In reply to gofastbobby:
Since neither one of us was there, I guess we'll just have to let the courts decide on that one, huh?
I'm OK with that.
I generally try to not pass judgement on things based on media accounts.
It is NOT a question of whether they knew of a problem. All cars have problems. It is a question of whether they are liable for deaths they could have foreseen.
I am less concerned about the ignition failures than I am about the (possible) correlation with the airbag malfunctions.
The airbags should not have been shut down instantly, whether or not the car was running or the keey sfell out.
slantvaliant wrote: Just a couple of observations: The steering has electric assist, not conventional hydraulics. The power steering in mine failed a couple of times on one trip, which turned out to be the motor. No harm done, no lock up, just a sudden lack of assist. I suppose that could contribute to a crash, but I think it'd be more likely in a low-speed situation than at highway speeds. Locking the steering is a lot more serious. The ignition switch also has an interlock with the shifter (automatic versions), to prevent removing the key while in gear. Unfortunately, a known fault in the console sometimes makes the ignition switch refuse to give up the key no matter what gear the shifter is in. There's an awkward work-around that requires probing blindly into the steering column with a long, skinny finger to find and press a small button. I haven't had any issue with the switch turning itself off. Not saying it couldn't happen. I do have a fair number of keys on the keyring, and I do drive on some rough roads and parking lots. Ever been in the oil field? If the key ring has a tendency to bounce around turn the key to "OFF" and lock the steering, wouldn't a reshaped key with a round hole instead of a slot reduce the leverage and therefore be an improvement? Chevy and other companies have contributed to the heavy key ring situation themselves. Using the key to unlock the door will result in the alarm sounding when the door is opened. So, one has to use the fob to unlock the door. Most drivers will keep the key and fob on the same key ring. Now, if one has more than one car, and, say, a home and maybe an office that also use keys ... I haven't given up on the HHR, but I'm hoping a pickup becomes available soon ...
My Ion wasn't initially included in the electric steering recall, and it was doing every symptom. Power steering would shut off at random. No issues, then again, power assist does NOTHING for you once the vehicle is up to speed.
patgizz wrote:Gearheadotaku wrote: From what I've read several of the accidents involved unbelted, intoxicated drivers leaving the road at high speeds.in which the car did us a service by removing them from the roads permanently so they wouldn't kill any of us with their drunk driving?
This. Most of those cars that have been pictured were far more mangled than would be survivable anyways. 40mph crash my ass. 
Datsun1500 wrote: In reply to foxtrapper: I agree that some protections are good. If the medicines are what they say they are, but I take the whole bottle, who is at fault? It is "reasonably foreseeable" that someone will have a car key, remote, and maybe 2 other keys on the key chain, that's not what is causing them to wear out, it's the ones with a bunch of stuff on the keyring.
You make a chair to sell. Lots of other people make chairs, and you want to be part of the chair making and selling world.
Your chair is delicate. Too delicate actually. It won't hold big people. It will break under them. It even breaks under normal sized people if they flop into it. You didn't label it as delicate, you simply sold it as a chair.
You quietly redesign your chair. Making it stronger. Now the chair can hold big people, and there is no more problem with regular people flopping into it. You put the new and improved chair on the market.
Life is good, people are buying your chairs and enjoying them. Congratulations, you are a successful chair maker.
But, You do nothing about the earlier more delicate chairs that you already sold. You do not replace them with the stronger chair. You do not even let the people know that theirs chairs are actually very delicate. You do not obey the law and report that you had a problem with the early chair being too delicate. Instead, you stay silent and hope no one notices.
That is a problem! Get caught doing that as a chair maker, and you are very likely to get into a lot of trouble. Understandably so.
I find the GM story to be very similar.
GM had a low friction ignition lock, and a high leverage key. It was easily flipped back. Far more easily than the normal cars ignition lock.
GM redesigned it for more friction. Making it behave like a normal cars ignition lock. Fine.
But they did nothing about the earlier low friction high leverage ignition locks that were already out there. That is the problem.
Had GM simply recalled the cars and replaced the locks with the redesigned ones, there would be no story. It would be just another one of those recalls to fix something.
In reply to foxtrapper:
I get your point.
But we are talking about 12 cases out of 1.7 million cars sold with the switch.
So, I think the parameters are significantly narrower than your example.
SVreX wrote: In reply to foxtrapper: I get your point. But we are talking about 12 cases out of 1.7 million cars sold with the switch. So, I think the parameters are significantly narrower than your example.
12 cases, in 1.7 million cars that are 7+ years old with unknown service/maintenance history. So there's a .00007% (1 in 141,666.67) chance of this happening to your car.
Let's put that into perspective:
Odds of getting hit by lightening: .03% (1 in 3000)
Getting injured by a toilet: .001% (1 in 10,000)
Getting hit by an asteroid or comet: .03% to .0004% ( 1 in 3,000 to 1 in 250,000)
Getting murdered in the US: .0005% (1 in 19000)
So, this isn't exactly a huge spread epidemic here. In fact, it almost looks pathetic when you actually run the numbers. 12 cars with faulty switches in 1.7 million cars made. Hell, that's better than the norm for just about any automaker isn't it?
There have not been twelve cases of failure, there have been twelve deaths because of this failure.
There have been documented discussions about this issue at GM since 2004...
This is also not the first time they've been in court because of this same failure.
I see we have an insider here that has been inside the GM corporate circle this entire time. Nice to know.
SVreX wrote: In reply to foxtrapper: I get your point. But we are talking about 12 cases out of 1.7 million cars sold with the switch. So, I think the parameters are significantly narrower than your example.
GM redesigned that lock with increased friction for a reason, not whim. It's not simply 12 cases that ever happened, it's 12 cases that have gotten the most notoriety.
I'm not trying to go all Ralph Nader here, nor am I anti GM. Just that I think they handled it quite poorly, and are now reaping the rewards of their bungling.
It's an odd event imo, since GM isn't particularly bad at recalling cars to fix problems. Why they decided to handle this one the way they did, I've no idea. Seriously doubt they are happy with their decision now.
Anyone notice this is getting all the interest but Toyota paying billions in fines is getting ignored?
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2014/03/19/toyota-settlement-unintended-acceleration/6595345/
Just sayin'....
Bobzilla wrote: I see we have an insider here that has been inside the GM corporate circle this entire time. Nice to know.
...
As early as 2004, two GM engineers involved in the Cobalt said there had been discussions about how the model’s engines could cut out when the keys were bumped, according to documents and depositions gathered in a lawsuit over a 2010 crash that killed a Georgia pediatric nurse.
http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2014/03/16/323449.htm
In reply to gofastbobby:
Discussions of the potential of the engine cutting off (by engineers PRIOR to the release of the vehicles) has very little to do with the keys falling out, and absolutely nothing to do with the airbags not deploying. Therefore, it really doesn't have much to do with the deaths.
As I said earlier, you are going to have to wait for the courts to decide, just like the rest of us (who are not GM insiders).
If an engineer identified an issue that could be life threatening prior to the release if the vehicle, which only cost a dollar or two to fix, do you honestly believe GM (or anyone) would not have fixed it? Seriously??
I can ALMOST understand not implementing a recall once the cars have hit the market, but now you are suggesting they knew in the development stage.
I don't buy it.
In reply to foxtrapper:
There is allegedly a TSB that was issued for those complaining about ignition cylinders. There was a plastic insert that filled in the long opening of the key available IIRC.
That is a proper line of corrective action IMHO, and TSB's are issued all the time. We don't know exacting figures on any of this info. People could have come in, complained, but then refused to have anything done due to cost, people could have just delt with the issue and never complained, people could have complained and gotten the TSB insert and never had another problem, etc.....WE DON'T KNOW.
All we do know right now is what news agencies/GM/lawyers want us to know. Hence Datsun's response of letting the courts decide(granted that one is pretty skewed already)
I'm not bothering to read through 4 pages but as a 05 cobalt SS owner with 134,000 miles on it I have had it shut off twice. 1st time was in 2009 in a drive way that had a big steep drop to the street. At that time I had a bunch of keys on the ring so all but the house key and the alarm fob came off. The last time it happened I only had the fob and house key I was flying down a back road doing Aprox 60mph and hit a HUGE I mean HUGE pot hole big and deep enough to damage both side walls of the tire. soon as I felt the lack of power and the dash lights I flip it back to run and kept on going didn't even need to clutch. I only noted the golf balls in the sidewalls until the next day. They keep dumbing down America... I mean how many things do you need in a car today due to people who don't really know there cars? We run out of gas so we have a gas gauge...people still run out so we add a yellow light with a gas pump....again people run out so now they add a dinging bell...they still run out so they put a display that blinks how many miles are left... Don't even get me started in TPMS, anti lock brakes etc.
SVreX wrote: In reply to gofastbobby: Discussions of the potential of the engine cutting off (by engineers PRIOR to the release of the vehicles) has very little to do with the keys falling out, and absolutely nothing to do with the airbags not deploying. Therefore, it really doesn't have much to do with the deaths. As I said earlier, you are going to have to wait for the courts to decide, just like the rest of us (who are not GM insiders). If an engineer identified an issue that could be life threatening prior to the release if the vehicle, which only cost a dollar or two to fix, do you honestly believe GM (or anyone) would not have fixed it? Seriously?? I can ALMOST understand not implementing a recall once the cars have hit the market, but now you are suggesting they knew in the development stage. I don't buy it.
I've given up on this one. Someone has an axe to grind with GM for whatever personal reasons and no amount of information will change that. C'est la vie
In reply to SVreX:
Actually SVreX, GM might have actually done that math and actually decided not to have fixed it, for far less than a $1 a fix, and it is possible that that's absolutely OK. It all depends on what the fix is, how many cars, what are the chances of failure and what is the failure, and what are the chances that not fixing it will cause harm, and what harm. If there's a $1 fix to 20 million cars that will prevent 1 death in a one in a trillion chance that that part will fail and cause that death, it is entirely reasonable to argue that there is no legal, business or moral justification to spend $20 million dollars just on the part alone to try to prevent a one in a trillion chance one person will die because of the part failure. Until a court or other fact-finding investigation occurs, we have really no idea what the actual equation is or was. I'm certainly not relying on any news outlet to inform at this stage. I'll say I don't like how it looks for GM at this point, but we really don't know.
So on average, how many keys or how much weight over how many hours/miles can an ignition be expected to bear?
Is this question as stupid as it sounds?
By that logic why should a car be designed to make any impact at all survivable? That's not a strictly required operating condition.
I think the point is that GM seemed to have ignored the problem.
Well it's more convenient to carry your keys on a ring than individual keys in some kind of...bag or something. People like to do this. Car manufacturers know it. Pretty much every other car out there has an ignition that can handle the weight of many keys just fine because the market demands it. As such it is highly unlikely that GM spontaneously decided to make an ignition which could only bear the weight of a single key for a few of their cars.
My new keychain
I'm gonna sue the capitalist creeps, and get me what I deserve.
GameboyRMH wrote: Well it's more convenient to carry your keys on a ring than individual keys in some kind of...bag or something. People like to do this.
Not to be chauvinistic, but all my girlfriends and even my mom is guilty of this. They have huge keyrings simply so they can find the ring in their purses
In reply to GameboyRMH:
Its not a problem isolated to just GM, other cars have had issues with the keys due to(lets just throw the usual suspects out there) WOMEN having massive amounts of keys on a keyring. Heck, a sho I owned in the past had a broken ignition bar due to that. This is why I like mom's new fusion(no "key" for the ignition) but I bet there will now be a rukus about those when they start malfunctioning.
In reply to SVreX:
Congratulations, you win at this thread
I remember Suzuki having this problem with the first gen Grand Vitara/XL-7's. Large amounts of keys would lock the key into the start position once the tumblers were worn enough. Hit the switch to start it, engine catches and starter tries to keep up eating the starter and flyhweel. Honda has had them allow the key to come out with the car running, in gear. The second gen accents would stick easily with wear and lots of keys. the list is pretty long of manufacturers with this same problem.
All this publicity over 12 accidents at the same time Toyota is paying $2B in fines to gov't for their E36 M3ty handling of their issues. Almost seems like we got a media spin-miester at work here. If not, it's an awfully large coinky-dink.
GameboyRMH wrote: Well it's more convenient to carry your keys on a ring than individual keys in some kind of...bag or something. People like to do this. Car manufacturers know it. Pretty much every other car out there has an ignition that can handle the weight of many keys just fine because the market demands it. As such it is highly unlikely that GM spontaneously decided to make an ignition which could only bear the weight of a single key for a few of their cars.
Bolded part entirely not true. You know how most of them are "fixing" this? Keyless ignitions. More and more cars are going push button start that doesn't even require a key in a slot to turn. Why? Because they're tired of dumb people putting 5lbs of E36 M3 swinging this way and that on their ignition locks.
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