If your ignition suddenly cuts out on a highway, turn, intersection etc. it would be very bad and potentially fatal, as 12 people dead attests to.
So the steering wheel locked up because the engine cut off? Must be due to the push-button ignition, the old manual key ignition switches won’t lock up if fully engaged, and it has to be in order for the engine to be running.
The bigger problem for GM is that they've known about this problem since at least 2001. It's been implicated in the deaths of at least 300 people in accidents where the front airbags did not deploy in smaller GM cars. On March 12, 2014, GM disclosed documents showing it knew about the defect, but thought they had fixed it. GM kept using the switch.
On June 19, 2005, the New York Times reported that Chevrolet dealers were telling Cobalt owners to shed items from heavy key rings so they wouldn’t bump the ignition into the off position. GM kept using the switch.
A Georgia attorney named Lance Cooper sued GM in a case involving the death of two nurses in a Cobalt, and received more than 30,000 pages of GM documents in discovery.
The documents showed that as early as 2004, GM engineers had discussed that simply bumping the keys with your knee could shut off the ignition. GM kept using the switch.
GM settled the Cobalt case for an undisclosed amount in 2013.
Over the years, GM has recalled the Saturn Ion, the Cobalt, the Pontiac G5, and a couple of other models because of problems with . . . the same ignition switch.