California law traditionally abolished additional driver's fees (I`ve been renting cars there since 1993), so all car rental agencies there were not charging any fees until this year when that law was changed at the behest of the rental car lobby group.
The NYT article quoted above (
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/24/u...ental-law.html) has some great insights into how this piece of legislation came to be and what effects it'll have on the cost of rental cars in California - it's not just the additional drivers' fees but also the cost for CDW waivers which more than double in most cases. This will hurt people who can't really afford it the most - people who don't have high-end credit cards or fancy insurance policies covering rental cars. .
We'll see how this evolves. If the rental agencies overdo it (again) with fees there'll be backlash, likely leading to a proposition which then would reintroduce legislation banning them (again).
The
hospitality and
airline industries already are facing regulatory pressure re:ancillary fees, and if it becomes enough of a nuisance rental car industry might well be added to the fray.
Originally Posted by
xxnm
The one who drafts the Digest appeared to have inadvertently dropped the "the renter's" and thus totally skewed the meaning.
Ref (including both the digest and the law): page 5 of the PDF.
Oh wow. That shows how much diligence or rather lack of it goes into CA lawmaking. I didn't even catch this at all..... This should have been reviewed and corrected before getting published on the state .gov website.