Rental-Car Firms Ban Smoking

Rental-Car Firms Ban Smoking
September 17, 2009

News Summary

Budget Rent-a-Car and Avis are prohibiting smoking in their rental vehicles as of Oct. 1, the Los Angeles Times reported Sept. 13.

The agencies announced that all rental vehicles will now have a sticker warning drivers and passengers not to smoke. The policy will be applied to all vehicles in their fleets.

Renter face a $250 fee if a car is returned smelling of smoke or with other evidence that someone has been smoking in the car.

"Tobacco smoke leaves a residue on fabrics, fibers and surfaces of vehicles, which emits odors that many people find unpleasant," said Avis Budget Group official Larry De Shon. "In fact, we receive more customer requests for smoke-free vehicles than any other special request."

COMMENTS ON THIS ARTICLE:

Posted by maxwood on 17 Sep 09 09:25 PM EDT

This isd a major change. For decades manufacturers ROUTINELY built cigarette lighter and ashtrays into every car even though 50% or more of the population did not smoke; buyers passively let this happen, even though those items were adding hundreds of dollars to the price of each vehicle. In 2005 Honda or some other company announced that certain economy cars would be available without smoking-related furnishings and there was an outcry.

Posted by Bill Godshall on 18 Sep 09 10:16 AM EDT

Only 14% (1/7) of American adults are daily cigarette smokers, and it's probably less than that among Avis and Budget Rent-A-Car customers. And even smokers don't want to inhale somebody else's tobacco smoke pollution residue that permeates the inside of cars in which people smoke. Besides, virtually nobody wants to buy a used car that was smoked in, and rental car companies sell all of their cars after several years of use.

Posted by joshua on 18 Sep 09 10:27 AM EDT

this isn't really a major change though. I worked at Avis in high school, we had about 200 cars on the lot at any given time, only about 10-15 of them were smoking-allowed vehicles. They almost never got rented. There was always a fine for smoking in the non-smoking cars.

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