{"id":5194,"date":"2017-04-11T11:10:53","date_gmt":"2017-04-11T18:10:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/turo.com\/blog\/?p=5194"},"modified":"2025-03-26T04:17:43","modified_gmt":"2025-03-26T11:17:43","slug":"turo-lobbies-for-hosts-rights-in-maryland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/turo.com\/blog\/news\/turo-lobbies-for-hosts-rights-in-maryland\/","title":{"rendered":"Turo lobbies for hosts\u2019 rights in Maryland"},"content":{"rendered":"

FIGHTING FOR EMERGING ECONOMIES<\/span><\/h4>\n

As Turo\u2019s resident Super Patriot, I love every single opportunity to spend time in our nation\u2019s capital, drinking in the history and walking in the footsteps of our greatest national leaders. In a moment of stars aligning, this week\u2019s community party will be held on Thomas Jefferson\u2019s birthday! And will I probably pretend that the party is actually a birthday party for TJ, Founding Father and third President of this great nation? Yessiree.<\/span><\/p>\n

With Jefferson on my mind, I recall the little-remembered fact that he spent a good bit of his time in Annapolis, MD, as a Congressional Delegate, when it was our baby nation\u2019s capital in 1784. Jefferson probably rode his horse for days from Charlottesville, VA to Annapolis. Imagine how \u00a0much nicer it would have been to just pick up a car from a Turo host and zip across those 150 Virginia miles in a just few short hours.<\/span><\/p>\n

A Maryland roadblock \u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

But these days, it\u2019s possible that not even a man of Thomas Jefferson\u2019s stature would be able to rent a car from Turo in Maryland if some legislators had their way. In this new world of ride sharing, home sharing, and car sharing, the Maryland legislature is considering legislation presented to them by traditional rental car companies that would require car sharing platforms like Turo to be subject to the same regulatory requirements as the incumbent players in the car rental industry. Turo is actively lobbying against this legislation, since in many cases the requirements are decades old, and couldn\u2019t have anticipated an emerging economy where private citizens offer to share their cars with other people. <\/span><\/p>\n

The bill as originally drafted, for example, would mandate that the Turo host\u2019s personal insurance would be secondary to Turo\u2019s protection package, which would be primary. We want Turo\u2019s protection to be primary and exclusive for our hosts. For years, <\/span>we have championed the type of insurance<\/span><\/a> that leaves the owner out of the insurance equation in case of an incident while their car is rented since their involvement would be circumstantial \u2014 Turo\u2019s protection would be primary and the owner\u2019s insurance wouldn\u2019t be docked. This stance is a cornerstone of our offering to car owners \u2014 if someone else gets into an accident while driving their car, the car owner won\u2019t be held responsible. Because the legislative language was lifted right from the traditional car rental statute, it doesn\u2019t fit and should not apply. If enacted, the language would make our customers vulnerable to undue insurance claims because it was never intended to \u2014 and shouldn\u2019t \u2014 apply to peer-to-peer car sharing.<\/span><\/p>\n

And that would be a shame \u2014 because the Turo Maryland community is bustling! To date, Maryland has seen tens of thousands of\u00a0rental days and nearly 60,000 registered Turo travelers. There are hundreds of privately-owned cars for rent in Maryland, ranging from affordable daily drivers at $17 per day to high-end luxury cars for $800 per day. Our car owner community is 350 strong in Maryland, and hosts like <\/span>Erika L.<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>as reported recently in the Baltimore Sun<\/span><\/a>, has grossed nearly $6,000 renting out her <\/span>smart fortwo<\/span>. Our platform offers unprecedented economic opportunity for Maryland car owners like Erika, or <\/span>Rodrigo V.<\/span><\/a> out of Bethesda with a <\/span>vintage Fiat<\/span><\/a>, or Patrick C.<\/a>\u00a0in Baltimore. They\u2019re able to turn their depreciating assets into earning engines with real ROI, and, as independent car owners, shouldn\u2019t be subject to the same rigorous taxes, fees, and regulations as traditional car rental agencies.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

Erika’s smart fortwo, Baltimore, MD<\/p><\/div>\n

To highlight the anticompetitive nature of this bill put forth by the American Car Rental Association and Enterprise Holdings, Inc., the Turo Government Relations team has been lobbying and meeting with legislators, and even testified at two hearings this spring in Annapolis. The bills didn\u2019t make it to a floor vote in the 2017 session, and so they\u2019re dead for the year. However, just as they\u2019ve attempted to do for ride sharing (Uber, Lyft) and home sharing (Airbnb), the Senate would like to create a similar framework for peer-to-peer car sharing. Accordingly, Turo will participate in a working session this summer to discuss what such a framework might look like.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Rodrigo’s Fiat Spider<\/p><\/div>\n

Frustrated by the efforts of incumbent, monolithic businesses to stifle tech-enabled emerging economies but invigorated by the democratic process championed by my boy TJ all those years ago, the Turo Government Relations team is dedicated to continue fighting for our customers\u2019 ability to use the platform without unreasonable restrictions.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re interested in helping Turo fight this fight or staying abreast of the evolving situation, please get in touch with me by joining <\/span>OpenRoad<\/span>, our public policy website. <\/span><\/p>\n

Join OpenRoad<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FIGHTING FOR EMERGING ECONOMIES As Turo\u2019s resident Super Patriot, I love every single opportunity to spend time in our nation\u2019s capital, drinking in the history and walking in the footsteps…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":5226,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[319],"class_list":["post-5194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-openroad"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/turo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/turo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/turo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/turo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/turo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5194"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/turo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31020,"href":"https:\/\/turo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5194\/revisions\/31020"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/turo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/turo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/turo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/turo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}