Posted on 07/21/2008 9:01:18 AM PDT by Abathar
MILWAUKEE -- Air bags were designed to save lives, not put them in danger. So imagine driving on a freeway or crowded city street and your air bag deploys unexpectedly.
When Fond du Lac, Wis., was drenched in heavy rain last month, Lynda Schultz's 1997 Chevrolet Cavalier became trapped in a heavily flooded parking lot.
"I'm sure the floorboards were soaked because the floodwaters rose," Schultz said.
Weeks earlier, heavy rains had leaked into Tom Kleist's 1996 Pontiac Grand Am.
"I just went in my car and the floor had water all over it," Kleist said.
Both drivers eventually dried out their cars and hit the road, only to be stunned by what was about to happen.
"I got home, pulled into my driveway, put it in park and the air bag deployed in my face," Schultz said.
Kleist, not coincidentally, experienced a very similar situation.
"About five minutes after I got off the freeway, the air bag just blew up right in my face," Kleist said.
Both airbags deployed without any warning, stunning both drivers.
(snip)
The next day, the cause of the air bag explosion became clear when she received a warning letter from General Motors.
"The letter said, 'should your car ever become wet, the floorboards get soaked, don't drive your car, disconnect the battery and have it towed to a Chevrolet dealership,'" Schultz said.
(snip)
A General Motors spokesperson confirmed the air bag problem for certain 1996 and 1997 vehicles. This problem affects the 1996 and 1997 Chevy Cavalier, Pontiac Grand Am, Pontiac Sunfire, Buick Skylark and Oldsmobile Achieva.
(Excerpt) Read more at theindychannel.com ...
Seems easy to fix, don’t let your car get flooded.
I live in the Midwest. I don’t have a car to worry about on the list, but a crap load of people around here drove through flood waters that do.
“I live in the Midwest. I don’t have a car to worry about on the list, but a crap load of people around here drove through flood waters that do.”
I grew up in the mid west but now live in Sunny Florida. We happen to have our own flooding problems now and again. Don’t drive through flood waters. Especially ones that are deep enough to soak the floor boards. If you do that and don’t expect problems you are seriously naive.
I guess GM is trying to keep up with Microsoft...
“If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty-five dollar cars that got 1,000 miles per gallon.”
Recently General Motors addressed this comment by releasing the statement: “Yes, but would you want your car to crash twice a day?”
A year ago I traded in a 2000 Chevy Silverado pickup. For two years I drove without a working fuel gauge. the dealership told me that I needed a new sender, and parts and labor was around $500.00.
Shortly after getting rid of the truck, I found that there was a recall sent out to the dealers on replacing a 60 cent connector. But I never received anything, since it wasn’t considered a safety concern, like the tailgate cables that Chevy hounded me to get replaced before they borke.
Replaced that truck with a Nissan Titan. My daily driver is a 69 VW, because of the better gas mileage.
This would be a problem for ANY vehicle not specifically engineered to handle high water, like, presumably, a Jeep or Land Rover. It is not a "GM" problem. The vast majority of vehicles are just not engineered to resist flooding.
(I am a quality engineer for a plant that supplies airbag crash modules, though we don't supply GM with ACU's.)
I had a 2000 Silverado. I liked it, all except for the brakes went out one day.
I was on the Interstate in a construction zone, and about 3 or 4 cars came off the on ramp and jumped the separator lines in front of the guy in front of me. I hit the brakes, started to slow real fast, then...the pedal went right to the floor!
Well, luckily for me I hit an older Suburban. All I did was scratch the chrome on his hitch. LOL
But, the when I told the cop my story, he looked at me like I just ate a frog. Then, he reaches in and release the hood, and him and I pried it open only to find that the cap had come off of the reservoir and fluid had sprayed all over the engine compartment. The cop now believed me and didn’t even write an accident report or a ticket.
Even when the cap comes off, it shouldn’t do this. There is a valve that is supposed to prevent it from back flushing like that. GM denied any responsibility, so I had it fixed, and traded it in.
About two months later I received a notice that my truck was in the VIN range of a brake reservoir safety campaign.
Go figure.
My biggest complaint that caused the trade-in of the Silverado was that the 4.3 liter V-6 in the 2000 truck didn’t match very well with the 2005 23 foot boat I bought.
The Titan pulls it effortlessly.
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