During 2014, General Motors blew through the single-year records for automotive recalls by wide margins. With recalls for defective airbags that may explode, random stalling, excessive corrosion, power steering failure, headlamp failures, and a whole host of other problems, one issue in particular stands out: ignition switches that turn themselves off. If you’re wondering why this is a serious issue, read on.
Why is this a problem?
Cars are often sold with some issues. It is fairly common for a manufacturer to issue a recall in an abundance of caution for something like incorrect recommended tire pressures printed in the owner’s manual or cracking of the exhaust hangars in extreme cold temperatures. This, however, is something very different. The recall affecting the ignition switches in the Chevrolet Cobalts. Saturn Ions, and Pontiac G5s among others is an imminent safety concern.
What is the safety concern?
The ignition switches in a number of these GM models do not have a strong enough spring in them so that if they are accidentally jostled or have keys with some weight attached to them (read: any other keys at all), the switches can turn themselves (and therefore the cars) off.
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Seth Mariscal "Arranca" July 20, 2008 via Flickr
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So what’s the problem with that?
If the affected cars turn off, some very critical functions of the vehicle no longer work such as the airbags, the power steering, the power brakes, and stability control. If this occurs at a high speed, this can lead to a rapid change in the control situation of a vehicle and send it dangerously out of control.
So GM is fixing it, right?
Well that’s complicated. GM is currently fixing the problem for free at your dealer. However, parts may not be available for your vehicle for as long as a year, perhaps more, as the suppliers are extremely backordered trying to supply the roughly 16.3 million vehicles that have been recalled for this. GM has also created a compensation fund managed by attorney Kenneth Feinberg to reimburse anyone injured by the defective vehicles. All of this would, however, never have been necessary if GM had just dealt with this when they first discovered it.
What?! You’re saying GM has known about this for a long time?
Disappointingly, that is correct. GM has known there might be an issue since the vehicles in question were in early design stages in 1999 as the ignition switch became a notorious engineering problem during development. GM has even been accused of “bullying” a supplier into building a substandard part. Furthermore, there is evidence that engineers made changes to the ignition switch parts in 2005; evidence that they knew about the problems even then and did not issue a recall. There were numerous reports from automotive journalists and even company testers during the initial testing and release period; they were not handled in a coordinated manner and were assigned very low importance levels. Finally, documents from Delphi Mechatronics (the supplier of the ignition switch components) indicated that executives at General Motors placed orders for 500,000 new ignition switches more than a month before the recall was announced to the public.
Wait a minute, people were injured? Or killed?
People were killed;
General Motors recognizes 87 deaths due to the recall. However, this number is highly disputed;
Reuters has posited that the death toll is at least 74 and later revised that toll to over 100. All of these numbers are significantly higher than the 13 deaths that GM initially acknowledged.
However, all of these numbers are likely low as they only include deaths from crashes where the front airbags failed. Deaths from other crashes where power steering failure or power brake failure resulted in a car becoming out of control and crashing, do not contribute to either the Reuters or the General Motors tallies.
399 total claims have been issued by Feinberg's reimbursement fund equating to somewhere over 300 injury claims being accepted. Also important to note is that approximately 90% of claims that General Motors received were not accepted and therefore received not restitution.
Who was in charge of this?
There are many people who have some blame for this disaster but as can be expected, there is always a scapegoat. His name is Ray DeGiorgio. According to the widely read automotive magazine Car and Driver (2014), Ray DeGiorgio, the engineer most directly responsible for the GM Ignition Switch Crisis, recently stated:
“It’s very emotional, ... I’m getting very emotional about it right now.” Yet at the same time he was defensive and defiant. “All I can say is that I did my job, … I didn’t lie, cheat, or steal. I did my job the best I could.”
These were his first words to the press since he was fired from General Motors by CEO Mary Barra along with 14 other employees implicated in the ignition switch fiasco.
Others, however, tend to have a much more scathing estimation of DeGirogio’s performance of his job. In her academic look at the staggering recalls of 2014 (Still) “Unsafe at any Speed” (2015) published in the Harvard Law & Policy Review, Rena Steizor describes DeGirogio as:
“...a GM engineer ..., who was responsible for switch design in the Cobalt, [who] had sufficient advance notice of this problem prior to production of the car to have insisted on a re-design. In fact, [he] signed an e-mail to a colleague with the ostensibly wry appellation "Ray (tired of the switch from hell) DeGiorgio." But he said nothing as the new car went into production probably because of internal pressure not to interfere with its 2004 launch date.”
Steizor incisively pinpoints the issue. Perhaps DeGiorgio didn’t see himself as having done anything wrong due to a culture of acceptance at General Motors at the time. But that is precisely the problem. Though the issue was surely not solely DeGiorgio’s fault, he was a primary participant in an engineering culture where okay was in fact good enough.
So are they’re being fined or something, right?
General Motors is receiving heavy fines. Reform in what can be paid out in criminal settlements, also known as tort reform, however, has limited fines paid to the government at $35 million per recall which has angered many. Mary Barra, the recently appointed CEO of General Motors, was called to testify before the Congressional Sub-Committee on Consumer Protection. Though she displayed some contrition as demonstrated by reporting by CNN (2014):
"Numerous individuals did not accept any responsibility to drive our organization to understand what was truly happening. The report highlights a company that operated in silos, with a number of individuals seemingly looking for reasons not to act, instead of finding ways to protect our customers."
In another quote from CNN (2014), Barra was considerably more defensive defending the company against allegations that other news channels have made:
"The Valukas report (concluded) that there was no conspiracy found and there was no employee that made a trade off between safety and cost."
Based on this testimony, Congress desperately tried to improve the process of automotive recalls by deliberating acts such as the RECALL Act as well as a number of others including some that raised possible fines on automakers who withhold recall information from the government.
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US Government "NTSB Logo" via Wikipedia
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Shouldn’t the government protect us from this?
Yes, that is most definitely the case. The National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration (the NHTSA) is the agency responsible for investigating automotive safety in the United States. Grossly underfunded according to a recent scathing Congressional report, the agency did not investigate problems and complaints soon enough and well. Many observers blame this on regulatory capture and the deep impact of lobbying at the agency as many people who work there have held high ranking positions within the auto industry itself. Only after too many years and too many deaths did an investigation finally occur.
What’s the takeaway?
Automotive recalls can be critically important. Therefore, if the manufacturer of your car sends you a recall notice, it is very important that you bring your vehicle to the nearest dealer as soon as possible. If you want to be more proactive, the NHTSA has a very useful VIN check service on their website that will display any recalls on your car.
