![]() I was scared and shaking and had no idea what just happened.” “I was barely able to make it to the left shoulder. “All of a sudden the steering wheel locked up and the car shut off,” she testified. Smith in 2013 testified to the Nevada legislature that her car’s kill switch activated as she was driving down Interstate 15. But she says having a kill switch on her cars led to her being stranded more than once.Īt least her cars didn’t stop in the middle of a trip. Hayes, now 27, acknowledges her credit wasn’t very good back then that’s why she had the high-interest loans and the kill switches in the first place. Lawmakers in at least two other states, Illinois and Rhode Island, are considering legislation. Nevada’s and New Jersey’s similar laws took effect in 2017. New York is the latest, with a law that took effect in October requiring lenders to disclose in writing by certified mail when they install the devices on vehicles. In recent years, though, amid consumer horror stories ranging from inconvenience to outright danger, a few states are restricting or banning the kill-switch tactic as unfair and potentially unsafe. But many subprime auto lenders across the country are using more sophisticated versions to ensure that car buyers make their payments. Rudimentary kill switches have long been sold to the public as anti-theft devices for less than $50 apiece. If I didn’t have the payment to them in an hour, they’d cut it off again.”Ī couple of years later, the same thing happened with her next car, a 2008 Hyundai. I told them I would try to pay them, and they cut it on for an hour. ![]() “They cut the car off, and I was 20 minutes from home. “I was very anxious,” Hayes said recently, recalling being stranded with her first car. The lender, without her knowledge, had installed a “kill switch” and triggered it remotely after Hayes missed a payment. One day in 2013, having forgotten to make her payment, she got into her 2006 Kia Optima at work and turned the key, but instead of starting so she could go home, the car made a loud beeping noise and wouldn’t go anywhere. ![]() About a decade ago, when Erin Hayes was in her late teens, she bought a used car with a subprime loan from one of those “buy here, pay here” car lots close to her home near Raleigh, North Carolina. ![]()
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