Car Rental Company Loses GPS Policing Case

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Misc. Tech

Chalk one up for the people. The Connecticut Supreme Court has proclaimed that a $150 “excessive wear and tear” penalty charged by Acme ‘American Rental’ is illegal. Acme outfitted their vehicles with GPS systems and set them up to rat you out if you drive at least 80mph for over two minutes at a time. Of course, details were buried deep within the fine print, and the GPS devices was never mentioned. The contract simply stated “Vehicles driven in excess of the posted speed limit will be charged $150 per occurrence.” Some customers were fined more than once on the same rental.

Justice David M. Borden wrote, “Using the [consumer department] hearing officer’s calculation, a customer would have to travel more than 1,070 miles at high speeds, without decelerating below 80 miles per hour, to cause $150 of excess wear on the vehicle.” Unfortunately the ruling is in regards to the excessive fine, stating that there really was no extreme wear on the vehicle. The companies’ use of GPS to track a customer’s actions was not touched. So, we won this battle but we have no precedent for our coming war.

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