Miss one car payment? You can lose your vehicle in Colorado. A fight is on to change that at the State Capitol

The number of people defaulting on auto loans has surged to the highest level in 15 years. An estimated 3 million vehicles were repossessed last year.

While the increase is due in part to the rising cost of living, Duffi Frazier says, in Colorado, it's also too easy for lenders to seize a vehicle.

She says she was on I-25, rushing her son to the hospital, when the dealership she'd bought her car from remotely disabled the vehicle.

"I lost complete control of everything. The steering wheel locked. I couldn't turn the hazards on. And we were right in the middle of traffic. It was really scary," she said.

Her fear turned to fury when she learned the dealership had put their lives in danger due to a missed car payment.

Under Colorado law, a lender can repossess a vehicle after one missed payment.

"You get sick, you miss one car payment, you could then lose your car. If you lose your car, you could then lose your job," said state Rep. Javier Mabrey.

Mabrey has introduced a bill that would bar dealerships from disabling a vehicle to repossess it, give owners 34 days instead of 20 days to make a missed payment before their car is repossessed, and give them 48 days to settle their debt and reasonable fees after their car is repossessed. Violations would be a deceptive trade practice, punishable by up to triple the damages.

Car dealerships, banks and credit unions oppose the bill.

"They say, 'Oh, well we work with people. We already do this.' And to that I've said 'What's wrong with codifying your best practices, then?'" said Mabrey.

Matthew Groves with the Colorado Auto Dealers Association says the bill puts dealers and lenders on the hook for everything from towing and storage to unpaid interest.

"They're not allowed to withhold any unreasonable fees. Without having definition to unreasonable they really don't know what is okay and what's not. They're going to have to learn that through years of lawsuits," Groves said.

Frazier says something needs to change.

"If they would have just given me a few days to help my son? But because of the way they handled it, they could have killed us," she said.

The bill also allows buyers of used cars to return them within 3 days for a refund, and it forbids dealerships from charging for unreasonable excess mileage or repairs.

Groves says unwinding a purchase is harder than it sounds.

"There's a lender involved, there's the warranty companies involved, there's the DMV," he said.

The bill goes before the House Committee on Business Affairs & Labor on Thursday afternoon. Mabrey says, right now he doesn't have the votes to pass it.

"My colleagues are going to need to decide are they more concerned with the people who might benefit from two extra weeks or do they believe the banks, credit unions and auto dealers who say that alone is going to put them out of business when the banks, credit unions and auto dealers are telling us they hardly ever repossess cars anyway. So, which one is it?" he said.