Montana’s Senate Business, Labor and Economic Affairs Committee approved an OEM repair bill Wednesday and moved it to the Senate floor. 

The bill, SB356, keeps insurance companies from disregarding or requesting a repair business to disregard repair instructions from an OEM or safety inspections of collision-damaged automobiles recommended by an original equipment manufacturer. 

Language in the bill notes that the requirements do not restrict the use of alternative repair parts. 

“There does need to be an identified law that states the standards than we must follow to provide a safe and proper repair,” said Paul Flores, Montana Collision Repair Association vice president, during a public hearing Wednesday. “Every accreditation and information provider that deals with us in our industry all point to the reference of OEM repair procedures. That is the gold standard. That is the No. 1 standard as we assist consumers in the state of Montana.” 

Flores said repair professionals reference OEM repair procedures, which tell them what safety inspections need to be performed. 

“I support this because it is necessary for us,” Flores said. “When an accreditation unit says this is what you must follow, that’s a standard.” 

John MacDonald, representing the Alliance for Automotive Innovation (Auto Innovators), said the organization sees OEM repair procedures as a serious public policy issue. 

“Today’s vehicles are considerably more advanced than even vehicles a few years ago,” MacDonald said. “Features including things like automotive lane centering, adaptive cruise control, pedestrian detection and avoidance, and dozens of other — what we call ADAS, or advanced driver assistance systems — are standard in a lot of vehicles.” 

Proper procedures are in place to fix ADAS systems, MacDonald said. He said these procedures are provided to repair shops by automakers. 

“We firmly believe that the OEM procedures should guide the work that’s done,” MacDonald said. 

He said Ford and GM also hoped to participate in the hearing online but couldn’t. He said representatives with each company would provide written statements. 

Flores told Repairer Driven News Thursday that repair shops will use repair procedures to fix vehicles because that is the standard. The bill is to help consumers get the cost covered by insurance companies. 

Aimee Grmoljez, a legal representative for the American Property Casualty Insurance Association, said the bill is “vague.” 

She also said it would increase costs for consumers in the state, which has the third highest repair costs in the U.S.  

Greg Van Horssen, a State Farm representative, agreed with Grmljez, saying that the insurance industry and repairers want to return a vehicle to its pre-accident condition. 

“We have an obligation to return a car to its pre-accident condition, and we try to do that as cheaply and as reasonably as possible,” Van Horssen said. “Any time the cost of repair goes up, so does your insurance premiums, and you know what your insurance premiums are doing in the past five years or so.” 

Van Horssen said the vagueness of the bill would cause prices to increase. 

“We do support and would support and do follow specific technical procedures but not position statements or general checklists or safety inspection checklists because they are general,” Van Horssen said. “They are in the manufacturer’s book. These are not repair procedures. They are suggestions, and we think this bill would require us to follow that, and we believe that it would result in an astronomical increase to your insurance premiums.”

Flores told RDN that insurance companies want to blame the shops and labor rates for increased costs. He said the true increased costs are from advanced technology and ADAS components. 

“Calibration costs are very high right now but in the future that is going to come down. The technology is going to catch up but we just aren’t there yet,” Flores said. 

An Illinois representative is currently reworking a bill that would require insurance companies to cover the costs of OEM procedures. A Mississippi bill also would require insurance companies to pay the prevailing market amount for a vehicle or glass to be repaired pursuant to the OEM repair procedures. 

A bill that requires OEM procedures was reintroduced in New York in January. A similar bill was introduced in Texas during its last legislative session that sought to require OEM collision repairs and replacement parts.

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