rental cars and chasing?

[David Wolfson]

Avis to offer 3G in-vehicle wi-fi at $11/day

Just saw this in the news.... http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/02/t...&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

In case this is unavailable to those without a NYT subscription, some excerpts:

Autonet Mobile, a start-up wireless technology company based in San Francisco, is expected to announce this week that it has reached an agreement with Avis Rent A Car System to provide a rolling Wi-Fi hotspot to Avis customers by March. For $10.95 a day, Avis will issue motorists a notebook-size portable device that plugs into a car’s power supply and delivers a high-speed Internet connection.

For the moment, the service is intended for business travelers. But Autonet sees its service appealing to families traveling with their children, although its unit is expected to cost $399, about twice as much as current cellular card technology, plus $49 a month for service.
...

Sterling Pratz, the president and chief executive of Autonet, said the device uses the 3G cellular network and will work in all major metropolitan areas and in about 95 percent of the country.

Mr. Pratz said his technology minimized dropped connections but did not eliminate them, and noted that the In-Car-Router had been modified to reduce battery consumption.

 

[rdale]

More on that at http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/80664

 

[Jason Doss]

Quick story for fun:
Had a rental b/c the tahoe was in the shop for hail damage. Intercepted a tornadic cell in Corpus, with the rental, and got baseball size hail. Make sure you tell them what you are doing, or you could just say you drove through a storm.

 

[Doug_Kiesling]

Another thing is to watch what you say if you do rent a car or SUV. Not to the rental car company but to any chasers that might get jealous. A chaser told me that someone called the rental car company he used to rent a car that was hit by hail last May just to try and get him in trouble. WX Narc is what it has come down to in chasing.

 

[John Erwin]

Another thing is to watch what you say if you do rent a car or SUV. Not to the rental car company but to any chasers that might get jealous. A chaser told me that someone called the rental car company he used to rent a car that was hit by hail last May just to try and get him in trouble. WX Narc is what it has come down to in chasing.

Might also apply to those chasers who rent cars and then proceed to drive like maniacs out there; many of the rental companies have decals or license plate holders with the company name on them.

 

[Helen Rossington]

We hired an SUV from Alamo last year from DFW. We made sure we were as insured as we could be as.

We said that there had been stories in the English press about problems of insuring against weather after Katrina and just wanted to make sure we would be covered.

The lady said "all you need to do is just bring the car back, drive it over a cliff...or whatever just bring it back!"

 

[Doug_Kiesling]

Might also apply to those chasers who rent cars and then proceed to drive like maniacs out there; many of the rental companies have decals or license plate holders with the company name on them.

From what I was told, they were narced on by other chasers who were not there. It boiled down to some chasers got into the storm by accident and others were jealous of the chase after seeing the video and chase reports. They called the rental car company and narced on them to try and get them in trouble.

Sad but true, that is the state of chasing today.

 

[Greg Campbell]

You guys have a dozen excuses - how clever. Doesn't the ethics of driving someone elses car into a severe thunderstorm bother anyone?

I'd like to think no one has yet (?) deliberately driven a rental into gorilla hail, just for the hell of it. But even a prudent chaser has vastly greater odds of damaging the car that the average Joe Tourist or travelling sales flack. Also, I tend to think that even the 'prudent' guys will be somewhat less so when any potential vehicle damage is 'not their problem.'

I've no love for the insurance racket, but the fact remains: everyone else's premiums WILL go up to pay the thou$ands required to repair your nuked rental.

 

[Dave Gallaher]

everyone else's premiums WILL go up to pay the thou$ands required to repair your nuked rental.

The way insurance providers operate indicates the car will more likely be totaled and replaced.

 

[Doug_Kiesling]

I've no love for the insurance racket, but the fact remains: everyone else's premiums WILL go up to pay the thou$ands required to repair your nuked rental.

Not really. When I rented in all of the hurricanes since I flew into the areas getting hit, I asked about the fact that I'm in the hurricane zone. I was told several times by several different rental car companies that they are self insured and if the storm is coming then it is ether they take the risk of getting their car damaged by me and make money or they take the risk of getting the car damaged by the storm while it sites in the lot and not make any money.

When I went on a dive trip this summer, one of the guys on the trip worked for a major rental car company and he pretty much told me that all the cars are leases from the Detroit and the amount of money they make off the insurance they self insure the cars is insane. Plus if you factor in that they keep the cars for only a few months until the miles add up then they ship them back to be sold as lease returns. The way he put it is that they make a killing on the rentals.

For the rental, just be upfront and say your on a vacation to photograph the midwest landscape and clouds and weather. Say you need the full insurance incase you blow out a tire, get a rock kicked up in your windsheild, or get stuck in one of those midwest hail storms and thunder storms.

On the case of chase ethics, I could go on for pages and pages with the stuff I have seen others do in the chasing scene from long time chasers to the up and coming flash in the pan. But it really is not worth it because my point is that you not only have to watch out for other chasers driving these days since it is pretty nuts now but you also have to watch out what other chasers will do just for spite because you got on a storm or you got better video or were more succesful.

But at least we don't have to worry about everyone racing to sell video now since all the networks have their new TV Shows and are trolling the web for free video. The age of the storm chasing stringer is pretty much dead.

 

[Michael Thompson]

You guys have a dozen excuses - how clever. Doesn't the ethics of driving someone elses car into a severe thunderstorm bother anyone?

Is it any different for anybody hiring a car and driving to a ski resort for a ski holiday - icy roads, snow, etc. Many of these people could be from overseas or areas where driving on ice and snow is not part of their usual winter routine. In 30 years of driving in Australia and the only ice/snow I have ever driven on is hail.

The number of chasers hiring cars is a drop in the ocean compared to how many cars are hired in the USA over a year- more like a grain of sand a beach actually.

I do however agree that hire companies just to squeeze extra $$ may see extra insurance penalties, etc, as an opportunity.

As for ethics, I am not dealing with salt of the earth individuals trying to put food on their table, I am dealing with very large corporations whose executives are on salaries I can only dream of.

 

[David Wolfson]

When you rent a car it becomes "your" car for the duration of the rental -- hence the damage issue. Big hail is a major hassle and trip interruptor regardless of whose car you're driving, and no serious chaser seeks it out a second time. It's a calculated risk you take.

It's probably prudent that those of us who intercepted storms like the 05/05/06 Seminole-Patricia hailer be cautious bragging about their rental car coverage on public forums such as ST and YouTube, though.

More significant and overlooked I think is the rather general restriction against driving on unpaved roads. That could void or limit your coverage. Check your rental's terms carefully.

The main reason I rent is because I can put lots of miles on a well-maintained, low-mileage vehicle for less than it would probably cost me to drive my own. If it does get damaged or broken down, a major rental company will replace it pretty quickly with less interruprtion to the trip.

 

[Helen Rossington]

The alamo agreement definately said you shouldn't drive on unpaved roads - we noticed this while reading the small print while waiting for some storms to fire!

We always try and avoid damaging the car in anyway. We pay a lot of money going across to the states and don't want to waste our time waiting for repairs.

 

[Warren Faidley]

Rental Cars

Another thing to be careful with is that many rental car companies are now installing either GPS or in-car data recorders that can record miles, mechanical issues and speed records. I have been told that renters have been banned from further renting because of excessive speed violations. I am sure it is only a matter of time before such data is accepted for traffic citations, license suspensions or worse if an accident is involved. One note about taking care of a rental, if it's trashed, it might take a day or two to repair the glass and that can take you out of the chase.

Warren

 

[John Olexa]

From what I was told, they were narced on by other chasers who were not there. It boiled down to some chasers got into the storm by accident and others were jealous of the chase after seeing the video and chase reports. They called the rental car company and narced on them to try and get them in trouble.

Sad but true, that is the state of chasing today.

That's a damm shame!. Anyway I specialze in lightning, so the rental car thing don't really matter to me. Theres enough good places around where I live to shoot.