Hertz to introduce AI car scanning to detect damage

[Carolinian]

Rental car giant unveils Orwellian X-ray return tunnel for scratches

One off the Big Three US rental car firms has news for drivers who don't know how to parallel park.

www.dailymail.co.uk

 

[TolmiePeak]

Yeah just a bunch of nonsense designed to scare people. Orwellian? Please. You think the rental car agencies using new technologies to detect damage is a bad thing? Why on earth wouldn't they do that?

 

[dioxide45]

They create these new things for two reasons, reduce expenses or increase revenue. For Hertz it will do both. Why invest the money. I suspect more people will be hit with damage fees as quite often the human checker doesn't see it or doesn't care.

 

[Carolinian]

This is an incentive to rent from smaller companies who will not try to nickle and dime people this way.

 

[Carolinian]

Another shocking headline (sic!) from the right-wing rag tabloid Daily Mail
But. A.I. is slowly taking over from the clueless humans with their cell phones ...
.
View attachment 109447Iff

If you have ever travelled to the UK, you must not have been very observant when you passed a newstand.

It is disingenuous to try to denounce a British newspaper as a "tabloid" because in the UK MOST daily newspapers are printed in the tabloid format as opposed to the broadsheet format. In America, tabloids are a very different thing. In the UK, it is just journalism. The left's favorite, the (Manchester) Guardian, is also printed in a tabloid format. Even the UK's most prestigious newspaper, the renowned London Times, is published in a physical tabloid format. The UK's largest circulation broadsheet is the Daily Telegraph, which is closely aligned with the country's Conservative Party. The term "tabloid" in the UK simply means it is a newspaper printed in a certain physical format.

 

[TolmiePeak]

This is an incentive to rent from smaller companies who will not try to nickle and dime people this way.

How is charging you for damage, nickel and diming you?

 

[WaikikiFirst]

A.I. is slowly taking over from the clueless humans with their cell phones

The most clueless humans write click-bait headlines that Brett finds fascinating

 

[WaikikiFirst]

Orwellian?

What a clueless world. For decades, auto makers (and then other kinds of mfrs, like circuit boards) have used VISION SYSTEMS to detect "damage", "build qlty", call it what you want, even paint quality.
Back in the late '80s, I was in a few plants using such things (Cognex is a name I remember, partly because I knew people who worked there, but there were & are others.) "AI"? No intelligence needed. "AI" may be a cheaper way to DIY for the recognition software, but other than that ... pfffffftttttttttttttt
from wikiedia:
American manufacturer of machine vision systems, software and sensors used in automated manufacturing to inspect and identify parts, detect defects, verify product assembly, and guide assembly robots. Cognex is headquartered in Natick, Massachusetts, USA and has offices in more than 20 countries. Cognex began exploring commercial applications of machine vision in the early 1980s. In the 1990s, Cognex's business grew due to a demand for machine vision tools to help automate semiconductor and electronics manufacturing.

 

[jp10558]

Yea, I generally discount the Daily Mail - clickbait headlines and outrage generators.

After the various "made up damage" Hertz has been reported on, as well as "failed to successfully log a car was returned so must be stolen" reporting - somehow I doubt this AI will be well trained and likely to hurt consumers even more. There's a small possibility it'll actually notice a car was returned when the company otherwise would somehow miss that. I generally feel like if a company can't get good human employees and practices, adding computers very rarely helps and usually makes it worse.

 

[TolmiePeak]

What a clueless world. For decades, auto makers (and then other kinds of mfrs, like circuit boards) have used VISION SYSTEMS to detect "damage", "build qlty", call it what you want, even paint quality.
Back in the late '80s, I was in a few plants using such things (Cognex is a name I remember, partly because I knew people who worked there, but there were & are others.) "AI"? No intelligence needed. "AI" may be a cheaper way to DIY for the recognition software, but other than that ... pfffffftttttttttttttt
from wikiedia:
American manufacturer of machine vision systems, software and sensors used in automated manufacturing to inspect and identify parts, detect defects, verify product assembly, and guide assembly robots. Cognex is headquartered in Natick, Massachusetts, USA and has offices in more than 20 countries. Cognex began exploring commercial applications of machine vision in the early 1980s. In the 1990s, Cognex's business grew due to a demand for machine vision tools to help automate semiconductor and electronics manufacturing.

Yep. Just par for the course for the low IQ set. Take anything you don't understand and immediately brand it evil and bad. Glad that Galileo had the balls to stand up to these people.

 

[rickandcindy23]

What we were told at Alamo and Thrifty and other bigger companies is that damage that looks like a baseball hit the car with a dent, those are the ones they want you to notice, when you are checking out the car before you drive away. In other words, you need more of a dent than a mere scratch or small indent in the body of the car. Windshield damage is what we watch for most of the time, when we rent any car.

 

[Carolinian]

How is charging you for damage, nickel and diming you?

Unfortunately, rental car companies are too prone to this.

To give one example the way many (most?) rental car companies scam people on tolls at the Dublin airport is disgusting. A short stretch of motorway going into the airport is a toll road but not well marked as one so many drivers would not know it. There is no toll booth. You have to know it is there are how to pay, which is either online or at a small office deep in the airport that you have to search for. A camera takes photos of license plates and charges tolls. If a driver has not paid by a certain date, a big penalty is added and a notice sent to the car owner. For rental cars, that ais the rental car company, which then pays it with the drivers credit card they have on file and then adds a big fee for their doing so. This is a profit center for them. They could be proactive and tell their customers about the toll road and how to pay, but they don't.

I heard about this before the first time I flew into Dublin and have never been caught by it, but sure enough, the rental car company failed to mention it either when I picked up or returned the car. When my wife and I did a timeshare exchange, booked through DAE Europe into Ireland and flew into Dublin, we attended the welcome session at the resort, which we usually do not do, but the resort manager was on top of this toll road scam. She asked how many timesharers had flown in Dublin and rented a car. Over half of the hands went up. When she asked how many knew about the toll road, my hand was the only one that went up. She explained the scam to the rest of then, and helped them pay the outbound toll online.

Another rental car company scam is the winter tire scam. Most European countries require winter tires on cars during winter months and there are significant penalties for not having them. Instead of mounting all season tires that would count in winter, most rental car companies change tires on cars twice a year and charge a "winter tire surcharge" during those months.

 

[Brett]

If you have ever travelled to the UK, you must not have been very observant when you passed a newstand.
It is disingenuous to try to denounce a British newspaper as a "tabloid" because in the UK MOST daily newspapers are printed in the tabloid format as opposed to the broadsheet format. In America, tabloids are a very different thing. In the UK, it is just journalism. The left's favorite, the (Manchester) Guardian, is also printed in a tabloid format. Even the UK's most prestigious newspaper, the renowned London Times, is published in a physical tabloid format. The UK's largest circulation broadsheet is the Daily Telegraph, which is closely aligned with the country's Conservative Party. The term "tabloid" in the UK simply means it is a newspaper printed in a certain physical format.

LOL -- It's about the "Orwellian" headline
All the US rental car companies are using some form of AI (like all major US corporations )
I've even heard that teachers and college and high school students are using AI ChatGPT - now that's Orwellian !
But I'm hoping CyberDyne Systems doesn't use AI )
.

(

 

[TolmiePeak]

Unfortunately, rental car companies are too prone to this.

To give one example the way many (most?) rental car companies scam people on tolls at the Dublin airport is disgusting. A short stretch of motorway going into the airport is a toll road but not well marked as one so many drivers would not know it. There is no toll booth. You have to know it is there are how to pay, which is either online or at a small office deep in the airport that you have to search for. A camera takes photos of license plates and charges tolls. If a driver has not paid by a certain date, a big penalty is added and a notice sent to the car owner. For rental cars, that ais the rental car company, which then pays it with the drivers credit card they have on file and then adds a big fee for their doing so. This is a profit center for them. They could be proactive and tell their customers about the toll road and how to pay, but they don't.

I heard about this before the first time I flew into Dublin and have never been caught by it, but sure enough, the rental car company failed to mention it either when I picked up or returned the car. When my wife and I did a timeshare exchange, booked through DAE Europe into Ireland and flew into Dublin, we attended the welcome session at the resort, which we usually do not do, but the resort manager was on top of this toll road scam. She asked how many timesharers had flown in Dublin and rented a car. Over half of the hands went up. When she asked how many knew about the toll road, my hand was the only one that went up. She explained the scam to the rest of then, and helped them pay the outbound toll online.

Another rental car company scam is the winter tire scam. Most European countries require winter tires on cars during winter months and there are significant penalties for not having them. Instead of mounting all season tires that would count in winter, most rental car companies change tires on cars twice a year and charge a "winter tire surcharge" during those months.

How is charging you if you damage the rental akin to paying toll charges?

 

[Carolinian]

LOL -- It's about the "Orwellian" headline
All the US rental car companies are using some form of AI (like all major US corporations )
I've even heard that teachers and college and high school students are using AI ChatGPT - now that's Orwellian !
But I'm hoping CyberDyne Systems doesn't use AI )
.
View attachment 109536
(

I would put the credibility of the Daily Mail, one of the UK's largest circulation newspapers far ahead of the more biased New York Times or Washington Post, although among British papers, I like the Telegraph, the Time, and the Express better.. The Post used to be more credible before Bezos bought it.

Oh are your fake "article" is just that - FAKE. You clearly made it up to express your own position because clicking it takes you to nothing.

 

[Carolinian]

How is charging you if you damage the rental akin to paying toll charges?

What I have found is that often rental car companies check the car when it is turned in by the previous driver, not just before your rental starts. That means any damage that occurs while the car is on the lot may get charged to you. I have had a number of times that when I checked a rental car over I found damage not listed that I had to insist they put on record. Paying for these new contraptions will mean they will need to charge a lot more on damages to make them profitable.

 

[Brett]

I would put the credibility of the Daily Mail, one of the UK's largest circulation newspapers far ahead of the more biased New York Times or Washington Post, although among British papers, I like the Telegraph, the Time, and the Express better.. The Post used to be more credible before Bezos bought it.

Oh are your fake "article" is just that - FAKE. You clearly made it up to express your own position because clicking it takes you to nothing.

.

.
LOL
The Daily Orwellian !
.

 

[geist1223]

Unfortunately, rental car companies are too prone to this.

To give one example the way many (most?) rental car companies scam people on tolls at the Dublin airport is disgusting. A short stretch of motorway going into the airport is a toll road but not well marked as one so many drivers would not know it. There is no toll booth. You have to know it is there are how to pay, which is either online or at a small office deep in the airport that you have to search for. A camera takes photos of license plates and charges tolls. If a driver has not paid by a certain date, a big penalty is added and a notice sent to the car owner. For rental cars, that ais the rental car company, which then pays it with the drivers credit card they have on file and then adds a big fee for their doing so. This is a profit center for them. They could be proactive and tell their customers about the toll road and how to pay, but they don't.

I heard about this before the first time I flew into Dublin and have never been caught by it, but sure enough, the rental car company failed to mention it either when I picked up or returned the car. When my wife and I did a timeshare exchange, booked through DAE Europe into Ireland and flew into Dublin, we attended the welcome session at the resort, which we usually do not do, but the resort manager was on top of this toll road scam. She asked how many timesharers had flown in Dublin and rented a car. Over half of the hands went up. When she asked how many knew about the toll road, my hand was the only one that went up. She explained the scam to the rest of then, and helped them pay the outbound toll online.

Another rental car company scam is the winter tire scam. Most European countries require winter tires on cars during winter months and there are significant penalties for not having them. Instead of mounting all season tires that would count in winter, most rental car companies change tires on cars twice a year and charge a "winter tire surcharge" during those months.

When we were in the Dublin area several years ago we had to pick up a friend at the Airport. When we got to the Timeshare (Fitzpatrick Family Castle) the Front Desk called the correct Government Office and paid our Toll from the Airport to Dublin with our Credit Card. On the day we flew out of Dublin they told us where in the Airport the Toll Office was located so we could pay our Toll to the Airport before we flew out. Loved the fact that there was a USA Customs and Border Control Office inside the Dublin Airport.

 

[jp10558]

I would put the credibility of the Daily Mail, one of the UK's largest circulation newspapers far ahead of the more biased New York Times or Washington Post, although among British papers, I like the Telegraph, the Time, and the Express better.. The Post used to be more credible before Bezos bought it.

Oh are your fake "article" is just that - FAKE. You clearly made it up to express your own position because clicking it takes you to nothing.

AllSides Media Bias Chart

The AllSides Media Bias Chart is an easy way for you to identify political bias in the news so you can be better equipped to navigate our increasingly polarized media landscape.

www.allsides.com

Makes me think it's about as far right as The Atlantic is Left, so no, it's further over than NYT (news) and equal to their opinion pages. I'd pick BBC for less biased news. It's pretty obvious just reading the Daily Mail that they're pretty partisan and mid to the right - about as far as any mainstream sources currently. The Post also rates less left than the Daily Mail is right, but TBH their overall reporting has gone downhill since Bezos started really applying pressure in 2024. Sadly, it's harder and harder to find decent fact based reporting - but certainly Reuters and the more "boring" framing tends to be much better than the sensationalist ones like the Mail or the Post ( and the post is to me pretty obviously less bad than the Mail - just read the "panic" in almost every Daily Mail headline shared on TUG).

 

[easyrider]

What we were told at Alamo and Thrifty and other bigger companies is that damage that looks like a baseball hit the car with a dent, those are the ones they want you to notice, when you are checking out the car before you drive away. In other words, you need more of a dent than a mere scratch or small indent in the body of the car. Windshield damage is what we watch for most of the time, when we rent any car.

I'm in the habit of taking a video of the car before I leave. I point at anything , even tire wear. So far it's saved us twice. Actually, it saved our Amex card twice as that's the insurance we use for car rental.

I did return a new Avis car with a golf ball dent. I thought for sure they were going to charge our card for the damage as they did notice it. They didn't charge us anything.

Bill

 

[Carolinian]

.

.
LOL
The Daily Orwellian !
.
View attachment 109543

That explains it. Wikipedia has been denounced by its own co-founder as "badly biased to the left". Maybe you should look to credible sources. Wikipedia is NOT one. Heck, look at the editting wars that have gone on there over timeshare, with the "exit companies" trying to push their views. Here is how the process at Wikipedia works: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wikipropaganda-on-global-warming/

 

[Carolinian]

AllSides Media Bias Chart

The AllSides Media Bias Chart is an easy way for you to identify political bias in the news so you can be better equipped to navigate our increasingly polarized media landscape.

www.allsides.com

Makes me think it's about as far right as The Atlantic is Left, so no, it's further over than NYT (news) and equal to their opinion pages. I'd pick BBC for less biased news. It's pretty obvious just reading the Daily Mail that they're pretty partisan and mid to the right - about as far as any mainstream sources currently. The Post also rates less left than the Daily Mail is right, but TBH their overall reporting has gone downhill since Bezos started really applying pressure in 2024. Sadly, it's harder and harder to find decent fact based reporting - but certainly Reuters and the more "boring" framing tends to be much better than the sensationalist ones like the Mail or the Post ( and the post is to me pretty obviously less bad than the Mail - just read the "panic" in almost every Daily Mail headline shared on TUG).

Like most self styled "fact checkers" your "bias chart" is itself quite biased.

 

[Carolinian]

When we were in the Dublin area several years ago we had to pick up a friend at the Airport. When we got to the Timeshare (Fitzpatrick Family Castle) the Front Desk called the correct Government Office and paid our Toll from the Airport to Dublin with our Credit Card. On the day we flew out of Dublin they told us where in the Airport the Toll Office was located so we could pay our Toll to the Airport before we flew out. Loved the fact that there was a USA Customs and Border Control Office inside the Dublin Airport.

One would hope the rental car companies should inform their customers, but they seem to prefer to profit off of the situation.

 

[jp10558]

Like most self styled "fact checkers" your "bias chart" is itself quite biased.

So you don't think it's possible to identify "extreme" content by patters of phrasing and framing?

https://app.mindstudio.ai/agents/remove-bias-8d066f40

While I don't know about the app, I think it's pretty easy to see that a site that regularly would benefit from

Removes loaded language - Strips out emotional framing and exaggerated claims.

Eliminates unsupported assertions - Ensures all statements are backed by evidence.

Balances biased perspectives - Presents multiple viewpoints for a clearer picture.

Preserves factual accuracy - Keeps all essential details and context intact.

Maintains the original story structure - Delivers a readable, professional rewrite.

Professional Standards for Clear, Unbiased News​

AP Style guidelines - Ensures journalistic integrity.

Neutral, precise language - Prevents manipulation through word choice.

Evidence-based reporting - Focuses on verifiable facts.

Balanced viewpoints - Reduces ideological bias in storytelling.

Clear attribution - Ensures sources are properly credited.

would be a less useful source for information than sites that need less of that.

 

[Carolinian]

So you don't think it's possible to identify "extreme" content by patters of phrasing and framing?

https://app.mindstudio.ai/agents/remove-bias-8d066f40

While I don't know about the app, I think it's pretty easy to see that a site that regularly would benefit from

would be a less useful source for information than sites that need less of that.

Here is a humorous video that sums up the self-styled "fact checkers" most of whom have their own built in bias: