About ten years ago me and my chase partner had our chase car in the shop and so we rented one. The rental agency definitely was suspicious and hesitant when we said we would be traveling in KS and NE (they ask where you will be traveling during the checkout and we naively told them without mentioning weather). They were kind of a pain about it but we told them further info about our trip was our business. We deliberately avoided hail that trip and brought the car back in perfect condition. The avoidance of hail did alter our chase strategy and success a bit.
Even with my personal vehicles I almost always have avoided hail and still seen what I want to see, it just takes a bit more planning and is much safer. The one time I did not, I came upon a closed road and had a radar data outage at once, and I got clipped by a 2 inch hail core that did a lot of damage in just over a minute. I had to fix that damage as the car still had a loan, and my rates went up. It was very unintentional, but the insurer did not care after the claim and regarded me as a higher risk. I don't ever feel the need to tuck into an HP notch to see some un photogenic low contrast piece of junk anyway, and I have adjusted my strategy to not end up ever getting hit by hail again if I can help it. Probably less odds than the average unaware motorist of getting hit, and I have escaped hail in town multiple times because of the skills of a chaser.
All that said about the choice to drive into hail or not, rental or not - I find regarding anyone's property including rental car companies as there to be abused is immoral and extremely immature and makes us all look bad and high risk to insure. There is a strong attitude, particularly in many younger people and immature older people that 'that's what insurance is for' or 'those greedy corps deserve it'. I saw comments all over social media about how there is nothing wrong and 'sticking it to the man' is some type of justice in their small minds. Most of these people have no idea that all this behavior is why most things like service and options and quality degrade over time and prices for all of us skyrocket; they are helping cause a portion of the corporate problems they despise. Sure there are other factors to why insurance and rental companies suck, but rampant abuse is also a big part of cost increases. For profit industries have to be able to cover their financial risk to stay viable. If payouts or costs increase, so do costs for everyone.
Anyone intentionally chasing storms who damages a car that bad is easily over the line of intent. In the recent instance being referenced here, the chasers were deliberately chasing 'gorilla hail', exclaiming about it like kids or some Jackass movie (what a stupid movie) and deliberately kept driving until glass was exploding in their faces. They did this on live video, for profit. Even if their stream is demonetized (uncertain because google loves ad revenue) they have a billion patreon fools to pay them. Hardly the first time either - probably in the dozens of instances now where rentals were damaged or totaled. The chaser even spoke in their own comments that it was 'getting harder to rent' when someone brought up the question of how they are able to. Intent to deceive and destroy these cars on someone else's dime is evident unless someone comes forward and confirms they buyout these totaled cars with their streaming money or something later.
It would be different if someone rented, intended to stay out of hail, made a mistake or broke down and got into it - but that would still be borderline their financial responsibility if they deliberately drove to close proximity to hail.
I agree with Dan that the fine print in most rental contracts easily bypasses a LDW or any insurance if you show any intent at all to put the rental car in a risk situation. I have heard about people taking a rental on flat dirt roads and being held accountable for all damage even if they did nothing crazy and something just went wrong with the car by coincidence, just because the company had no dirt roads in fine print. The fine print gives rental agencies a lot of power over collecting money for damage even if people think it doesn't. Just because many rental employees could care less or some agencies probably deliberately allow certain cars to be damaged without protest does not mean the risk to an individual renter to be held liable is low. Honestly I would love to see some of these people hit with a 'car totaled' bill for how they treat others' property. I am sure Hertz would love to rent out all their Teslas and have them destroyed for the payout, so the rental car companies could be part of the problem too. They seem to allow some of this dishonesty to game the system themselves for optimizing their fleet. That is a bit of speculation on my part, but there must be a reason why they haven't cracked down severely before this.
I am not going to judge a whole person by this type of action, but the repeated immaturity of stuff like this, and indirect disregard for others makes it harder not to. Driving into any damaging hail on purpose is an activity that already may put yourself and others at risk if something goes wrong, but if one is going to do it it should be a personal choice in a personal vehicle at the least.
