Before I took the helm of ABRN, Mike Willins ran the magazine for over five years. He now heads up our automotive electronic media efforts, and he's still a great friend to the collision repair community and remains tuned-in to its issues. He expects the best possible coverage of our market.
I wasn't surprised then several weeks ago when I revealed the topic for this month's cover story, airbag fraud, to Mike and he promptly quizzed me on my decision. How does that merit a cover? "What is the significance of that to our industry?" he asked.
Perfect questions. He knew that no decent shop would ever engage in such a dangerous and criminal practice and that most of the time airbag fraud is carried on by small rebuilder operations hoping to "fly under the radar."
I was prepared to support my decision with three strong reasons for raising this topic now.
One, the factors driving this growing problem are tied-in to the collision repair community. The rising number of totals, increasing repair costs and growing use of airbags in multiple vehicle locations help create more opportunities for fraud. Throw into this mix factors like the surging market for used cars and you have a deadly practice becoming more financially rewarding, hence more widespread than ever before.
Reason two, as the economy worsens and shops become more desperate for work and motorists more desperate for "affordable repairs," a lot of shops are going to feel pressure to engage in repairs they otherwise would never consider, including airbag fraud or simply eliminating this work in certain cases.
Think about what happens when a shop owner on the brink of bankruptcy is approached by a motorist who says, "I really don't care whether the airbags are fixed. I just need the car to be drivable." How many of you have heard of cases where a motorist has asked a shop to not repair the airbags in order to save $2,000 on a bill? There are going to be shops so desperate to stay in business, they might be willing to go along with such a request.
Reason three, ultimately someone will be held accountable for this fraud, which already has killed unsuspecting motorists. Follow me on this point. More people stand to die or be seriously injured as this problem spreads. Consider these numbers. According to a recent NHTSA study, of 1,446 fatal accidents from 2001 and 2006, in 255 instances – almost 18 percent – missing airbags had not been repaired following a previous wreck. The California Highway Alliance says it found one out of every 25 previously damaged vehicles inspected had phony airbags. Work in those numbers with the one million vehicles that are rebuilt from salvaged titles and returned to American streets every year.
Eventually, probably much sooner than later, one particularly tragic case or a number of cases will finally catch the public's attention. Guess who will catch the blame? That's right. We will.
Count on the public not to be savvy enough to distinguish guilty rebuilders or a small number of outlaw shops from the collision industry at large. We'll catch the blame. A lot of customers, someday soon, will come away from a normal, quality repair worried they may have just been defrauded.
This will be a huge black eye on our industry, which has worked hard for years to be a strong consumer advocate and which badly needs the public to reciprocate and be on our side.
So what do we do? We get proactive – as an industry. We begin warning the public about airbag fraud. We talk to our customers, hand out pamphlets, put up signs and provide whatever information we can on the subject. The same effort our associations and individual shops put into informing consumers of their repair rights can be spent warning them of fraud. If we see signs of fraud, we make a call to the owner and the authorities. We keep an eye out for the people involved in this practice and report them as well.
Let's be the first to publicize this issue. There are two paths we can take on – be the hero or be unfairly vilified. I prefer the former.
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