Car buyers get some help — 16 years later

Herb Weisbaum • Profile • E-mail

Shopping for a used car is always risky. You never really know what happened to that vehicle before it went on the lot. Was it wrecked? Was it underwater in a flood? Was it totaled by the insurance company, then sold at auction and put back together again?

Sixteen years ago, Congress ordered the Department of Justice to create a computerized database consumers could use to get this important information. Believe it or not, that system finally went on line last week.

“The government just dragged its feet and didn’t do anything about this,” says Deepak Gupta, a staff attorney with Public Citizen, one of three consumer groups that sued the Department of Justice to create the Web site.

The new National Motor Vehicle Title Information System (NMVTIS) will let you use the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) to instantly check a vehicle’s title and odometer reading and find out if it was ever totaled or reported stolen.

Jack Gillis, author of The Car Book 2009, calls this critical information that will let buyers avoid cars that could be trouble down the road. “If a vehicle has been in a major accident and not repaired properly,” Gillis warns, “there is a very good chance you will have mechanical problems and you could have some very serious safety problems, too.”

A death-trap on wheels
You don’t hear a lot about it, but rebuilt wrecks are regularly sold to unsuspecting buyers who pay more than they should for a shoddy repair job. “There are many documented case where people unknowingly bought used cars that were missing airbags or had frames improperly welded back together,” says Rosemary Shahan, president of CARS, Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety.

The consequences can also be deadly. Bobby Ellsworth, an 18-year-old from San Diego, lost his life in 2003 while riding in his friend's 1998 Doge Dakota pickup — a salvaged vehicle that had been improperly repaired. The truck crossed the center line and crashed head-on into an oncoming car. Bobby died at the scene.

Cutting down on car thefts Congress created the NMVTIS when it passed the Anti Car-Theft Act of 1992. One purpose of this database was to reduce the highly profitable business of car theft – now estimated at $8 billion a year. The Bureau of Justice Assistance estimates NMVTIS could reduce insurance payoffs on stolen vehicles by more than $200 million dollars a year. A study done for the Department of Justice concluded the system (once fully operational) could save between $4 and $11 billion dollars a year by reducing losses to fraud and theft.

Bob Ellsworth, Bobby’s father, tells me he was shocked and angry when emergency workers at the scene told him what happened. Neither of the front air bags in the pickup inflated. They couldn’t. Both had already deployed in a previous crash.

Bobby’s father did some checking and found out what had happened to that Dodge Dakota. After the earlier crash, it was totaled by the insurance company and sold at auction as salvage to a backyard body shop. The shop rebuilt the wreck but never installed new air bags, as is required by California law.

“They just stuffed the old bags back in and glued the panels shut,” Ellsworth says.

Since his son’s death, Bob Ellsworth has worked to get NMVTIS going. He believes his son might be alive today if the system had been operational in 1996 as required by Congress. “It makes me sad and sick that it took so long to get this up and running.”

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