Even if it's billed as a "certified" vehicle, do you really know where a used car's been?  Was it wrecked?  Worse yet, was it stolen?  Now that a long-delayed law is being upheld in federal court, consumers will be able to attain vehicle histories based upon information gleaned from insurance companies.

Last Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled in favor of three groups, who argued that a long-delayed consumer protection law should be upheld.  Crafted in 1992, the legislation effectively forces insurance companies to disclose all their information so complete databases of stolen and damaged cars can be made.

Currently, few insurance companies report information on damaged and stolen cars. Services like CarFax and AutoCheck are in business to track the history of used cars to prevent fraud and protect consumers. However, since both companies attain most of their information from state records, gaps still exist.

Kenneth Klein, the owner of Consumer's Auto Detective, says that current services are notoriously unreliable. He ran the numbers of eighty-eight vehicles he knew should have salvage titles.  Amazingly, twenty-eight of them were shown with clean histories.

The insurance industry claims that it hasn't denied the public information. David Snyder, vice president and assistant general counsel for the American Insurance Association, says that the information insurance companies do hold was simply collected for business use and not for public disclosure.

Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ordered a disclosure system be instated by March 31, 2009, although details - including access fees- have yet to be worked out.

Source: New York Times