GPS gets car renter a speeding ticket
Date: 2001-06-20
A Connecticut man is suing ACME Rent-a-Car, a local rental company, after it used the GPS (Global Positioning System) in one of its cars to catch him speeding and then fined him $450 for speeding three times.
What in-car telematics systems are supposed to do and what they're used for might by quite different, it seems. ACME recently decided to equip its cars with GPS technology and uses tracking services from AirIQ to find stolen rental cars and charge customers for "dangerous" conduct, reports C/Net news. The company states its policy at the top of it's rental agreement.
New Haven resident James Turner has filed a claim against Acme in small claims court. He also filed a claim with the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection. He paid for his car rental with a credit card, and when he got his statement he was shocked to find a charge of $450 included. When he complained to ACME, they pointed out on a map exactly where he had exceeded the company's threshold speed of 79 mph.
ACME's Web site promotes the service's ability to track a vehicle's location, notify the company when the car has crossed into another country or state, alert for "excessive speed," and even disable the car remotely. Read C/Net article
Comments to this article have been disabled.
