Enterprise rented and sold vehicles without side curtain air bags

Enterprise Rent-A-Car, the nation's largest private buyer of new cars and seller of used vehicles deleted the standard side curtain airbags when it ordered 66,000 Chevrolet Impalas and Cobalts in order to save money. By removing the safety feature, Enterprise saved over $11 million. When they resold the cars to consumers, however, they failed to disclose the air-bag omission. Ads for some of the cars on the Enterprise Web site mistakenly claimed they had side curtain air bags.

According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), side impacts are the second most common type of fatal crash. More than 8,000 people were killed in side impacts in 2007 and side airbags can reduce driver death by 37 percent.

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—Liza Barth