesn't seem unreasonable that you would be held responsible for ensuring it was safe to drive.
Who among us treats a rental with the same tender care we treat our own cars?
I always check the tire inflation of a rental. I have gotten cars with 60 lbs of pressure. Does this make drifting easier?
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
RelayRide say:
One of the ways we protect you is by providing a $1 million insurance policy that protects you against lawsuits for injuries and property damage while your car is being rented through the RelayRides service.
The cost of, for example, lifetime care for a paraplegic is greatly in excess of $1 million. If RelayRide thinks you might be liable to such lawsuits and aren't offering enough to cover them, this doesn't look like a good deal.
You don't have an automatic, unlike 94% of cars sold? That's easy, this program is not for you.
Agreed, the grandparent used a bad example, but there are lots of ways that careless/malicious renters could abuse a car with an automatic. They can still drag race, do donuts in a parking lot, and so on.
Will people using this Onstar rental service be allowed to restrict rentals to experienced drivers with good records? Can you specify no one with less than 4 years of driving experience or with more than 1 at-fault accident in the last two years?
This isn't really car rental -- it's car sharing. This is very different from rental cars. With car sharing, there is more onus on the "renter" to treat the car well since the chances are -- they want to rent the car again and again. If they treat cars poorly, they'll be kicked out of the car share service.
In Florida, the burden of proof is on you to prove that you were not driving your car if you get a red light ticket.
The owner of the motor vehicle involved in the violation is responsible and liable for paying the uniform traffic citation [...] when the driver failed to stop at a traffic signal, unless the owner can establish that [...] The motor vehicle was, at the time of the violation, in the care, custody, or control of another person;
http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&Search_String&URL=0300-0399/0316/Sections/0316.0083.html
(It's been challenged under the due process clause of the Constitution; I'm not sure of the details. )
Also, parking laws in New York are similar.
As someone who has started a new job and travels regularly, I am shocked to see how my colleagues treat rental cars. Hard breaking, rapid acceleration, reckless turns, etc... and then the interior... and it's not just my company. I've been in other rental cars (driven by other third parties at the client) and it's all the same. Sometimes they smell, sometimes people scratch them... why would you do that for $10/hr?
Even if they insure it, if they get in a wreck they'll probably repair it with non-original parts, and it'll never be the same. Yeah it was fixed, but when your buyer pulls the Carfax report, he's going to see the accident.
People do not treat rental cars well. $10/hr and you have to pay for gas, plus the income is taxable? I'd never do it, and my car is far older than the ones people are renting out.
We have two cars, parking for one, and variable (relatively low) needs.
I actually looked into this, but our cars are too high mileage (they limit to 120K and we racked up miles quickly prior to our move) to rent out through their service.
But when one dies, this will probably be better vetted in practice and if it's still going this provides two more options for me depending on frequency of need.
1: More convenient and cheaper rental
2: A way to partially offset the cost of the newer car.
Either way, I like.
...unless the owner can establish that [...] The motor vehicle was, at the time of the violation, in the care, custody, or control of another person...
Like having rental details available from RelayRide that says the renter was operating the car?
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
If I'm renting my car out under this arrangement, how can I be sure that the renters aren't abusing it in subtle or hard-to-detect ways? Burning up the brakes, doing donuts in parking lots, weird stuff with the transmission... there are lots of ways to damage a car that won't be immediately apparent. By the time it's noticed, it may be too late. And even in the case of overt damage, expect a major fight with the insurance company over just who caused it and whether your insurance or Relay Rental should pay. Dealing with insurance companies is always a nightmare, every time.
For rental recipients, this poses its own set of problems: how do you avoid being blamed for damage you didn't cause? How can you be sure that the car isn't missing basic functionality – you wouldn't be happy to get a rental in the middle of July with broken A/C.
I was in a collision scenario around 10 years ago where the driver was definitely not the owner. Someone hit me at a red light; all 3 passengers got out of the car QUICK and bolted from the scene. The passengers all got rounded up in front of the local police department (why, oh why would you run towards the police lol) but they could not easily determine the driver of the vehicle. Neither could I, as I only had an instant to relax before the hit - I saw them coming in the rear view and my immediate concern was for the service manager who was in the passenger seat on a test drive to help solve an intermittent misfire. The car that hit me turned out to be an over due rental - and none of the occupants were the renter of the car; it was one of the passenger's sister who rented the car. Eventually the insurance company covering the rental (turned out to be a dealership across from the location I was getting my car looked at) paid for the damages to the car.
In any case, I would be very leery to rent out my car unless I had additional insurance protection to cover this scenario - and I would have to think that between the extra hike in insurance costs plus GM's cut of this process, it would probably not turn out to be a whole lot of money unless I was renting a few cars at a time.
Karnal
While RelayRides is providing its own supplemental policy, I wouldn't be surprised if the primary car insurance provider decides to drop customers. Personal Auto Policies are strict in what use they are intended to insure. If they find out that you are renting out your car, they can cancel your policy, even if you have RelayRide's insurance. Some insurers don't want ANY possible exposure to liability for people using their cars in this matter.
standard transmission
If 94% sold are automatic, and most cars to not offer a manual option, shouldn't the automatic be considered the "standard"?
I have purchased 2 cars through Hertz's Rent 2 Buy program. The first purchase was a very specific minivan that had a tow package installed (suspension but not a hitch). I bought it with about 40k miles on it. It was at least $2000 below KBB, and I've had it for 2 years now. It has given me NO trouble whatsoever. I just purchased a small SUV from their program and it was basically cherry. Again, $2000 below KBB and it too has been wonderful so far.
I've had a lot of people raise their eyebrow at this. They typically recount a story where they treated their rental like crap. But they've rented many cars. Most are rented at the airport by business people who drive to a hotel and an office, and back to the airport to go home. Most rentals are like that minus the horror stories you hear.
The nice thing about the Hertz program is that you rent the vehicle after finding it online near you. You can rent it for 3 days at $50/day. You get to drive it and see if the tire pressure sucks, or the car shimmies, or the tranny doesn't shift right. You bring it to a garage and have them inspect the car for damage and general road worthiness. If you decide to buy, you go to their website, click "Buy" and keep the car. They send you an fedex with all the paperwork, and even do financing through Chase or BoA. After you send them the downpayment, they send you the completed registration and plates for your state. You can even transfer your old plates if you sell your old car separately. I dumped a 100k+ mileage Honda Accord hybrid on CarMax. They paid me 4k for it, and the AC didn't work and there was significant body damage. We now have a 2011 late model SUV with 37k miles, the AC works, and the car has been like a dream in comparison. Gets the same mileage, and is from a reputable Japanese manufacturer.
For all those who are going to reply that the car will be trouble down the road, I'd ask you to tell me how you treated your last lease vehicle. That is what you're going to get on a used car lot. One driver who didn't change the oil, and didn't give a crap about the car because it was just a lease and they will trade up in 3 years anyway. Is there really any appreciable difference? Yes. The rental company had an incentive to make sure the car was in its rental fleet, and so they did the maintenance regularly. It all depends on your POV... if you want to roll the dice that you got a good lease car over a bad one, okay. Or, you can buy the rental for thousands less, with the chance that a small number of drivers abused the car, while most treated it with care lest they end up having to pay the rental company for damage. I'll take the latter.
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I can see using RelayRides for a ratty subcompact car whose only purpose is to be a backup vehicle, or for something to drive downtown that it doesn't matter if it gets hit by car doors, vandalized, broken into, or set on fire. At least the vehicle can perhaps pay for itself.
It would not have much value when selling though. I'm sure Carfax or other places will note the vehicle has been used as a rental, and this will disastrously impact the thing's resale value.
Owners of vehicles are, in most jurisdictions, jointly and severally liable for the injuries caused by the negligent operation of their vehicles.
It might be that GM assumes liability for you, but since they provide $1 million of coverage, that implies to me that dollar $1,000,001 comes out of your pocket, not theirs.
Why didn't the police just fingerprint the steering wheel? Running from an accident is a crime.
You don't have an automatic, unlike 94% of cars sold?
In many countries the vast majority of cars sold are manual transmissions.
Its worth remembering what happened to a poor boston student who rented her car for a carshare out using relay rides (and their liability insurance (same 1 million dollar liability insurance GM is using):
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/14/your-money/relayrides-accident-raises-questions-on-liabilities-of-car-sharing.html?pagewanted=all
Actually you sue the driver first - then when they are dry you go after the registered owner of the vehicle. I know it sounds stupid but as long as the tags are in your name you are responsible for it.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
I'm somewhat dubious about this. Given the propensity of people to mistreat stuff they don't own, I don't know that I would be willing to rent my car out. I depend upon the reliability of my car. I've heard tell of people beating up rentals. Plus, imagine the insurance you would have to carry and I'm sure it would not be inexpensive. In fact, you would have to incorporate yourself just to shield anything personally-owned from potential loss due to a lawsuit. If your customer got injured because the brakes fail (it can happen even in a car properly maintained) and a child got injured as well as a third party, you could be positively cleaned out and living on the streets.
One thing people haven't thought about is that On-Star is able to monitor the car's operation. It could be easy to spot renters who are driving 100 miles an hour or are doing donuts in parking lots and fine them for abuse. But I see all sorts of other problems. For example, when I rent from a major company, I know the car will be cleaned and vacuumed and that the company has some kind of maintenance program. You could wind up renting a car filled with baby seats and McDonalds wrappers. And what about minor dings, scratches and so forth. You would have to take pictures of your car daily to prove who messed up your car.
Like having rental details available from RelayRide that says the renter was operating the car?
I'm sorry, I wasn't clear. My point was that you can and would get a ticket in the mail, and you would have to prove that someone else was driving. The need to prove that would be a punishment in and of itself. Also, you would be rolling the dice to see if they believe you.
And my other point is that in New York, parking tickets are given to the car, not to the driver. So, the owner would be responsible.
While I'm sure that rental companies have all sorts of loopholes and outs, doing this as a private person could get expensive in terms of time and/or money.
Sure, it's great when you can inspect it before plunking down money. I'm sure there's plenty of fine former fleet cars. But how would you feel about loaning the car out after you've already bought it?
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It seems many of the car-owners have an inflated opinion of their cars' worth. Looking at the prices people in my area want to charge, they tend to be at least double what ZipCar would charge me (and ZipCar includes gas!). That kind of kills their business model in major cities.
RelayRides does offer manual transmission cars, too. They're not too common, but clearly indicated.
One holiday season when I was returning to my original home for a little over a week I considered renting a car to make it easier to get around. Car rental companies utterly rape customers on costs over the holiday (the same imaginary supply and demand bit that causes gas prices to go up and down at convenient times) to the point where I would have paid 10x as much for a really lousy rental car than I did for round trip airfare.
I thought perhaps I could get around the stupidity by trying to rent a car through craigslist. I posted an ad "I want to rent your car" and after getting a reply from one idiot who thought himself funny, the ad was removed within 24 hours.
But there is definitely a market for this. People do have cars that they don't always need, and people have a demand for cars that they need for just a short bit of time. Not everyone has the disposable income to pay a rental car company for a car, either. Even the cheapest Hyundai shitbox gets expensive quickly. A one-week rental of a Hyundai is equal to about 10% of the car's MSRP on the lot.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
while the kids drive. I can set the maximum speeds and even the volume of the radio with Ford's mykey. I would hope OnStar is as advanced if not more.
After all, if the car leaves the proscribed area it should turn itself off.
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Sure you can. That's considered a good record.
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That would involve "Actual Police Work (tm)". Can't have that. Why didn't the police fingerprint the stuff that I know the intruder touched when I had a break-in some years ago? Too much trouble.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
You don't sue cars, you sue people. That old woman crossing the street can sue the driver of the car, not you. It is him who has been negligent by running her over, not you. Otherwise it'd be sort of like lending your brother your gun and then being liable for any damage he did with it.
And you can also sue the driver of the car for negligence in damaging your car.
It is true that you sue the driver of the car; however, in some states (e.g. New York) the owner of the car is "vicariously liable" for the negligence of any driver of that car who was driving with the owner's permission. This means that, so long as they can show that the driver was negligent, they do not need to show anything about the owner.
This is the same manner in which, for example, if you're run over by a negligent, red-light-running Pizza Hut delivery guy, Pizza Hut is automatically liable,
no matter how careful they were in screening or training the guy (and if they were negligent there, that is ANOTHER basis for their liability, known as "negligent entrustment").
Now, the driver is liable to the owner for any judgment that the owner had to pay out ("indemnification"). And yes, the driver is separately liable to you for his own negligence in damaging your property. But as you pointed out, good luck getting anything from him.
The one saving grace is that, in many states, a valid insurance agreement, to indemnify the owner, allows (or even requires) the insurance company to immediately step in to deal with defending the lawsuit. So at least the owner won't personally have to find a lawyer and go to court. But good luck trying to find affordable insurance premiums after that.
You don't have an automatic, unlike 94% of cars sold? That's easy, this program is not for you.
Agreed, the grandparent used a bad example, but there are lots of ways that careless/malicious renters could abuse a car with an automatic. They can still drag race, do donuts in a parking lot, and so on.
Try "Drag racing" or "doing donuts" with a new car that has all of the "safety features" enabled and see how that goes. The car wont let you break the tires loose at all, plus it will force a shift well below redline, and (in my imagined future) it won't let you speed either (in the present, the car can still tell on you for speeding). So, those two pastimes basically never leave the operational envelope of the car (and are totally boring). The most you could do is attempt high-speed maneuvers like drifting in turns, but that really only compromises the tires and unless you are really good at tricking the stability control system, it won't even do that very much.
Agreed. I spend a lot of time out of the country and it's a shame having to pay for a car I rarely use, but it's essential when I am in that location.
In the UK a cheap car can be £600($940) and the tax per year for that is ~£200($312). Fuel is £6.7/gal ($10.4) Renting a car is ~£70($110)/day and leasing is only a little cheaper.
We have all these cars on the road, some people have 3 or 4 cars each for different tasks. It's ridiculous excess.
This should be useful for people in cities like London where there isn't the space but it's workable to get public transport out of town and use a car from there. I'd love this kind of thing to catch on outside the U.S.
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There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
False dichotomy.
Option C: Pay a little more up front to buy new, take good care of it yourself, and get ridiculous mileage out of it bringing down the total cost/mile compared to a used car.
Why didn't the police just fingerprint the steering wheel? Running from an accident is a crime.
Or why not arrest all three of them. Isn't running from an accident a crime even if you were not the driver?
Though the most obvious answer is the police just didn't give a shit, which is usually the case for minor crimes for people that don't matter. Do the same thing to a politician's car and they will have the entire force crawling the streets for you.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Woman rents out her car via RelayRides, someone gets killed while driving her car, she may end up getting personally sued.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/14/your-money/relayrides-accident-raises-questions-on-liabilities-of-car-sharing.html?pagewanted=all
"Professional *what*?"
Save Ferris
"now can"?
RelayRides was advertising in SV six to eight months ago. /.!
Get with the times,
First, this is not an OnStar rental service. This is RelayRides adding a feature, allowing people with OnStar equipped vehicles to easily participate in their service without having to have the special module from RelayRides installed. The module provides the GPS, network connection and locking/unlocking capability which is all stuff that the OnStar system is capable of. RelayRides restricts its service to renters with at least two years of driving experience and a clean driving record. I don't know what they consider clean and I don't think this is configurable. You also have the option of being able to look at a renter's history and feedback on the site before choosing whether to rent to them.
Both age 3 times faster than they would normally... There is no way I would rent my car out to a random person. I know many people who rent cars and have a goal of putting more wear and tear on the car than they paid for the rental... driving with the e-brake on, driving with both the gas and brake applied at the same time, repeatedly accelerating and braking as fast as possible until you warp the rotors, setting an automatic to no use more than first or second gear for the entire rental duration (think 6,000rpms at highway speeds for 3 days straight) just to name a few.
There is often an easily accessible button to turn off traction control (electronic stability control, etc).
Tinfoil hat affixed.
Sounds like a drug/contraband/money traffickers dream come true. Call up GM with fake credentials, get a car, nobody sees your face on camera when you pick up your vehicle.
Being electronic, the operation is easily overridden in software (for example, by the owners request whenever the car is in "rental" mode.)
Insurance companies insure cars, not drivers. If you lend your car to someone else, and they run over an old lady, you can be sued just as rightly as the driver. You are responsible for your vehicle unless it is stolen. How RelayRides insurance fits into that I don't know, but definitely some fine print worth reading.
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Who was talking about vandalism? Just rode hard and put away wet is all... And we are talking rentals here, Are we not?
"Ouch, podjo, that was a bad pothole."
"No worries. It's a rental vehicle."
A friend's car is of course returned clean and full.
Whoa! Fifty GBP for turning in a dirty car. There would be no charge in the US for returning a car with a bit of litter in it. Maybe if the interior was egregiously filthy, or if you smoked in it. Then you could get dinged. That said, I usually police the interior before I turn a car in, if only to double check for my own possessions. I'm currently in Europe. Have to remember to use that litter bag.
I would not want my car rented to "random strangers". What's up with this big sharing movement, anyway? Everything seems up for grabs. Couch surfing, car swapping, my personal data.... What's next? Wife swapping..? Oh, wait!
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
New cars are for ego driven suckers.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You neglect to even indicate (let alone support) the notion that the owner of the car would be responsible for any misuse. $1,000,000 should be sufficient for any reasonable action (and most unreasonable ones).
Learn to love Alaska
Assaulting someone with a motor vehicle and running is only a minor violent crime. But, if they were committing a non-violent victimless crime (like smoking a joint), then they'd have the book thrown at them, then tased, then kicked a few times.
Learn to love Alaska
Don't you already do this as a matter of course when renting a car? If you have to walk around the car to inspect it, you may as well have your phone camera actively recording what you see.
Most rental companies I know don't keep the cars long enough to do any maintenance they pay for - they bring them into the dealer while still under free maintenance and expect the dealers to be responsible for doing any warrenty work.
120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
Most rental companies charge a 10% to 30% service charge on fines, tolls and tickets. I would be surprised if RelayRide does not have you covered there. Same with cars returned with no gas or in need of cleaning.
120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
Or go off-road.
Mostly, the only reason I rent a car is to drive something fun and different. Even with my driving experience and good driving record, I still do donuts with my car and bend my 4x4 jumping sand dunes and ruts.
120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
An example. Suppose the brakes fail and the car causes more than a million dollars worth of damage (e.g. by severely crippling someone). As of the owner of the car you are responsible for the maintenance and you are first in line for liability. It's then up to you to attempt to shift that liability on to somebody else, the manufacturer or a mechanic, say. But you were a week late with the annual service so the court decides the liability is yours. And you're bankrupt.
This certainly wouldn't be the wackiest decision made by an American court.
Ever turn off the traction control in a rental?
I saw a guy launching a boat with a uhaul truck - complete back end of the truck submerged (including rear diff) and it started to slip in... luckily someone had a strap. I am sure there was no VISIBLE damage done to the truck but would be surprised if the diff didn't get water inside it and fail shortly after.
Drive around and round in an empty round about as fast as possible?
Drive it on the ocean beach during low tide?
Do +80km/h on a long rough gravel road?
Leave it running with the A/C on in the corner of a hot parking garage?
Drive on a humid day with A/C on max and windows open?
Leave the windows/sunroof open in the rain fog, or early morning dew?
Tow it incorrectly (causing early wheel bearing failure or transmission wear)?
Take it off-road and smak the oil pan/diff off a few rocks?
Take it into the sand dunes?
Drive through a corn field and make a mais maze?
Jump it on hilly back country roads?
Use sunroof as exit to sit up on roof (who notices roof dents)?
Make whoopie in it?
Do all of the above on the same day.
120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
Yes, because all cars, even ones without onstar that they rent, have an override to disable the traction control.
Even then, unplugging the ABS relay easily overrides such an override.
120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
Slightly different angle, same idea of short-term rentals: I've become a fan of a service in my home town where you can rent a car, get billed by the minute, and don't have to worry about gas or anything else, as everything is included in the rental price.
It's perfect for driving in the city, costs about half as much as a taxi would, and they have an iPhone App that tells you where around your current location the nearest available car is.
Concepts like these will change mobility, especially in cities. I don't need a car of my own, haven't needed one for years, but every now and then I have something to transport or whatever. Lots of people aren't so different.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
My local car share (I use it for the hourly rental of a pick-up and sometimes a mini-van, while using my sub-compact as a daily driver) will not let people join with under 5 years experience, more than one accident in 5 years or a DUI in 10.
I don't believe the regularly re-run the license though, and looking at the site now, some of these requirements are relaxed/not mentioned.
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Then, if you've missed the annual service, take it out of the rental pool for a week until you get it done. I would agree with the courts on that one, if you negligently neglect the maintenance on your equipment, and that equipment kills someone, then you are at fault. But the first court case against a car-sharer-for-hire was where another driver was driving on the wrong side of the road and hit her car head-on while rented, and she was sued for millions (because she had insurance, and you sue the money, not the guilty). The reasonable outcome of that case would be to disbar the lawyer for the plaintiff and find for the defense, but instead, the insurance companies are battling it out with a sleazy ambulance chaser lawyer paid on commission. That's the much more likely scenario, rather than deliberate negligence, as you suggest.
Learn to love Alaska
Who gets their services done exactly one year apart? If you get a service every July, say, then some years the gap will be a little less than a year and some years a little more. When it's a little more, are you negligent? How many people who share their cars will give this a moment's thought?
Not that it matters. You think it's negligent, I don't. We agree that the courts might find it negligent and that's what does matter. I also agree that sleazy lawyers are a problem.
Anyway, the bottom line is that I'm not getting into the commercial rental business without the protection of a limited liability corporation. No RelayRide for me.
I'm the sort of person who gets a bit annoyed at having to own more than 1 pair of shoes. 1 should be enough, I find the efficiency assuring. All the rest is just an irritation for me. I can see I don't really need it but I have to recognise social rules around me. So the partner says have to buy shoes for sport, work, hiking, sailing, work boots etc, I do it. To me, having to own more than one of something shows up the failure of something to deliver (the world on a stick).
When I was younger living at home we had my van, my dads van, my brothers car, my mothers car, my fathers car all on one driveway. Then relatives visit and we've caused our own traffic jam. It seemed like an inefficient waste of metal especially as not all of them were used at any one time. Likewise, when we're driving down the road there will be at least a few people going the same way. It costs me over $200 to fill my car now. If I was driving like I used to that would be $5000 of wasted cash. I'd prefer to have that cash in my pocket.
I have an engineers mindset so I like efficiency. I find that beautiful. There are other arguments to be made including that having more than what we need in general is the kind of thing that is bringing the world to it's knees, but that isn't why I like to be minimalistic, promise.
A blog I run for the wealth
That depends on your jurisdiction - my insurance policy covers me if I'm driving someone else's car with their permission.
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