Congress seeks to guarantee safety of federal vehicles – By Jessie Bur (Federal Times) / Mar 27 2021
Bipartisan legislation introduced in the House March 26 would require the federal government to immediately remedy any recall on its fleet of over 200,000 vehicles prior to leasing those vehicles to another agency or selling them to the public.
An investigation into the vehicles owned by the General Services Administration, which manages a large portion of the federal fleet, found that 25,000 government cars have open safety recalls and 637 of the cars sold to the public were under recall.
The Shielding All Federal Employees and Consumers from Actionable Recall Situations Act, or the SAFE CARS Act, would require the managing agency to remedy all actionable recalls prior to leasing or sale and mandate that any agency currently in the middle of a lease for a vehicle under recall remedy the defect themselves.
“The presence of recalled cars on the road is dangerous to drivers and to everyone around them which makes it inexcusable that the federal government is facilitating these risks by continuing to sell and lease such vehicles,” said Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., one of the bill’s sponsors.
