Fine for Delayed Recall of Defected Vehicles Proposed to Reach $300 Million

Michigan Municipal League (MML) / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

In light of the numerous recent vehicle recalls, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx is proposing Congress to increase the maximum fine for automakers who fail to recall their defected vehicles on time from $35 million to $300 million.

What is more, the Obama administration wants rental car companies to consider repairing recalled vehicles before renting them out again.

The law requires automakers to recall vehicles in five days after discovering that they pose a threat to driver safety. Foxx said that the department “wants to make sure there’s an ability to make it count and ensure that there’s enough of an effect across the industry.”

There are plenty of examples in recent years of fined automakers. Toyota Motor Corp. was fined a total of about $66 million, because three times failed to recall its vehicles on time.

Last year, Ford Motor Co. delayed the recall of Ford Escape SUVs, and was fined $17.5 million.

As far as the latest General Motors Co. developments go, the company failed to recall 2.6 million vehicles for ignition switch defects that were thought to be the reason for at least 13 deaths.

Read the full story at The Detroit News.