I don’t think it’s all as conspiratorial as the reporters wish to think. GM does, and has done, thousands of recalls over the years, and they’ve probably got a few dozen open recall projects going at any one time. It’s nothing new to them and they’ve done them for issues larger and smaller than this ignition switch. They have whole departments full of people that this is all they do. They do, also... make a huge priority out of getting well out in front of any recall that has even the tiniest safety implications.
Especially for recall issues as seemingly cheap and easy as a swapped out ignition switch. I don’t work for GM but I’ve been in those meetings with the people who make decisions like this— and everybody always has them bassackward. They really don’t care all that much how much a recall costs. What they care about is safety and the reputation of the company. A few million here and there doesn’t mean anything if the public starts to lose faith in GM as a safe brand. That really is how they think.
I think you are wrong in this case. People died because the vehicles kept having unexpected shutoffs. The computers showed this. GM went out of its way to not acknowledge the cause, they had the part changed, and did not show on the replacement that it was different. They could have kept the exact number, changed the number, or added an “a” to show that it was different.
They were hiding it and you know it.
I am glad your life experience is different. I have worked for the government and major companies and my experience is that management cares not who dies especially if it impacts this years bonus.
Well, it sure sounds conspiratorial to me, and I am an engineer from way back, where one of the major rules of the game was that different items had different part numbers, even if it was a drop-in replacement.
One of the things to note is that GM settled out of court in this particular case. This keeps other peopler from using the results of the engineer's work. There are many possible reasons for this, all involving economics, but I remember back when every time it looked like a trial was going to end up demonstrating legally that cigarettes really did cause cancer, the tobacco companies would quickly settle it, so that every new plaintiff had to go through that proof all over again starting a zero.
Your contention vs. mine would easily be resolved in discovery, when the plaintiffs would depose a GM engineer about these part numbers being the same, he would say it was common for drop-in replacements, and the the plaintiffs attorney would ask him for a list of all instances like this that he knew of. I believe that GM would never allow such a list to become public, because there would only be two possible outcomes: (1) it wasn't really very common,or (2) it happened all the time and the list would give other plaintiffs a great start on their defects.
A second reason to settle would be that if there are 13 deaths, how many other accidents have there been? Lots and lots of property damage, which insurance companies would love to take a crack at, and then hundreds of injuries, some permanent, some disabling, and some permanently disfiguring. The liability is enormous if the real truth comes out.
As far as the idea that being bumped wasn't an "expected" stress in the normal course of use, this is complete BS. A car is a confined space, with kids, pets, all sorts of stuff that can be foreseen happening in there. I have seen women with 20+ keys, 3 charm bracelets, 2 or 3 plastic key fobs and who-knows-what else hanging from their keys. Men do this less because it doesn't fit in a pants pocket. I have never seen any car company warn against excessive ballast on a key chain.
GM new this was going to happen.