Jeep Owner Drops Off Car for Oil Change, Ends Up Fighting $15M Lawsuit
May 6, 2022 - The owner of a stick-shift Jeep handed the keys over to a Jeep dealership for a routine oil change. A teenage dealer employee who reportedly wasn't licensed to drive and didn't know how to operate a stick-shift attempted to move the owner's Jeep, when it lurched forward with enough force to kill a nearby service technician.
Because of the way the law works with regard to the legal principle known as vicarious liability, the family of the service tech isn't suing the dealership—they're suing the owner of the Jeep. Anything a driver does with an owner's vehicle, it's still the owner's responsibility.
IIHS Eyes Higher-Speed Test for Automatic Emergency Braking
May 5, 2022 - Now that nearly every new vehicle comes with automatic emergency braking (AEB), the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety is looking for ways to encourage even better systems that can prevent more severe front-to-rear crashes that occur at higher speeds.
In the new study, IIHS Senior Research Scientist David Kidd found that only 3 percent of police-reported rear-end crashes happen at low speed limits. Increasing the speed of the IIHS test to 35-45 mph would make it relevant to more than 10 times as many police-reported rear-end crashes.
Based on Kidd’s findings, IIHS plans to conduct research tests on six vehicles equipped with different front crash prevention systems at speeds up to 45 mph. Tests will also be conducted using different types of passenger vehicles and other vehicles like a motorcycle and various sizes of trucks as the stationary vehicle.
Fleet Management Could Change More in the Next 10 Years Than It Has in the Past Century
Industry expert Paul Lauria shared his take on a rapidly changing fleet industry recently at The Fleet Success Summit in Phoenix.
A Family Affair
Fleet management professionals know that one of the key components that must be performed perfectly is vehicle registration. A company that is clearly doing something right is J3 Management Group. Ed Pierce authors a delightful piece about this sister-run company.
Last month, Ted Roberts and I attended the superb RTA Fleet Success Summitt where industry expert Paul Lauria was a speaker. We never miss an opportunity to sit down with Paul and this week we feature a video clip from that interview. He confidently states, “Fleet management is going to change more in the next decade than it has changed in the last century.”
Enjoy the newsletter and do check in with FleetManagementWeekly.com for daily updates.
Drive Safety!
Janice Sutton
Editor in Chief
Clark County Continues to See ‘Real Spike’ in Auto Thefts
May 3, 2022 - As cars continue to go missing in Clark County, statewide data has shown over 350 vehicles have been stolen in Clark County each month since the start of the new year — reaching a total of 1,150 car thefts by March of 2022.
“The auto theft cases here in our office and in Clark County, we’ve noticed, have been going up significantly for a while, but definitely more of a spike recently,” Clark County prosecuting attorney Tony Golik said.
As the numbers of auto thefts continue to rise in Clark County, Golik told KOIN 6 News in addition to police staffing challenges, new laws which limit law enforcement and embolden criminals are some of the primary factors driving the recent increase.
