NO ONE would blame consumer and religious groups if they took a break after this year's grueling and disappointing fight for payday lending reform.

The result is a new state law that offers modest protections, including a limit of one loan at a time per borrower, but it allows predatory lenders to charge their customers even higher fees - up to $118 on a $500 loan.

Gov. Tim Kaine declined to amend the legislation last week to toughen consumer safeguards. Because a new database for tracking loans will take time to compile, the legislature is unlikely to revisit the issue for at least two years. But advocates who care about people trapped by unscrupulous lenders don't have the luxury of a two-year break. There are other financial predators prowling Virginia who operate with virtually no government oversight.

They're called car title lenders.

Companies like LoanMax offer small emergency loans and require borrowers to turn over the title to their automobile as security. If borrowers cannot pay off the debt, inflated by annual interest rates that typically exceed 200 or even 300 percent, their vehicles are repossessed.

Because car title lenders are unregulated, no one knows how many already exist in Virginia. They have gained a foothold by exploiting a loophole in state credit laws, but their status has never been addressed by the legislature.

States like Oregon, Florida, New Hampshire and Kentucky have found it easier to pass strict interest rate limits or total bans on title lenders than on their cousins, the payday lenders.

But car title lenders have learned from those losses and have been aggressively defending their interests in Virginia. Last year, car title and payday lenders spent a combined $552,000 on campaign contributions, according to the Virginia Public Access Project. The largest donor, LoanMax, gave nearly $186,000, with the bulk going to Democratic legislators.

That spells a tough fight for anyone who takes on car title lenders next year, but there are two reasons why consumer and religious advocacy groups might succeed.

First, the abuses by car title lenders are easier to understand than the complex interest rate schemes used by payday lenders. Car title lenders charge triple-digit interest rates even though they hold title to vehicles typically valued at three times the amount of the loan.

When a borrower can't repay, the lender repossesses one of his most precious possessions: the car the borrower uses to get to work, school, doctor's appointments and the grocery store. An analysis of car title loans in Tennessee concluded that at least 12 percent of all transactions ended in repossession, according to the Consumer Federation of America.

Second, Virginia lawmakers have never given their blessing for car title lenders to operate in the state. Their misguided efforts to legitimize payday lenders in 2002 sparked an industry explosion. Legislators' efforts to back away from their original deal proved to be both embarrassing and politically difficult because they had already allowed 82 companies to open up 803 offices across the commonwealth.

Lawmakers are anxious not to replay that debacle with car title lenders, and that creates an opportunity for the growing movement to force real changes in the commonwealth's lax consumer laws. This is not the time for nursing regrets. Virginia has a second chance to get it right.