Senators want Amazon Autos to remove listings of cars with open recalls – Jalopnik

If you’re looking for a used car, you’re probably hoping to spend a little less than a new model would cost. You’re probably not hoping to trade your safety for that deal. So why can used cars be sold with open recalls and known and established safety issues, when new cars can’t? It’s a question lawmakers are asking, but they’re starting in an odd place: Amazon, a company that notably doesn’t sell cars.

The people there Autoblog captured a letter from three senators to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, ​​requesting that the listings of cars with open recalls be removed. But the request from Senators Ed Markey and Liz Warren of Massachusetts, along with Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, is oddly timed and targeted. Instead of reaching out to a range of marketplaces like AutoTrader or AutoTempest, or contacting the dealers who actually post these listings, lawmakers are only talking to Amazon. However, the explanation is already in the letter itself: these three senators have a bill to prevent the sale by dealers of used cars with open recalls.

For now, what Amazon is doing is completely legal – probably even explicit protected by current internet law as written. Writing a letter to a major company like this, one that exists outside of the more niche automotive world, seems like a good way to bring Markey, Warren and Blumenthal’s bill to the attention of all voters here. Hopefully it helps, and the days of dealers selling cars they know are dangerous are numbered, but these senators are taking on the lobbying giants of the car dealer industry. They face an uphill battle here.