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BOSTON (State House News Service) — Lawmakers on the Joint Committee on Financial Services were asked again Tuesday to advance legislation that would lay out rules and guardrails for person-to-person car-sharing, and to address issues of safety, insurance and taxation.
Car sharing works by allowing a vehicle owner to list their car for use by others at times when they won't be needing it. It could be an individual renting out their car to earn extra money, the owner of a small fleet of vehicles making them available to rent through a peer-to-peer platform, or a more typical rental car company listing excess inventory on a platform. The sharing service installs a device so the car can be unlocked remotely and then service users log onto an app to reserve a set of wheels near them. The app will unlock the car and the user is responsible for returning the car at the end of the rental period.
Travis Allen of Enterprise Rent-A-Car Company of Boston told the committee that his company views person-to-person car sharing as "simply a new business model using smartphone applications that make vehicles available for rent to the public, the same thing the incumbent rental car company does." He said H 1018 filed by Rep. Sean Garballey "removes all barriers for technology enabled service models" while ensuring all parties involved are protected by appropriate insurance, making sure cars offered for rent are not subject to vehicle recalls, clarifying the tax obligations for operators, and making clear that commercial airports can regulate car sharing at their facilities.
"Enterprise supports modernizing Massachusetts' existing laws to ensure that there are no barriers to the rental of privately-owned vehicles through platforms, while also ensuring Massachusetts residents get the same consumer protections regardless of what company they use to rent the car, commercial airports have the express authority to regulate this rental activity at their airports, and the already-enacted taxes and fees owed on the car rental activity don't go uncollected," Allen said. "Many states have already successfully addressed these policy issues on peer-to-peer car rental. And in previous sessions, there has been strong leadership from the Legislature in this committee to drive a compromise from both sides."
Allen said that putting in law that airports can regulate car sharing at their terminals is key because "Massport had to sue one peer-to-peer company over recent years in order to get them to the negotiating table after that company had already begun to operate at Logan Airport."
The committee heard testimony on person-to-person car sharing in 2019, but a bill sponsored by House Ways and Means Chairman Aaron Michlewitz that session went nowhere.
Frank O'Brien of the American Property Casualty Insurance Association told the committee Tuesday that he worked closely with the National Conference of Insurance Legislators (NCOIL) to develop a model that has become the standard for peer-to-peer legislation across the country. He said Garballey's bill is based on one version of that NCOIL model. O'Brien said APCIA "takes no position" on many of the provisions of the bill or NCOIL model because they deal with taxation and the regulation of the rental car industry.
"Our interest in it is on the insurance-related coverage provisions, which thankfully are non-controversial," he said. "But I'd be happy to work with the committee on this particular issue, as I have done in the past, given that I was involved in the development of the model at NCOIL."
Written by Colin A. Young/SHNS
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