In the wake of rampant odometer fraud, The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) wants to impose new requirements for 2021 and beyond regarding the disclosure of a vehicle’s mileage to potential buyers.

For those that don’t already know, odometer fraud is when you roll back an odometer to make it appear as if it has less mileage than it actually does, thus deceiving any potential buyers about the condition of the vehicle. This is a little more difficult to perform on newer vehicles, but is still possible on many older vehicles, which is where the NHTSA’s new requirements come in.

Read: Odometers Rollback Are More Common Than You Think, Could Impact 1.6 Million Vehicles

Here are the new rules:

Beginning January 1st, 2021, you will be required to disclose the amount of miles on a vehicle’s odometer for every transfer of ownership for the first 20 years of the vehicle’s life. This will begin with vehicles from the 2011 Model Year, so Model Year 2010 and older vehicles will still be subject to the previous 10-year disclosure requirements, and as such, are exempt from extended Federal odometer disclosure requirements.

It won’t be for another 20 years until Model Year 2011 or newer vehicles will be exempt from the odometer rules, so to comply with Federal law, anyone transferring ownership of a Model Year 2011 or newer vehicle will be required to provide a disclosure of the vehicle’s mileage to its new owner.

To summarize, Model Year 2010 and older vehicles will continue to be exempt from federal odometer disclosure requirements, and sellers of Model Year 2011 vehicles must continue to disclose odometer readings until 2031, and longer if the vehicle is newer.

The final ruling for these requirements took place all the way back in September of 2019, which goes to show how long it takes for these types of preventative regulations to take effect.

The average age of vehicles is older than ever, and the NHTSA felt they needed to take action in order to prevent a further increase in an already bad odometer fraud problem.

See Also: Average Age Of Vehicles In The U.S. Increases To 11.9 Years, And It Could Get Worse With COVID

The video below shares some useful tips on how to avoid odometer fraud.

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What do you think of the new requirements, will they help solve the issue?