Magazine for the professional car and truck rental industry.
RICTIONS, AND THE LAW DRIVER INVOLVEMENT RATE OF ALL AGES PER 100,000 POPULATION
40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0
Q FEMALE Q MALE 16-20 21-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 DRIVER AGE ( YEARS)
Driver involvement statistics look at the age of the driver involved in a traffi c accident, but do not distinguish as to who caused the accident. In separating males and females at all ages, female drivers are clearly involved in fewer collisions.
the rental company's knowledge that the driv- er was under the age of 21 was not suffi cient to establish a case of negligent entrustment. "So in other words, there has got to be more than just a person's age — there has to be some kind of evidence that they (the rental com- pany) knew the person was unable to safely drive the car," says Sue Bendavid, a California employment attorney and business litigation lawyer for Lewitt, Hackman in Encino, Calif. More recent cases have reiterated the Drum- mond v. Walker case. In Cowan v. Jack in 2005, a Louisiana Court of Appeals said that the rental car company had every right to rent to a 20-year-old who had a facially valid li- cense, saying that age cannot be used as the sole basis for establishing his incompetence. And in at least one attempt to take a car rental company to court for renting to an older driver, in a 2006 suit in Tennessee, Enterprise Rent-A-Car was dismissed as a defendant for renting to a 74-year-old af- ter the plaintiff motioned to release Enter-
prise as a defendant in the case. What's the Law?
Laws governing age restrictions depend on which state you're in. New York is the only state that directly prevents rental companies through state legislation from "discriminating against drivers 18 and over solely based on age," and the fi ne for doing so is "not to ex- ceed $500." Car rental companies in the state are, however, able to impose a surcharge on younger renters.
Michigan also says that rental car compa- nies must rent to drivers 18 and over. T is in- clusion came aſt er a 2000 lawsuit, in which a state court said in Bickham v. Hertz Rent-A- Car that the rental car company must com- ply with the state's Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on age, religion, national origin, sex, etc. in pub- lic accommodations or services, housing, ed- ucation and employment.
Most other states, such as California, Wis-
consin and Maine, have language in state stat- utes regarding auto insurance in rental, stating that an "authorized driver" must meet a rent- al company's "minimum age requirement," thus recognizing that it's OK for companies to set minimum age requirements. However, no mention is made that an authorized driv- er must be under a maximum age or any oth- er age requirements. In California, "T e Legislature has spoken based on [Civil Code 1936] that rental car companies can have restrictions on young- er drivers — because of the statistics frankly — but there is nothing in there that permits them to have restrictions against older driv- ers," Bendavid says. T is legislative language has also played a hand in court cases involving potential age discrimination in car rental. In Lazar v. Hertz in 1999, Adam Lazar fi led a class-action suit in California against the company for its pol- icy to not rent to customers under the age of 25 without a diff erential charge. Lazar argued
MARCH / APRIL 2012 • ARN 21 65-69 70-74 75-79 80-84 85+
SOURCE: NHTSA
