12,500 euros invoice for customers for accidents outside the rental period

The car is the German’s favorite toy – nevertheless, cars are idle around 23 hours a day on average. The car sharing concept has been a good idea for years, the costs for each participant are lower, the number of cars and the parking space used decrease.

The concept naturally has some legal challenges, especially in the event of an accident, the real responsible must be held accountable. Many providers rely on extensive terms and conditions and a variety of technical equipment and sensors. However, the provider Miles in Berlin doesn’t seem to be taking this very seriously – as a current example shows.

12,500 euros bill and theft after use

It has been some time now – the Briton Rob Shawn rented a car from Miles in Berlin at lunchtime on June 23rd. After the rental ended, the car was stolen, driven 200 kilometers through Berlin and then damaged. The car sharing provider then billed Rob Shawn for 12,500 euros. He is said to have not locked the car correctly – Shawn claims the opposite, now testimony is against testimony. Start-up scene would like to have collected other examples with a similar approach on the part of Miles.

Not an isolated case

On our English site Mobilegeeks.com we report a similar case. Our guest author Andrea Nepori transported a desk to his office on August 11th last year, while he was setting up the desk, the car was stolen. The bill after the joyride through the thieves amounts to 6,700 euros and was also sent to the last regular tenant.

Nepori immediately contacted the support, but only received the request twice not to contact the police himself. Miles himself, as the vehicle owner, felt his responsibility here. Four months after the incident, the bill fluttered into the house – Miles claims the car was parked in the street without locking.

Cars without keys … for everyone

With regard to the question of guilt, the question of cordoning off is of course decisive. If the cars had not been locked, the tenants could be accused of gross negligence. So she would be to blame – and the insurance would not pay either. The terms and conditions of Miles and many other providers also state this – anyone who does not lock the rented car is liable for all consequential damage.

Much more exciting would be the question: How is it possible that the cars are often not locked for many hours and are still ready to drive? In the case of the British, the theft took place four hours after the rental ended. Automatic security measures that Miles apparently did not implement should take effect here.

Cars with a keyless system often have proximity detection – if the virtual key, i.e. the smartphone of the (temporary) owner, is not nearby, it is locked. Gründerszene claims to have received some documents from Rob Shaw that show that the ignition was switched off – but the car was still open. There should also be other reports that show that many cars were open for hours.

Lack of security measures and the competition

Miles apparently has fundamental deficiencies in terms of his own security, even if there were even onboard systems that could prevent such errors. Fortunately, other providers take a different approach here.

“There has been no vehicle from WeShare stolen. In a few cases, customers have informed us that they have found an open vehicle where the previous renter had not properly terminated the rental. Here we ended the rental manually and informed the previous tenant, ”a company representative told me. “The WeShare system automatically and continuously checks whether rentals have not been properly terminated or whether vehicles are unlocked on public roads. In such cases, the system activates the immobilizer so that the engine can no longer be started. The customer is informed of this via the app. However, the doors remain open in the event of a medical emergency. The immobilizer can be deactivated again via the app or customer service ”.

“Since the SHARE NOW-App is the digital car key for keyless vehicles, we have taken additional precautions if our customers make a stopover during their rental. In this case, users have to unlock the vehicle’s engine via the app before they can ride along, ”says the company. “We also use various tools to identify and prevent fraudulent use of our cars, such as the use of a so-called immobilizer. This enables us to stop the engine and block the vehicle if our system detects unauthorized use of the respective car ”.

In addition, SHARE NOW implements a “GeoFence Alerting” system. “As described in our privacy policy, activating this tool requires a serious breach of our terms and conditions,” said the company. “Such a violation occurs, for example, if the customer leaves the contractually agreed area of ​​use. As a consequence, we receive a notification that the vehicle is outside the country. This way we can contact the customer and ask him to return the vehicle immediately ”.

Miles according to the statements on the own website Make car sharing more transparent and fair. So the marketing statement continues: “We want mobility in urban life to be more diverse and, above all, accessible to everyone”. Especially the point with “accessible to everyone” should be clearly reconsidered …