Lois Capps: “I thank my colleague for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I rise to call attention to an important safety provision in the…”

“I thank my colleague for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I rise to call attention to an important safety provision in the Senate-passed DRIVE Act being considered by the House this week. I am pleased the House is working in a bipartisan manner to fix our Nation's critical highway infrastructure needs. I want to bring attention to a key provision which is included in the DRIVE Act that passed the Senate earlier this year. In 2004, two young sisters, Raechel and Jacqueline Houck, were killed just outside my district when their rented Chrysler PT Cruiser caught fire and crashed due to a defective steering component. The vehicle was not grounded or fixed before it was rented to the Houck sisters, despite having a safety recall notice issued a month before the tragic accident. While today Federal law prohibits car dealers from selling new cars subject to a recall, there is no similar law prohibiting rental car companies from renting out vehicles under a safety recall. That is why I am so pleased the Senate included the text of my bill, H.R. 2198, the Raechel and Jacqueline Houck Safe Rental Car Act, into the DRIVE Act. This legislation is nothing more than a commonsense fix. It modifies existing law to prohibit rental car companies from renting a vehicle under recall until it has been fixed. Pure and simple, consumers must be protected from renting cars that are subject to a safety recall.…”