NY1 investigation, which revealed that cars with potentially deadly defects were being sold by the city and being driven by city employees, has prompted a new bill in the City Council.

City Councilman Ritchie Torres, the chairman of the oversight committee, has drafted legislation to protect drivers buying cars at city auctions. It would require the city sheriff's office to disclose if a car being auctioned is covered by a recall. That notice would have to be listed on the sheriff's website, and posted on the car. The bill also would require the city to remove any vehicles with an uncorrected recall from its fleet until they're repaired. 

"We know from NY1's reporting, that the city has a practice of using and selling vehicles with defects without disclosing those defects to the general public," said Torres.

The NY1 investigative team went undercover this summer at automobile auctions run by the city. They found more than 100 cars that were the subject of safety recalls.

Car buyers who were shocked to learn these cars had potential defects but did not carry any visible warnings.

"What makes it shocking is that the city of New York is knowingly selling defective vehicles to members of the general public without informing them about the recalls, and that's wrong, and that's something we're going to change," Torres said.

The sheriff’s office said it would update its website that lists cars being sold at auction so buyers can determine if the vehicles were subject to safety recalls.

But we checked and found no evidence the website was changed. 

We didn't stop there. We went back to the auctions undercover, and were thrown out for asking questions.

To find out if any government vehicles had recalls, NY1 filed a Freedom of Information Act request for records on city vehicles.

We ran the vehicle identification numbers for more than 17,000 city vehicles through two independent databases, Carfax and Recall Masters. Of those, 1,958 were flagged as having outstanding safety recalls, safety issues that include exploding Takata airbags, faulty steering wheels that can loosen or, even worse, detach, and cars and SUVs with brakes that can fail without warning.

"This is an accident waiting to happen, literally," said Joe Puelo, President of DC37 Local 938. "We're outraged. We want this to be fixed immediately. No one should be placed in any harm's way."

New York City's Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) is the agency responsible for handling New York City's fleet.