Senators Want Amazon Autos To Take Down Listings For Cars With Open Recalls

If you're in the market 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 away your safety in that deal. So why can used cars be sold with open recalls, 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 which notably does not actually sell cars. 

The folks over at Autoblog caught a letter from three senators to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, asking that the company take down listings for any cars with open recalls. But the request from Senators Ed Markey and Liz Warren of Massachusetts, along with Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, is curiously timed and aimed. Rather than addressing a range of marketplaces  like AutoTrader or AutoTempest, or reaching out to the dealers that actually post these listings, the lawmakers are only talking to Amazon. The explanation, though, comes right in the letter itself: These three Senators have a bill to prevent dealer sales of used cars with open recalls. 

This letter to Amazon, then, feels more like marketing for a bill than anything the trio expect Amazon to actually act on. After all, Amazon is essentially just acting as a place to post classified ads here, rather than as the merchant we all know from our consumer product purchases — the ads themselves come from the dealers, which means that Amazon isn't responsible for their content under Section 230. We all deserve to buy safe used cars, but letters to Amazon aren't going to really make those purchases any less risky by themselves. As part of a push for Markey, Warren, and Blumenthal's Used Car Safety Recall Repair Act, though, it might help move the needle of public opinion. 

For now, what Amazon's doing is entirely legal — even likely explicitly protected by current Internet law as written. Writing a letter to a big-name company like this, one that exists outside of the more niche automotive sphere, seems a good way to promote Markey, Warren, and Blumenthal's proposed bill to all of us voters out here. Hopefully it helps, and the days of dealers selling cars they know to be dangerous are numbered, but these Senators are going up against the lobbying giants of the car dealer industry. They're facing an uphill battle here.