Time to put the brakes on letting reckless drivers rent supercars: Holly Lynch

My proposed changes to the law, which I will present in the House of Commons today, have been crafted to do just that. More often than not when road traffic offences are committed in high-powered cars, supercars, prestige cars, whatever you want to call them, the driver is not the owner of the vehicle, rather they have hired it.

In recent years, we have seen a rise in cars like Lamborghinis and Ferraris being hired out to a person who goes on to pass the keys around to a group of others.

Vehicles are then driven at dangerously high speeds, putting other road users, pedestrians and the driver themselves, at risk.

Often the driver will not have the appropriate insurance and they certainly will not have the experience of handling a 300-plus horsepower vehicle. A deadly weapon in the wrong hands.

One roads policing officer tells me that he stopped two high-performance vehicles, both of which were rented, within a week alone, on the same 40mph road in Halifax. One was going at 76mph and the other at 86mph.

Whilst many companies who hire out vehicles operate responsibly and with transparency, there are some much darker elements within this industry. The sliding scale of criminality ranges from drivers engaged in persistent anti-social behaviour within communities, to dangerous and reckless driving, to serious and organised crime.

So what can we do to ensure that all companies renting out performance cars are acting responsibly and that drivers are accountable for their actions behind the wheel? My 10-minute rule bill will look to close some of the gaps in the law whilst allowing me to call on Government to address this issue in other ways.

I am proposing that all rental vehicles over 300 horsepower will need to be fitted with a black box.

A black box is typically the size of a matchbox and records information about how and when a car is driven. The information contained within that black box must be made available to the police on request.

The second related change is that a person hiring the car must be insured as the named driver, for that specific vehicle, for the entire duration of the rental agreement. They must satisfy the hire car company of this prior to being allowed to drive the vehicle away. Too often keys are swapped around those who do not have the appropriate insurance.

Too often, when the police have contacted hire car companies for details of the driver at the time an offence was committed, they have failed to provide the details. Whilst this is an offence in and of itself, and I welcome cases where prosecutions have been secured against owners of such companies, a black box and named driver and vehicle insurance combination would significantly undermine someone’s ability to abuse the system.

In addition to the changes presented in my bill, I will also be taking the opportunity to call on the Government to establish a task force to look at this whole industry.

Having spoken to colleagues and the Motor Insurance Bureau, this is a problem right across the country.

There is not only a cost to communities who face the disruption and the associated risks, but a cost to all responsible road users who are penalised through their own insurance to cover the risk of a minority of reckless road users.

I will be urging the Government through that task force to consider minimum licensing requirements for those seeking to hire a performance vehicle. That could include things like being over a certain age before you can hire a vehicle over 300 horsepower, and a requirement to have a clean licence or a minimum number of years experience as a driver.

I have seen several attempts to address this issue deployed by the police and partnerships over the years, some more successful than others. This bill is to say that Westminster must play its role in that – to call time on reckless drivers, irresponsible hire companies and to stand with the communities blighted by this issue.

Holly Lynch is Labour MP for Halifax

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