The problem here is that those who fervently believe in the free market seem to take insurance for g

Coming Soon: If you re traveling, make money by renting out your car while saving on airport parking. If you re looking for a car to rent, save up to 50% by renting a FlightCar . We ll be taking off and soaring in San Jose and Oakland late 2012.
From an article in SpringWise : FlightCar includes an approval process for both parties through driving license checks and is insured against damage and theft. According to the company, customers can expect a 20 to 50 percent discount compared to traditional rental rates, southwest airlines vacations gift certificates travel while owners receive 65 percent of the agreed fee. See video above for more details.
The basic premise of if you remove regulations, the market will provide cheaper southwest airlines vacations gift certificates travel transactions between seller and buyer does not deal with the realities of the risk and exposure inherent in many innovating start-ups to include vehicle rentals where both parties have significant risk and exposure with respect to each other.
But Insurance is a huge issue. If someone drives a FLIGHT southwest airlines vacations gift certificates travel CAR or for that matter a ZipCar and they die in an accident and it is claimed that the car was not in good repair there is a high likelihood for a lawsuit in the million dollar + range significant legal costs even if it is found to be a claim without merit you still have to pay your legal defense costs and that can easily be enough southwest airlines vacations gift certificates travel to bankrupt smaller start-up companies or franchises.
More likely will be people with beaters trying to make a few bucks but the level of maintenance especially safety is an issue with many beaters. So who is going to assume this risk? You rent a beater, a wheel comes off at 50 mph and you roll the vehicle and end up in the hospital and have no health insurance?
this is not going to be a desirable service for a large segment that would prefer renting a car from a traditional southwest airlines vacations gift certificates travel national rental car company with a known reputation with regard to the maintenance and safety fitness of their fleet. One policy performed the same way no matter southwest airlines vacations gift certificates travel if it is Phoenix or Jacksonville.
that means that you cannot just rent your vehicle. You have to meet the requirements and standards established by FlightCar OR FlightCar will simply make no such claims of standardization that all the are doing is providing a way for sellers to meet buyers with the transaction including fitness of the vehicle or the driver purely a personal arrangement.
Drivers under 21 get much less coverage. Zipcar would have to pay a lot of money to provide $300,000 in coverage to less-experienced college-age drivers, and it figures that most of its users in this age group are covered by their parents' southwest airlines vacations gift certificates travel auto policies anyway.
Wouldn't a lawyer for an injured person or the family of an accident victim go after Zipcar first, since that's where the money is? They could try, but a federal law shields rental car companies in many instances
but take the time to read the article to see how complex southwest airlines vacations gift certificates travel and insurance-reliant the rental car business is and it is under-appreciated (in my view) by people who like the idea of a rental fee 1/2 of traditional rental companies southwest airlines vacations gift certificates travel but they do not understand that insurance and policies to limit liability affect sustainability and profitability.
the envelope that FlightCar is pushing is the same one that Uber and other Smartphone-based vehicle rental businesses are pushing and that is what is the legal responsibility of a company that says it is only arranging buyer with seller transactions which seems to be an area of the current law not specifically addressed and likely with different buyers and sellers with different views and expectations when something goes awry and it will.
You have to ask yourself why ZipCars insurance is so low and the reason why, I strongly suspect, is that higher coverage for THAT KIND of rental service is going to affect their pricing model and profits in a negative way possibly pushing them to the edge of financial viability.
The seller could get burned by having someone with a terrible driving record. what buyer in their right mind, for instance, would willingly rent his/her car to someone who has a really bad driving record?
who is responsible for vetting customers southwest airlines vacations gift certificates travel the seller or FlightCar? and who is responsible if the driving record was stale, outdated or incomplete? say someone who just had an accident in another state and will be found guilty, has no car, no insurance and looking for a quick ride?
As typical southwest airlines vacations gift certificates travel the bigger, existing companies have more and better resources to exploit these concepts and if they look at it and decide as an industry that such a model is too risky or will have to be more expensive to compensate for higher insurance southwest airlines vacations gift certificates travel costs to do increased exposure they win.
FlightCar sounds a lot like a teen or 20-something person innovating. It s good for the young/anyone to innovate. There are some huge successes as a recent of young-minded/different thinking. There are also a lot of failures and they often happen as a result of not really southwest airlines vacations gift certificates travel understanding how changes to existing business models affect the viability of the new enterprise.
the rest is just you babbling about what YOU feel is important as opposed to realizing that many market participants may prefer somehting else and acting like the existence of any risk or possible bad outcomes is somehow a market failure.
southwest airlines vacations gift certificates travel zipcar offers southwest airlines vacations gift certificates travel what it offers because that is what it s customers southwest airlines vacations gift certificates travel want. the customers use zipcar because zipcar offers what they want. you are trying to tell both asides what to offer and what to buy as if you know best, not them.
if you want more insurance, it s readily available. what would stop you from getting it? zipcar already offers MORE, not less insurance than say, hertz. at hertz, you need to buy insurance separately if you want it. zipcar includes southwest airlines vacations gift certificates travel it. so why is that less safe? it s not low. it s very high compared to other options. you have this totally backwards.
it s a superior offering to that of their competitors, but like any insurance, has limits. you claim that there is more risk is totally southwest airlines vacations gift certificates travel false. where is there more risk? they offer more mandatory southwest airlines vacations gift certificates travel insurance than other renters, not less. you are just flat out falsifying the facts.
they have comp insurance on the car. it will be replaced. but you are the one on the hook for any damage you do over the insurance they provide. (which, again, is better than any other included offering and equivalent to the levels southwest airlines vacations gift certificates travel carried by most drivers on their own cars)
and all I m said from the get go is that free market types are fooling themselves if they think Hertz and company are screwing southwest airlines vacations gift certificates travel people on price and these ad-hoc services will provide a real alternative.
I m not saying that some won t survive. Some will. But they will have to have their shit together on the risk and exposure end of things. It s not a panacea to traditional renting. It s a consumer choice and the question is do they consumers willing pay less for higher risks.
if you crash a rental car, you are the one liable for damage unless you can prove that the car itself was faulty. cases like that are incredibly rare. it s a minuscule issue for costs. a basic check for safety is easy and can be performed in a couple of minutes. you check brake pads, tire wear, signals, mirrors, etc and there you go. such inspections are easily performed by semi skilled techs and cheap to do.
My bet is that by the time the insurance issue is actually dealt with, that regular rentals like Hertz are liable to be competitive because they self insure and limit liability and charge an arm and leg for insurance want your drivers license which they will then do a background search to see if you have a bad driving record, etc.
The problem here is that those who fervently believe southwest airlines vacations gift certificates travel in the free market seem to take insurance for granted free market insurance knows risk pretty well and renting your car to strangers is a big risk that if covered southwest airlines vacations gift certificates travel by insurance is going to be costly.
most free market southwest airlines vacations gift certificates travel folks have trouble understanding insurance you can tell this when they say we should give seniors vouchers for them to go shopping for insurance as if any company would want them when they are of the age where people get sick and use great amounts of medical care.
so, you are away for 5 days, and i want to rent for 3. what do we do with the car the rest of the time? what if you want a period that runs longer than my trip. now my car is useless to you. or what if you bring it back late etc?
your point about insurance is completely wrong. in a free market, there is nothing southwest airlines vacations gift certificates travel to understand. you contract with those who wish to do business with you on such terms as are mutually agreeable. you are starting from a position of everyone needs insurance which is a non free4 market idea and then blaming free markets for that.
It s EASY to SAY that FLIGHTCAR will offer insurance but the specifics of what are covered and what is not and how much it costs can easily sink a concept like FLIGHTCAR. It s already an issue with ZipCars southwest airlines vacations gift certificates travel and Uber type services.
sure, you CAN fail if you don t take them into account. but someone not getting a business model right is not the same as a market failure. when a company fails because it did not gauge its market or risks appropriately, that s a market success, not a failure.
free market folks are rah rah about being freed from business transactions with, for instance, rental cars or taxi cabs but they seriously underestimate how much of the traditional business transaction costs are associated with risk and legal exposure.
i note that you have yet to point out a single southwest airlines vacations gift certificates travel market failure here of any kind. a bad outcome is not a market failure. the existence of risk is not a market failure. the only way to have no risk of being hit by a car is to never cross a street or even go onto the first floor of a building. almost every action has some risk. markets exist to let us choose risk/reward and price/utility tradeoffs.
at core, you are taking a statist road that we are too dumb to make our own decisions and need to all be forced southwest airlines vacations gift certificates travel to pay more and