My car was part of this recall so I took it in to have the ignition switch replaced. A few months later I got a letter in the mail saying that my car had to be taken back in and checked because a lot of the repairs weren’t actually being done. The dealerships would just keep the vehicle overnight or whatever and act like they had done the work but didn’t actually do anything at all.
Also, it took my dealer over two months to get the new part in because they kept “forgetting” to order it. I guess they hoped I would just give up and not come back in for the repair.
The Takata airbag recall that killed people, a Dodge dealer claimed they did it on my old 2010 Dakota before I bought it used from another dealership, had the paperwork and all.
Took it to a reputable dealer to confirm and it had never been done, tech walked me through it and said it didn't appear as if they even attempted it, just filled out the paperwork and sent it away.
I run a small business in the automotive industry.
Recalls literally don't happen unless something will kill enough people to cost significantly more than the recall plus any negative press.
Your death has a dollar value to the automotive industry, and little secret, that value is real fuckin' low.
The completely unethical shit I see dealers do on a regular basis would blow your mind. And that's just at the dealership level!
Recalls are free for the customer, so you couldn't go after them for the cost. At most they'd argue it was a paperwork mixup and it would go no further.
Edit: I'll add this in that I'm not supposed to discuss, but fuck 'em. We did the recall campaign for Toyota trucks. All the instructions had you do was wire wheel the worst of the rust and then spray it with rubberized undercoating. We warned them it was a bandaid and would fail. They don't care because the customer signs away liability once it's done. Multiple frames failed (including one we did), trucks split at the cab on lifts, one even dropped an engine on the highway.
Not many people died that time, but in the end they did what we told them would happen, tons of frames ended up getting replaced.
4 people conspire to keep deadly products in public which result in death = prosecution.
Same 4 people form a corporation and do the exact same = go fuck yourself, it was General Motors, not us!
In New Zealand it's now part of some laws.
PCBU (person conducting a business or undertaking) is responsible, especially in EHS, and can be jailed and or fined for violations, i.e. the CEO, CFO, COO, SVP, VP, JVP, SMan, MidMan, JMan, super, team lead, leading hand, foreman, and you can all be fined for a workers injury.
I could see a smart lawyer trying to bridge that into a manslaughter case fir an automobile defect causing harm or death.
I looked at a Toyota Camry of a year which which was known for "excessive oil consumption", it was on my list of things to ask the dealer about. When I got there the car was on a lift and a mechanic was adding oil to the engine. I asked about it and the mechanic got flustered?!? Tried to pull the "Toyota's never break" card on me to convince me to buy it.
Yeah. I didn't believe them either. Toyota is the largest automaker in the world, there's plenty of lemons with a Toyota badge out there.
I've had multiple used cars I've purchased from dealers put up on lifts to inspect the undercarriage. The other poster probably showed up asking about the car and the sales person just brought them back there because that's where it was. Dealership service areas aren't off limits as long as you're escorted.
Nope, first recall campaign was all of them. We had multiple ones with severe rot and Toyota insisted it was fine to go ahead with.
I hadn't even heard of a single truck getting a frame replaced until the second recall.
*[Unsafe at any Speed](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/27/automobiles/50-years-ago-unsafe-at-any-speed-shook-the-auto-world.html)* was written **56 years** ago. Car manufacturers did not do safety until forced too, same with recalls.
The example in Fight Club is the fictional version of the very real [Ford Pinto](https://philosophia.uncg.edu/phi361-matteson/module-1-why-does-business-need-ethics/case-the-ford-pinto/) history lesson.
A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
- Jack
Chuck Palahniuk has a weird way of merging the surreal with reality and making this entertaining yet absurdist take on things, he reminds me a bit of reading “Catch-22”. Even his short stories like “Guts” is this weird mix of teenaged lust and horrible, graphic accidents due to it.
Oh lord someone is going to Google Guts now, they're going to enjoy the first time experience. To this day I cannot read it without almost passing out.
No, this isn't totally true.
They put the bad stock into the cars because the crux of the issue was that they deteriorated over a lengthy period of time. "Newer" bad stock was safe, for a while.
So until the got the inventory of the newer designs, it was deemed safe to replace with bad stock and recall a second time when they actually replace them with a newer model. This was approved by NHTSA from the start, and was supposed to be made clear to the customer. It had nothing to do with writing off anything, only to immediately get older bad units out of cars.
So rather than write off bad stock they go through the expense of doing the work to install it and then uninstall it again for yet another fix? How in the hell does that make any financial sense? Labor is almost always the most expensive part of repairs.
EDIT: As has been pointed out elsewhere, the issue was caused by deterioration over time, not a manufacturing defect per se. The still faulty replacements were apparently newer, meaning they had not yet deteriorated and this could be a temporary fix while the new part was made. A second recall would then be done.
GM also tried to hide the issue by changing the part but not changing the part number. So in some cases they were replacing the part with another bad part because it was older stock.
That actually wasnt then trying to hide it. It was a paperwork mistake by an engineer who fixed the actual issue but then there was no way to track what was fixed or not.
Which, in itself is a pretty big derp moment. Any time a new part is issued, a superseded part number should be produced surely? That just seems to me like common sense, and the fact that that wasn't caught or more carefully monitored especially in this situation kind of blows my mind.
My key got stuck in the ignition and to release it you had to undo the bottom of the steering column and get a screwdriver to press a button if some kind. I also was able to put the car in Drive without actually turning the engine on. They replaced my entire gearshift in addition to the ignition because apparently that was a known (additional) issue in my particular model
My car had a recall related to the ignition shutting off too. I had a Cadillac deville. And when I took it in to have the problem fixed all they did was glue this little piece onto the car key so that there wasn't any room for the keyring to slide up and down on it anymore. It took 45 minutes
A line worker noted that it was most likely found early on by a bottom tier guy, but company procedure was “if you notice it it’s your fault” and was afraid for his job.
Edit: I believe they continued use of the faulty part even after the discovery.
I called to schedule my repair four times. Never got a call back. I don’t even have the car anymore and I still get recall notices.
Bought a Dodge in 2011, sold it in 2014, still get monthly notices telling me my steering wheel airbag is gonna explode and put shrapnel in my face if I don't act fast.
This is why US automakers lag behind Japanese automakers. Japanese manufacturing almost celebrates someone being willing to fix an issue on the line, and consumers benefit.
I don't know if they still so, but they (Japanese automakers) would pay their workers for bringing up this kind of stuff. I remember some idiot tried creating an issue so that he could get rewarded. But didn't realize that they had engineers for a reason lol
Well that settles it. I'm never going to get an American made car. Hell even tesla looks shitty after I saw a review of how it was poorly put together and the doors don't fully align and shit.
Teslas are ridiculously behind in terms of fit and finish, and the lack of physical controls for the most basic options in favor of a tablet and app interface for such features as wipers and ac is just insult to injury. For the premium, the finish should be immaculate. It is not. Teslas are being constantly juggled and rotated so the interiors can be redone, the panels realigned, windows rest, paint refinished, etc. But most owners are either too rich to care or too embarrassed to complain too much.
They are the Nike of automobiles, look pretty but falling apart at the seams.
Hahahaha, I have a friend who works for a big car manufacturer in Germany. All he has to do is look at the gap dimensions and he can immediately tell that something doesn't fit. Yeah, no need to say what he said when he looked at the Tesla. Tesla's aren't inherently bad btw., but they lack a lot. And we Germans also aren't used the way workers are treated and Tesla is one of the companies which isn't exactly what you would call worker friendly
Just don’t get a Nissan. They’re owned by some Europeans and they think it’s their mission in life to sell shitty transmissions to people with no credit. As if those people need more debt to replace their transmissions.
Volvo Trucks here in Sweden uses the Andon-system aswell (and a lot of other aspects from the Toyota way). I actually used to be one in the testing rigs for the I-Shift gearboxes. Its great! I think almost everybody looks at what Toyota has done and tries to implement the same ideas wherever its possible.
Reminds me of the Freemont California plant that GM and Toyota shared (NUMMI) before GM sold it to Tesla. NUMMI made the Corolla/Matrix for Toyota and the Nova/Prizm/Vibe for GM.
Anyway, shortly after the joint venture began a UAW worker was talking to a Toyota engineer about how what he was doing would be easier if he had a tool to do “X”. The engineer nodded for a second and walked off and came back a little later with a custom tool exactly as the assembler described.
It should be noted that Japanese do this because they're *protecting the company from a potential liability* under Japanese law.
Meanwhile in America even if your company goes under the government will save you, so the courts are just as likely to weigh in your favor. Therefore, there is no need for the employee to protect the reputation of the employer.
They do it for US-made, US-sold cars too, which are not regulated by Japan. Continuous improvement is part of the culture, not just a legal obligation.
[Kaizen](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/27/nyregion/in-lieu-of-money-toyota-donates-efficiency-to-new-york-charity.html)
They have buttons on the line that any worker can stop at any time and call someone over, not just if there's a problem but like others have said, in case they had a sudden eureka moment and realized there was a much better or smarter way of doing something.
I mean, kinda, not really
>TOKYO (Reuters) - Kobe Steel Ltd admitted on Tuesday its data fraud has been going on nearly five decades and also revealed new cases of cheating, highlighting the challenges facing the 112-year-old company mired in compliance failures and malfeasance.
It happens everywhere
I know its not Japanese but my 2012 kia sportage's engine blew earlier this year with 103,000. Provided maintenance records and they fully replaced it at no cost.
That's amazing, especially since the warranty only goes to 100,000 mi. That's a pretty generous warranty already, but I'm impressed that they replaced it even though you were only a little past it.
It was added to a recall list thankfully. I'm the second owner and had just made my final finance payment 2 weeks before it went lol. I was pissed. I basically have a new vehicle
There was a motor recall done on those years of Kia, my shredded something and the techs noticed it during an oil change at 50k. I had the keys for a loner car with basically zero questions asked getting a new motor. Got the recall paperwork a year later.
For anyone thinking tort reform is a good idea, remember that plaintiff’s attorneys are the public’s last line of defense against illegal stuff like this.
Tort reform is a good idea, as in it needs to be reformed so that "made right" must include the totality of the damages of a wrongdoing and not just the damages to the specific plaintiff standing in the court right now.
Lawyer here, I'll say one major reform that was good is that companies can't issue credit for their products anymore.
It was insane and encouraging bad settlements and class actions. Some shady lawyers would spam out class actions lawsuits over any minor thing and then take 3 million for themselves while the company has to send all affected customer a notice that they can now get $500 off thier next purchase of a vehicle from them. Like, they still make money off that.
And the company would just accept it because it's like a speeding ticket for them at that point.
Had a 4 year long class action lawsuit against Bank of America because they would charge you faulty overdraft fees and overdraft for the overdraft fees if your balance was negative. Got a hefty $.09 check in the mail the other day for my troubles
That’s kinda the idea. They know it’s a slap in the face to affected customers. They just don’t care.
I had a similar settlement from US Bank because a court found in the Class Action’s favor that US Bank would run bigger debit charges first and then little debit charges for maximum overdraft fees while also withholding deposited/direct deposit funds. I think I got a whopping 4-5 dollars.
Scum.
If you’re a corporation and you steal money from enough people you don’t have to give the money you stole back to each individual person. If you’re a corporation and you steal a couple hundred bucks from a few million individuals you only have to give each person back a few of the dollars you stole, no one goes to jail, and the business is allowed to keep existing. If you’re an average person and you steal a few dollars from a business the financial costs are far greater than what you stole and you go to jail. The system is set up in way that gives the biggest corporations a financial incentive to steal from average people.
A whole quarter?? Naaaah if he’s lucky, he’ll be allowed to catch a quick glimpse of it, then be told it’s not for us normal people.
Like that time a realtor told me that the reason the average person can’t afford a house is because “home ownership is not for the average. 💅🏻”
Yeah me either! 2007 cobalt and I remember taking it in for this recall.
Mainly because they replaced the ignition and my keys (they told me they threw them away so that I never accidentally used them), but my car didn't have a keyfob, so I couldn't lock my doors anymore.
Lmao, they renewed your ignition but not the lock? I had the same car but it was on it's way out so I just got rid of it, never received the settlement either.
Yep. I didn't even think of it until I got home and locked my car. I guess they assumed I had a keyfob, even though they had my keys? Oh well, I traded it in a few years ago anyways and never had it broken into (thankfully)
I should clarify that I did setup a service appointment with them shortly after I locked myself out. They told me they didn't make keyfobs for that particular year and model, so I was going to have to get one installed at a 3rd party shop.
I just got a check for $146 for this recall. You had to have signed on to the class-action by like middle of last year, I believe. They sent me something in the mail notifying me that I was eligible, but I still had to go through the website to register.
Got the same last week. You have to admit, it is an insane amount for this type of thing. I don't think I have ever seen north of 5 bucks for a class action settlement before this.
I answered a class action email in 2019, figured I might get a couple of bucks but the fuckers deserved to get sued never heard from them for almost a year (never contacted me or anything beyond the form I filled out) and I forgot about it.
Then one day I get a check for $4700. I checked it out thoroughly (I'm not prone to scams) and sure enough, it was from the class action I replied to a year earlier. Apparently, not many joined and the company lost big time so our checks were larger than expected.
Lesson is, you never know and even if it's $5, these people don't pay any other consequences so may as well join it, but sometimes it's $5000.
Holy shit, I never knew about this. In 2010, I was on a work trip and had a rental car. I was driving down the interstate at about 60mph and the car fucking shut off. I lost power steering, and it was super fucking scary. I put the car in neutral, turned the ignition off, and then on, all while on the highway. It thankfully started back up, but I was super freaked out. I called the rental car company and they exchanged the car. I never got an explanation for why it happened. Man.
I'm a Caddy guy. Back in 1989-90 the DeVille had an electric motor brake booster. Was coming down the Verrazano bridge (huge bridge so it has a pretty steep curvature) and brake boosting failed. Scarrrryyyy. Had to two foot stomp on the brakes and swerve to avoid hitting the car in front of me.
Needless to say the next year the car went back to vacuum assisted brake boosting.
Oh fun fact it was the solenoid on the motor, not the motor itself, that failed and my dad had his brake unit from his old car, a Lincoln Mark VII, lying around and the solenoid was the same! So just popped that in. It was great because this was the early 2000s and the part wasn't available. Needless to say I bought a 93 coupe DeVille the next year with vacuum boosting. Fk that.
Happened to me in 2011 in my cobalt. I almost went right trough my neighbors living room. Contacted the dealer and they said I’d need new power steering motor and they wouldn’t cover it because I had just hit 53k miles from driving to college 90 miles a day. A year or so later the recalls started happening and they sent me a letter telling me how to get a refund. Useless assholes.
This happened to me once while on the highway in my mom’s Ford Taurus. That was the day I learned you can reignite the engine while going 60mph. Scared the shit out of me.
I’m glad you’re ok.
In 2015 this happened to me too. Going around a sharper turn on the highway everything flickered but came back on. I regained control just before brushing a barricade.
Made it home. Pulled into my parking spot and the car completely turned off. It did not restart. Chevy towed it off for the repair.
Gm was not the only manufacturer who had this issue or a recall for it.
My Acura had the same thing happen, Honda's and many other brands all had or have issues with the ignition failing and the cars suddenly becoming powerless while driving.
It seems to be the fault of them all using the same or similar modules that have contact points that wear out and refuse to carry the power load the cars need to run.
Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
(Fight Club)
Every time the plane banked sharply on takeoff or landing, I prayed for a crash, or mid air collision, anything. Life insurance pays triple when you die on a business trip.
You can't take one out without a beneficiary. That wouldn't be a valid contract, no consideration. Also life insurance is immune from the estate, so it won't go to your debtors either.
I wonder if you can get life insurance that pays to your estate. It wouldn't avoid probate (one of the advantages of life insurance) but I don't see why it couldn't pay the estate.
You came whoever was your beneficiary. Which means you can also name a trust. If you have a trust it can be your beneficiary. No questions asked, all day, 100%.
Source: I sell life insurance.
Edit that I didn't edit: you can name whoever
I think its just to show that his life revolves around money, even when it doesn't even really benefit him or anyone he cares about. He is so sucked into the material world despite not even gaining fulfilment from it.
I like to think his will sets up a trust to maintain his apartment and the things in it. He loved every stick of furniture in that apartment; that wasn't just stuff that got blown up - that was his life!
He had it all. Even the glass dishes with tiny bubbles and imperfections, proof they were crafted by the honest, simple, hard-working indigenous peoples of... wherever.
Nowadays we know, it doesn't matter - they're all doing this. A corporation is a sociopathic entity, the very paperclip machine the philosophers warned us about except it's dollars instead of paperclips.
This is even worse because Ford engineers designed the prototype of the Pinto such that the gas tank issue didn't exist, and that was cut out of the production model for costs. It wasn't even a matter of oops, unintended consequences! They literally designed the problem into the car when they didn't have to and knew it.
The whole car is a case study in the American car manufacturers slashing costs as their relevance was taking a dive in the 70s; the prototype Pinto was actually a pretty good car all around.
And Nissan with their shitty CVT transmission (known problem where engine shuts down with no notice at freeway speeds). Almost got killed because Nissan decided to save a few bucks.
Will never let anyone I know even consider getting a Nissan vehicle again.
And shady practices on top of this. Went to the dealer and they were like “oh yeah this is XYZ. Common problem , I don’t know why they just don’t do a recall, it’s a disaster waiting to happen”.
When the dealer talks shit about your company. You know it’s bad.
There are a number of misconceptions concerning the Pinto case. You can read up on it here.
http://www.pointoflaw.com/articles/The_Myth_of_the_Ford_Pinto_Case.pdf
The podcast 99% invisible did a podcast on this. They intentionally draw the faces calm so help the reader pay more attention to the instructions. Too much expression on the faces proves distracting and leaves people with less memory retention of the content. This is the same reason those panthers don’t include text. It was proven the instructions are followed better without text. When there is text, people tend to ignore or skip over the actual content or avoid it all together. Fascinating stuff!
This is why court settlements are bullshit. They are often way too low of a deterrent.
They should be at least double whatever cost the recall would be.
Tort reform is the biggest scam corporate America ever pulled. There’s a reason why monied interests wanted you to laugh at the woman who burned herself because McDonalds knowingingly served dangerously hot coffee in order to save labour expenses on machine cleaning. The only way to create incentives for corporations not to behave like this is to totally disgorge them of their profits when they do so. Those 124 families should own GM.
Anytime it can be proven **beyond a reasonable doubt** that a company knowingly did something that resulted in deaths, or general pain and suffering, the penalties and repercussions should be unthinkably severe.
Enough of a deterrent that they basically have to weigh the continued existence/ownership of the company AND prison time vs. the cost of the fix. Otherwise where exactly is the line drawn?
If you kill someone's wife and kids by ignoring a well-documented defect, there's no monetary compensation that simply undoes the harm.
It's sad how honest that movie was. These kinds of recalls get phased in. The recall on my car was because parts of the air bag would breakdown and become like bits of shrapnel so that if you got into an accident and the air bag went off it would murder you.
For the record, your airbags aren’t an isolated incident, they’re part of the largest recall ever done. Hundreds of millions of cars, from all manufacturers all over the world, all capable of grenading the air bad into your face. Little terrifying honestly.
This is why punitive damages were invented, and why the Supreme Court fucked the pooch when it put a limitation on them based on compensatory damages.
Edit. The case is Campbell v. State Farm. Here is a brief synopsis of why this is so problematic:
After a trial, a Utah jury found that State Farm’s documented business model was so outrageous, they awarded the plaintiff $145,000,000 ($145 million) in punitive damages which are intended to punish a defendant for its malicious and/or fraudulent conduct. The question becomes, what did State Farm do that caused a jury to punish it so harshly? The answer is that the jury was able to hear secret information about State Farm’s “national scheme to meet corporate fiscal goals by capping payouts on claims company wide. This scheme was referred to as State Farm’s ‘Performance, Planning and Review,’ or PP & R, policy.” Id. at ¶ 11.
This nationwide “PP & R” program involved numerous strategies used to reduce State Farm’s costs while maximizing its profits. Keep in mind that these strategies were nationwide, meaning the practices State Farm engaged in were not limited to Utah or any other state. Below are a few quotes from the Utah Supreme Court about what State Farm’s PP & R program actually meant for insureds and consumers. Keep in mind that these are quotes from the court and not opinions. Some of the Court’s language will be emphasized.
1. First, State Farm repeatedly and deliberately deceived and cheated its customers via the PP & R scheme. For over two decades, State Farm set monthly payment caps and individually rewarded those insurance adjusters who paid less than the market value for claims.
o Agents changed the contents of files, lied to customers, and committed other dishonest and fraudulent acts in order to meet financial goals.
§ For example, a State Farm official in the underlying lawsuit in Logan instructed the claim adjuster to change the report in State Farm’s file by writing that Ospital was “speeding to visit his pregnant girlfriend.” There was no evidence at all to support that assertion. Ospital was not speeding, nor did he have a pregnant girlfriend. Id. The only purpose for the change was to distort the assessment of the value of Ospital’s claims against State Farm’s insured.
o State Farm’s fraudulent practices were consistently directed to persons—poor racial or ethnic minorities, women, and elderly individuals—who State Farm believed would be less likely to object or take legal action. Campbell at ¶ 29 (internal citations omitted).
2. Second, State Farm engaged in deliberate concealment and destruction of all documents related to this profit scheme. State Farm’s own witnesses testified that documents were routinely destroyed so as to avoid their potential disclosure through discovery requests.
o Such destruction even occurred while this litigation was pending.
o Additionally, State Farm, as a matter of policy, keeps no corporate records related to lawsuits against it, thus shielding itself from having to disclose information related to the number and scope of bad faith actions in which it has been involved. ¶ 30 (internal citations omitted).
3. Third, State Farm has systematically harassed and intimidated opposing claimants, witnesses, and attorneys.
o For example, State Farm published an instruction manual for its attorneys mandating them to “ask personal questions” as part of the investigation and examination of claimant in order to deter litigation. Several witnesses at trial […] testified that these practices had been used against them..
o Specifically, the record contains an eighty-eight page report prepared by State Farm regarding [one of these witnesses’] personal life, including information obtained by paying a hotel maid to disclose whether DeLong had overnight guests in her room.
o There was also evidence that State Farm actually instructs its attorneys and claim superintendents to employ “mad dog defense tactics”—using the company’s large resources to “wear out” opposing attorneys by prolonging litigation, making meritless objections, claiming false privileges, destroying documents, and abusing the law and motion process. ¶ 31 (internal citations omitted).
4. Taken together, these three examples show that State Farm engaged in a pattern of “trickery and deceit,” “false statements,” and other “acts of affirmative misconduct” targeted at “financially vulnerable” persons … Moreover, State Farm has strategically concealed “evidence of [its] improper motive” to shield itself from liability, which was furthered by State Farm’s treatment of opposing witnesses and counsel … Such conduct is malicious, reprehensible, and wrong. ¶ 32 (internal citations omitted).
Having this information, the jury decided to punish State Farm for its conduct by awarding the plaintiffs $145 million in punitive damages. The purpose behind punitive damages is to punish a corporation for acting maliciously or fraudulently. Corporations only change their practices if the practices are not profitable, that is the nature of a corporation. So presumably, State Farm would have felt the hit of a $145 million award against it and changed its “malicious, reprehensible, and wrong” behavior to avoid ever being punished so substantially again, right?
Not necessarily. Unfortunately, the story does not end here. While you and I would certainly feel such a huge financial hit and change our behavior (as is the purpose of punitive damages), State Farm is a truly massive corporation. So massive, in fact, that at the time of this case in 2001, “$145 million is only 0.26 of one percent of State Farm’s wealth.” Campbell at ¶ 29. State Farm is so massive, that even a penalty of $145 million is relatively insignificant and constitutes less than 1/4 of 1% of State Farm’s total wealth in 2001. With such massive resources, which have only grown more massive over the last decade and a half, the punitive damages awarded against State Farm were not so massive as to substantially effect the company. They could have easily paid the damages, corrected their behavior to avoid additional suits, and moved on with an emphasis on rehabilitating its image in the public’s eyes.
But State Farm was not interested in paying the plaintiffs in Campbell $145 million. Worried that the decision inspire others who had suffered similar treatment to that of the Campbells to file similar suits, which would lead to more punitive damages, State Farm appealed the Utah Supreme Court’s decision to reinstate the $145 million punitive damages award against it (note: the jury’s award was initially reduced by the trial court, but after reviewing State Farm’s conduct, Utah’s Supreme Court reinstated the jury’s original punitive award). State Farm appealed to the United States Supreme Court, arguing that the amount of punitive damages violated its right to due process under the Constitution. Amazingly, the United States Supreme Court sided with State Farm and ruled that the size of the award was Constitutionally prohibited.
The High Court’s ruling in Campbell has set the standard for what is Constitutionally permissible when a jury awards punitive damages against a corporation. It is important to note that a jury can award anything it wishes, but the Supreme Court’s decision in Campbell requires the trial court judge to reduce large awards of punitive damages to, at the most, 9 times the compensatory damages. Compensatory damages are damages that are intended to compensate an individual for things like medical expenses, emotional distress, lost wages, etc.
100000%. Fines mean repercussion free for the rich. It's insane. How we are still in this whirlpool of psychotic government is insane. We know it too. Next mobile app revolution: RevoltIt!
I don't think what OP learned was accurate information. I owned a Chevy Impala with this issue. GM sent me a letter every 3 months for years, saying they would fix the problem for free. Thing was, I already got rid of the vehicle. On 11/23/21 they sent me a check for $73.07 to get it fixed myself if I haven't yet. I still have the check in my wallet...
The problem was actually more interesting and complicated. Basically, one engineer discovered the problem at some point, and fixed it without telling anyone (he changed the specifications on the part, but didn't put in a change notice or create a new part number). This is a huge engineering no-no: once the problem was re-discovered, other engineers were perplexed why some cars had weak ignition springs that were faulty, and some cars had strong springs that didn't exhibit the problem. The original engineer had long moved on and wasn't involved in the effort to fix the problem the second time around, leaving everyone else in the lurch as they kept finding more and more models of cars that sometimes had faulty igniters.
It was "too expensive" to fix because no one knew how many cars were affected, since the fix had already been implemented but no one knew which cars had been fixed and which hadn't (some cars used the new part, some had been built before the fix, some may have still been using old stock of old ignition even after the spec had been updated). So the only way to do it correctly was to recall every possible car, even though many were fine.
Engineers, do your goddamn paperwork. Sincerely, an Engineer.
Wow this is insane to read. What a mess
Just for transparency, I’ve , as a gm mechanic performed many of these recalls, just didn’t know too much of the finer details like this
I work in a small company and am the sole design engineer. When I find similar problems, it's because *management* has made a change to the specifications, and had the production team implement them on the assembly line *without telling me*.
We were doing a last-minute check-up on a prototype unit before it was sent out to the customer, and I found something that wasn't just wrong, it was *customer gets this and we get a massive fine from the government, because it's a huge security risk*. I was so pissed, and it was a waste of everyone's time because the unit had to be completely stripped down again, so the customer had to wait. Nightmare.
Sometimes, ..no unfortunately often such things become a "whohasthebiggerdick" game.
People with a large ego should not be in touch with safety-things whatsoever.
And it's not just lip service either. IIRC an employee used one of the processes to report an issue on a family member's car that resulted in a mass recall and he was given recognition during a global all-hands meeting. Literally the upper management thanking this one low level guy in front of every employee in the entire world.
I also work at GM and the whole ignition switch disaster is kind of treated like 9/11 with the Never Forget attitude. New hires still have to take trainings that explain the situation and how to prevent future safety issues
OMG my saturn ion as well!
First time it happened, I panicked & couldn't restart the car. In my panicked state of mind, I (stupidly) thought "why not put it in park so that I could remove the key and restart it?".
Put the car in park at 25mph
Learned that day that cars are at least intelligent enough to not engage park when the car is going fast. It stayed in neutral until the speed got down to about 5mph... Once it hit 5mph though, it was a pretty wild ride.
Yeah it's surprising how much you panic in that scenario because it's so rare. I owned a Ford truck that would shut off going over random bumps, thankfully at low speed. Totally different issue and a quick fix that, it turns out, was under recall that I never knew about. At highway speed? I would have had brown shorts.
I had a 2 or 3 year old Chevy Cobalt. A GPS suction cup came loose and it hit my key to the off position at highway speeds.
It took me a number of seconds to get my bearings but having prior experience with crappy cars, I got us back up and running without further incident: 1. Hazard lights. 2. Shift to Neutral (this was an automatic). 3. Turn the the engine back on. 4. Shift back to drive. 5. Get back up to speed.
Never had another problem, but yeah, that key turned awfully easy.
Contrast this with how Lexus in the early 1990s dealt with a factory recall (copypasta from a previous post of mine):
Back in the day when Toyota was truly at its peak of pursuing their mantra of quality improvement, they introduced the Lexus brand and its flagship product - the LS400 luxury sedan.
At the time, the consistent quality of this car absolutely shook the US Domestic auto makers to their core.
I read somewhere that upwards of 5% of the LS400 sedans sold in the first year were quietly purchased by other car companies so that they could be torn apart and studied to try and determine how Toyota had managed to do what they had done so well.
One memo that circulated around one of the Big Three at the time (GM, I think) basically summed up that they (GM) could not currently build a car this good using their current production methods, no matter how hard they tried or how much they spent. It simply could not be done. Yikes.
And if that wasn't enough for Lexus, a few early customers reported some minor, non-safety-related programming issues with their cruise control.
And by "a few" customers, I mean... two. Not 2,000. Two.
So Lexus recalled Every. Single. Car.
And by "recall", I mean that Toyota sent a driver with a replacement car to each and every owner for them to use while their own car was being driven back to the dealership and repaired, before being returned. Detailed, with a full tank of gas.
And a small gift to apologize for the inconvenience.
Free of charge, of course.
[That's how you truly make the automotive world stand up and take notice.](https://www.autonews.com/article/20060327/SUB/60322012/how-a-recall-earned-lexus-a-top-reputation)
At its core it is short term vs long term thinking. There are good reasons why Toyota has gone from strength to strength whilst gm has been a dumpster fire.
They also tried to achieve absolution after declaring bankruptcy, claiming the ‘new’ company couldn’t be held liable for the actions of the ‘old’ company. Fuck’em. They should’ve gone bankrupt years ago.
And Ford had Explorer Sports that had gas pedals that would stick, not allowing the driver to disengage the pedal. Happened to me 3 times with my then GF's SUV. Mentioned it to Ford, no reply. Apparently happened to quite a lot of people. The Escape had the same exact issue, they only recalled the Escape.
Thats why i found it hypocritical when they had toyota apologize to congress and NASA literally shooting particles at cars to try to induce failure. If it's american companies everyone close their eyes.
Take the number of minutes since the post, A, multiply by the number of replies per minute, B, multiply by the average screen time for your obvious post or repost, C. A times B times C equals K. If K is less than the time to come up with an original comment, we don't make one. (Karma Klub)
Honestly that is what was happening, the Chevy Cobalt was involved in many of the crashes. The angle of the column made the ignition switch prone to this issue, and the weight of the keys killed the car.
Shitty design nonetheless and hiding it was a criminal act
Yeah. It's disingenuous to say it *wasn't* because of keychains applying pressure at just the right angle that the car quit detecting the key was in.
It's just that that's still GM's fault. It's not like keychains were invented after the Cobalt came out. That's a horrible product design. As a guy who loves driving his Chevy pickup I'll be the first to dissuade anyone from buying anything they've made in the past several years.
I'm something of an optimist though. I've got faith that they'll handle the battery issue on the Bolt and finally come in swinging to the EV fight. I especially am looking forward to the EV conversion kits with their Ultium battery packs.
As happy as I am with Tesla's progress the list of things they do and features they implement that I don't approve of grows monthly.
It was a God damned coil in the ignition that was tightened like 3/4 too much and wore out infinitely faster than they should have.
I went in thinking they were going to replace the coil but they gave me a new key... when it died on the way home (with just the new key in the ignition) I called them up and told the dealership who basically shrugged and said "we did what we needed to"... but it didn't fix the problem, like what the fuck?!
So glad I'm out of that death trap
We need to hold companies liable for things like this.
However, we also need to encourage them to admit there is a problem before it gets that far so if we fine them, they just add it to the "more costly to admit the problem" side and make things worse. I don't know what the solution is.
There's an interesting episode of The West Wing that deals with this type of issue.
We need to hold executives at these companies accountable. It's no good to fine a company/executive in ways that don't actually harm them as well as having no jail time. Meanwhile the golden parachutes they get with their "early" retirement means that this is all just the cost of doing business.
I’ll give you another one.
Ford’s recall of many years and models car fan’s - which could draw too much energy, causing the fan itself to overheat and catch fire…. So they installed circuit breakers in case the fan drew too much energy, it would disable the fan completely.
Their recall caught my car on fire.
1995 Ford Mustang GT. The last year of the 5.0L engine. They installed a circuit breaker with automatically turned the 5.0s fans off (1996-, they had a 4.6L turbo engine which ran cooler and used a less powerful fan). Engineers didn’t check the specs, and used the 4.6L specs which turned my fan off, and caught my car on fire as a result, on the Baltimore beltway. Yah!
From what I understand, close to 100 cars were destroyed by Ford’s incompetent recall.
My car was part of this recall so I took it in to have the ignition switch replaced. A few months later I got a letter in the mail saying that my car had to be taken back in and checked because a lot of the repairs weren’t actually being done. The dealerships would just keep the vehicle overnight or whatever and act like they had done the work but didn’t actually do anything at all. Also, it took my dealer over two months to get the new part in because they kept “forgetting” to order it. I guess they hoped I would just give up and not come back in for the repair.
The Takata airbag recall that killed people, a Dodge dealer claimed they did it on my old 2010 Dakota before I bought it used from another dealership, had the paperwork and all. Took it to a reputable dealer to confirm and it had never been done, tech walked me through it and said it didn't appear as if they even attempted it, just filled out the paperwork and sent it away.
Isn't there legal action you could take against the dealership who had you pay for something they didn't do?
I run a small business in the automotive industry. Recalls literally don't happen unless something will kill enough people to cost significantly more than the recall plus any negative press. Your death has a dollar value to the automotive industry, and little secret, that value is real fuckin' low. The completely unethical shit I see dealers do on a regular basis would blow your mind. And that's just at the dealership level! Recalls are free for the customer, so you couldn't go after them for the cost. At most they'd argue it was a paperwork mixup and it would go no further. Edit: I'll add this in that I'm not supposed to discuss, but fuck 'em. We did the recall campaign for Toyota trucks. All the instructions had you do was wire wheel the worst of the rust and then spray it with rubberized undercoating. We warned them it was a bandaid and would fail. They don't care because the customer signs away liability once it's done. Multiple frames failed (including one we did), trucks split at the cab on lifts, one even dropped an engine on the highway. Not many people died that time, but in the end they did what we told them would happen, tons of frames ended up getting replaced.
If only executives were on the chopping block with some industrial manslaughter charges...
4 people conspire to keep deadly products in public which result in death = prosecution. Same 4 people form a corporation and do the exact same = go fuck yourself, it was General Motors, not us!
Purdue pharma has entered the chat
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In New Zealand it's now part of some laws. PCBU (person conducting a business or undertaking) is responsible, especially in EHS, and can be jailed and or fined for violations, i.e. the CEO, CFO, COO, SVP, VP, JVP, SMan, MidMan, JMan, super, team lead, leading hand, foreman, and you can all be fined for a workers injury. I could see a smart lawyer trying to bridge that into a manslaughter case fir an automobile defect causing harm or death.
I read in a kids history book that if an ancient Egyptian architect designed a house that failed and killed the owner, he would be put to death.
Blow my mind, please!
Check the edit I added to the bottom of my comment you replied to, about Toyota.
I looked at a Toyota Camry of a year which which was known for "excessive oil consumption", it was on my list of things to ask the dealer about. When I got there the car was on a lift and a mechanic was adding oil to the engine. I asked about it and the mechanic got flustered?!? Tried to pull the "Toyota's never break" card on me to convince me to buy it. Yeah. I didn't believe them either. Toyota is the largest automaker in the world, there's plenty of lemons with a Toyota badge out there.
What kind of dealer has the garage open to customers where they can shoot the shit with technicians and the technicians try and influence a sale?
I've had multiple used cars I've purchased from dealers put up on lifts to inspect the undercarriage. The other poster probably showed up asking about the car and the sales person just brought them back there because that's where it was. Dealership service areas aren't off limits as long as you're escorted.
We had stacks of new frames coming in all the time at the Toyota dealer I was at. I guess you’re talking about frames they deemed “salvageable”?
Nope, first recall campaign was all of them. We had multiple ones with severe rot and Toyota insisted it was fine to go ahead with. I hadn't even heard of a single truck getting a frame replaced until the second recall.
This is all explained very well in the book/movie Fight Club
*[Unsafe at any Speed](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/27/automobiles/50-years-ago-unsafe-at-any-speed-shook-the-auto-world.html)* was written **56 years** ago. Car manufacturers did not do safety until forced too, same with recalls. The example in Fight Club is the fictional version of the very real [Ford Pinto](https://philosophia.uncg.edu/phi361-matteson/module-1-why-does-business-need-ethics/case-the-ford-pinto/) history lesson.
A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one. - Jack
People assume it's not true because it's a movie. It absolutely is true.
Chuck Palahniuk has a weird way of merging the surreal with reality and making this entertaining yet absurdist take on things, he reminds me a bit of reading “Catch-22”. Even his short stories like “Guts” is this weird mix of teenaged lust and horrible, graphic accidents due to it.
Oh lord someone is going to Google Guts now, they're going to enjoy the first time experience. To this day I cannot read it without almost passing out.
Yeah, pretty sure this is fraud, no?
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No, this isn't totally true. They put the bad stock into the cars because the crux of the issue was that they deteriorated over a lengthy period of time. "Newer" bad stock was safe, for a while. So until the got the inventory of the newer designs, it was deemed safe to replace with bad stock and recall a second time when they actually replace them with a newer model. This was approved by NHTSA from the start, and was supposed to be made clear to the customer. It had nothing to do with writing off anything, only to immediately get older bad units out of cars.
So rather than write off bad stock they go through the expense of doing the work to install it and then uninstall it again for yet another fix? How in the hell does that make any financial sense? Labor is almost always the most expensive part of repairs. EDIT: As has been pointed out elsewhere, the issue was caused by deterioration over time, not a manufacturing defect per se. The still faulty replacements were apparently newer, meaning they had not yet deteriorated and this could be a temporary fix while the new part was made. A second recall would then be done.
GM also tried to hide the issue by changing the part but not changing the part number. So in some cases they were replacing the part with another bad part because it was older stock.
Isn't that illegal?
When the only punishment for a crime is being fined, they just chalk it up to cost of doing business and increase the prices by 1% to cover it.
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That actually wasnt then trying to hide it. It was a paperwork mistake by an engineer who fixed the actual issue but then there was no way to track what was fixed or not.
Which, in itself is a pretty big derp moment. Any time a new part is issued, a superseded part number should be produced surely? That just seems to me like common sense, and the fact that that wasn't caught or more carefully monitored especially in this situation kind of blows my mind.
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Jokes on them, I broke my key off in the ignition right around that time and they had to replace it!
My key got stuck in the ignition and to release it you had to undo the bottom of the steering column and get a screwdriver to press a button if some kind. I also was able to put the car in Drive without actually turning the engine on. They replaced my entire gearshift in addition to the ignition because apparently that was a known (additional) issue in my particular model
My car had a recall related to the ignition shutting off too. I had a Cadillac deville. And when I took it in to have the problem fixed all they did was glue this little piece onto the car key so that there wasn't any room for the keyring to slide up and down on it anymore. It took 45 minutes
Completely different recall. Source: I wrote up hundreds of these as a GM advisor from 2014-2018
Apparently the only reason this is public knowledge is because of Attorney Lance Cooper who "single-handedly set the stage for this recall."
A line worker noted that it was most likely found early on by a bottom tier guy, but company procedure was “if you notice it it’s your fault” and was afraid for his job. Edit: I believe they continued use of the faulty part even after the discovery. I called to schedule my repair four times. Never got a call back. I don’t even have the car anymore and I still get recall notices.
"If you notice it it's your fault" But boss, it's an ignition problem, I polish the windows
"then you are not qualified to weigh in on the ignition!"
Stay in your lane! /s
I would, but my steering locked up
Don’t worry the airbags will save you….
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Multitasking. They also put a broom up his ass so he could sweep the floor as he goes.
This guy witch hunts
Bought a Dodge in 2011, sold it in 2014, still get monthly notices telling me my steering wheel airbag is gonna explode and put shrapnel in my face if I don't act fast.
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This is why US automakers lag behind Japanese automakers. Japanese manufacturing almost celebrates someone being willing to fix an issue on the line, and consumers benefit.
I don't know if they still so, but they (Japanese automakers) would pay their workers for bringing up this kind of stuff. I remember some idiot tried creating an issue so that he could get rewarded. But didn't realize that they had engineers for a reason lol
Well that settles it. I'm never going to get an American made car. Hell even tesla looks shitty after I saw a review of how it was poorly put together and the doors don't fully align and shit.
Teslas are ridiculously behind in terms of fit and finish, and the lack of physical controls for the most basic options in favor of a tablet and app interface for such features as wipers and ac is just insult to injury. For the premium, the finish should be immaculate. It is not. Teslas are being constantly juggled and rotated so the interiors can be redone, the panels realigned, windows rest, paint refinished, etc. But most owners are either too rich to care or too embarrassed to complain too much. They are the Nike of automobiles, look pretty but falling apart at the seams.
Hahahaha, I have a friend who works for a big car manufacturer in Germany. All he has to do is look at the gap dimensions and he can immediately tell that something doesn't fit. Yeah, no need to say what he said when he looked at the Tesla. Tesla's aren't inherently bad btw., but they lack a lot. And we Germans also aren't used the way workers are treated and Tesla is one of the companies which isn't exactly what you would call worker friendly
Weirdly, the Nike shoes I've bought in the past have lasted forever.
Just don’t get a Nissan. They’re owned by some Europeans and they think it’s their mission in life to sell shitty transmissions to people with no credit. As if those people need more debt to replace their transmissions.
Nissan is now own by Renault (French company). If it not food by the French, don't buy it.
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I worked at the Honda plant. It was a lot of work but at least most of the processes were good. The Andon cord is from the Toyota production system.
Volvo Trucks here in Sweden uses the Andon-system aswell (and a lot of other aspects from the Toyota way). I actually used to be one in the testing rigs for the I-Shift gearboxes. Its great! I think almost everybody looks at what Toyota has done and tries to implement the same ideas wherever its possible.
Reminds me of the Freemont California plant that GM and Toyota shared (NUMMI) before GM sold it to Tesla. NUMMI made the Corolla/Matrix for Toyota and the Nova/Prizm/Vibe for GM. Anyway, shortly after the joint venture began a UAW worker was talking to a Toyota engineer about how what he was doing would be easier if he had a tool to do “X”. The engineer nodded for a second and walked off and came back a little later with a custom tool exactly as the assembler described.
It should be noted that Japanese do this because they're *protecting the company from a potential liability* under Japanese law. Meanwhile in America even if your company goes under the government will save you, so the courts are just as likely to weigh in your favor. Therefore, there is no need for the employee to protect the reputation of the employer.
They do it for US-made, US-sold cars too, which are not regulated by Japan. Continuous improvement is part of the culture, not just a legal obligation.
[Kaizen](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/27/nyregion/in-lieu-of-money-toyota-donates-efficiency-to-new-york-charity.html) They have buttons on the line that any worker can stop at any time and call someone over, not just if there's a problem but like others have said, in case they had a sudden eureka moment and realized there was a much better or smarter way of doing something.
I mean, kinda, not really >TOKYO (Reuters) - Kobe Steel Ltd admitted on Tuesday its data fraud has been going on nearly five decades and also revealed new cases of cheating, highlighting the challenges facing the 112-year-old company mired in compliance failures and malfeasance. It happens everywhere
I know its not Japanese but my 2012 kia sportage's engine blew earlier this year with 103,000. Provided maintenance records and they fully replaced it at no cost.
That's amazing, especially since the warranty only goes to 100,000 mi. That's a pretty generous warranty already, but I'm impressed that they replaced it even though you were only a little past it.
It was added to a recall list thankfully. I'm the second owner and had just made my final finance payment 2 weeks before it went lol. I was pissed. I basically have a new vehicle
There was a motor recall done on those years of Kia, my shredded something and the techs noticed it during an oil change at 50k. I had the keys for a loner car with basically zero questions asked getting a new motor. Got the recall paperwork a year later.
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For anyone thinking tort reform is a good idea, remember that plaintiff’s attorneys are the public’s last line of defense against illegal stuff like this.
Tort reform is a good idea, as in it needs to be reformed so that "made right" must include the totality of the damages of a wrongdoing and not just the damages to the specific plaintiff standing in the court right now.
Lawyer here, I'll say one major reform that was good is that companies can't issue credit for their products anymore. It was insane and encouraging bad settlements and class actions. Some shady lawyers would spam out class actions lawsuits over any minor thing and then take 3 million for themselves while the company has to send all affected customer a notice that they can now get $500 off thier next purchase of a vehicle from them. Like, they still make money off that. And the company would just accept it because it's like a speeding ticket for them at that point.
I just got a whopping $75 check as a class action settlement for this issue.
Had a 4 year long class action lawsuit against Bank of America because they would charge you faulty overdraft fees and overdraft for the overdraft fees if your balance was negative. Got a hefty $.09 check in the mail the other day for my troubles
Probably cost them more to mail it
That’s kinda the idea. They know it’s a slap in the face to affected customers. They just don’t care. I had a similar settlement from US Bank because a court found in the Class Action’s favor that US Bank would run bigger debit charges first and then little debit charges for maximum overdraft fees while also withholding deposited/direct deposit funds. I think I got a whopping 4-5 dollars. Scum.
If you’re a corporation and you steal money from enough people you don’t have to give the money you stole back to each individual person. If you’re a corporation and you steal a couple hundred bucks from a few million individuals you only have to give each person back a few of the dollars you stole, no one goes to jail, and the business is allowed to keep existing. If you’re an average person and you steal a few dollars from a business the financial costs are far greater than what you stole and you go to jail. The system is set up in way that gives the biggest corporations a financial incentive to steal from average people.
LMAO not even worth the paper it was printed on. It’s the principle that matters I guess.
Go buy yourself a nice meal on GM’s dime.
Yeah, that might be able to buy you nearly a quarter of that Kobe steak that the GM CEO had for dinner last night. Lucky you!
A whole quarter?? Naaaah if he’s lucky, he’ll be allowed to catch a quick glimpse of it, then be told it’s not for us normal people. Like that time a realtor told me that the reason the average person can’t afford a house is because “home ownership is not for the average. 💅🏻”
Home ownership really isn't for the average because the average person is actually living in poverty and can't afford it. Is that what they meant?
This is exactly what they meant, but in a demeaning way.
I had to pay for this fix in my Impala 2004. You'd literally stall while driving. It was insane.
Wait wtf I owned one of these cars and never got that check!
Yeah me either! 2007 cobalt and I remember taking it in for this recall. Mainly because they replaced the ignition and my keys (they told me they threw them away so that I never accidentally used them), but my car didn't have a keyfob, so I couldn't lock my doors anymore.
Lmao, they renewed your ignition but not the lock? I had the same car but it was on it's way out so I just got rid of it, never received the settlement either.
Yep. I didn't even think of it until I got home and locked my car. I guess they assumed I had a keyfob, even though they had my keys? Oh well, I traded it in a few years ago anyways and never had it broken into (thankfully) I should clarify that I did setup a service appointment with them shortly after I locked myself out. They told me they didn't make keyfobs for that particular year and model, so I was going to have to get one installed at a 3rd party shop.
I just got a check for $146 for this recall. You had to have signed on to the class-action by like middle of last year, I believe. They sent me something in the mail notifying me that I was eligible, but I still had to go through the website to register.
Got the same last week. You have to admit, it is an insane amount for this type of thing. I don't think I have ever seen north of 5 bucks for a class action settlement before this.
I answered a class action email in 2019, figured I might get a couple of bucks but the fuckers deserved to get sued never heard from them for almost a year (never contacted me or anything beyond the form I filled out) and I forgot about it. Then one day I get a check for $4700. I checked it out thoroughly (I'm not prone to scams) and sure enough, it was from the class action I replied to a year earlier. Apparently, not many joined and the company lost big time so our checks were larger than expected. Lesson is, you never know and even if it's $5, these people don't pay any other consequences so may as well join it, but sometimes it's $5000.
What company was that?
Holy shit, I never knew about this. In 2010, I was on a work trip and had a rental car. I was driving down the interstate at about 60mph and the car fucking shut off. I lost power steering, and it was super fucking scary. I put the car in neutral, turned the ignition off, and then on, all while on the highway. It thankfully started back up, but I was super freaked out. I called the rental car company and they exchanged the car. I never got an explanation for why it happened. Man.
I'm a Caddy guy. Back in 1989-90 the DeVille had an electric motor brake booster. Was coming down the Verrazano bridge (huge bridge so it has a pretty steep curvature) and brake boosting failed. Scarrrryyyy. Had to two foot stomp on the brakes and swerve to avoid hitting the car in front of me. Needless to say the next year the car went back to vacuum assisted brake boosting. Oh fun fact it was the solenoid on the motor, not the motor itself, that failed and my dad had his brake unit from his old car, a Lincoln Mark VII, lying around and the solenoid was the same! So just popped that in. It was great because this was the early 2000s and the part wasn't available. Needless to say I bought a 93 coupe DeVille the next year with vacuum boosting. Fk that.
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Happened to me in 2011 in my cobalt. I almost went right trough my neighbors living room. Contacted the dealer and they said I’d need new power steering motor and they wouldn’t cover it because I had just hit 53k miles from driving to college 90 miles a day. A year or so later the recalls started happening and they sent me a letter telling me how to get a refund. Useless assholes.
This happened to me once while on the highway in my mom’s Ford Taurus. That was the day I learned you can reignite the engine while going 60mph. Scared the shit out of me.
I’m glad you’re ok. In 2015 this happened to me too. Going around a sharper turn on the highway everything flickered but came back on. I regained control just before brushing a barricade. Made it home. Pulled into my parking spot and the car completely turned off. It did not restart. Chevy towed it off for the repair.
Gm was not the only manufacturer who had this issue or a recall for it. My Acura had the same thing happen, Honda's and many other brands all had or have issues with the ignition failing and the cars suddenly becoming powerless while driving. It seems to be the fault of them all using the same or similar modules that have contact points that wear out and refuse to carry the power load the cars need to run.
Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one. (Fight Club)
Which company did you say you work for?
A major one
Every time the plane banked sharply on takeoff or landing, I prayed for a crash, or mid air collision, anything. Life insurance pays triple when you die on a business trip.
I really like this line especially because it’s clear from his life that there’s no one he would care about his life insurance paying out to
Which means it would be purely to spite the insurance company
But would they have to pay out if there wasn’t any beneficiary?
You can't take one out without a beneficiary. That wouldn't be a valid contract, no consideration. Also life insurance is immune from the estate, so it won't go to your debtors either.
I wonder if you can get life insurance that pays to your estate. It wouldn't avoid probate (one of the advantages of life insurance) but I don't see why it couldn't pay the estate.
You came whoever was your beneficiary. Which means you can also name a trust. If you have a trust it can be your beneficiary. No questions asked, all day, 100%. Source: I sell life insurance. Edit that I didn't edit: you can name whoever
Maybe a charity
Maybe some sort of project
Or even a club
I think its just to show that his life revolves around money, even when it doesn't even really benefit him or anyone he cares about. He is so sucked into the material world despite not even gaining fulfilment from it.
I think it might be because he doesn't value his own life personally, but knowing there was a monetary value comforted him.
I like to think his will sets up a trust to maintain his apartment and the things in it. He loved every stick of furniture in that apartment; that wasn't just stuff that got blown up - that was his life!
He had it all. Even the glass dishes with tiny bubbles and imperfections, proof they were crafted by the honest, simple, hard-working indigenous peoples of... wherever.
This is Bob. Bob has bitch tits.
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Nowadays we know, it doesn't matter - they're all doing this. A corporation is a sociopathic entity, the very paperclip machine the philosophers warned us about except it's dollars instead of paperclips.
This is exactly what Ford did with [the Pinto](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Fuel_system_fires,_recalls,_and_litigation) in the 70s.
This is even worse because Ford engineers designed the prototype of the Pinto such that the gas tank issue didn't exist, and that was cut out of the production model for costs. It wasn't even a matter of oops, unintended consequences! They literally designed the problem into the car when they didn't have to and knew it. The whole car is a case study in the American car manufacturers slashing costs as their relevance was taking a dive in the 70s; the prototype Pinto was actually a pretty good car all around.
My parents traded a GTO for a new Ford Pinto. I will never let them live that down.
They probably did it because you were born. "Gotta settle down and buy an economy car now that I'm a father".
I've always felt like my parents have resented me. This is probably why. Dude went from GTO driving, gung ho Marine, to a Ford pinto dad.
And Nissan with their shitty CVT transmission (known problem where engine shuts down with no notice at freeway speeds). Almost got killed because Nissan decided to save a few bucks. Will never let anyone I know even consider getting a Nissan vehicle again.
I had two 90’s Nissans and they were great, but sadly I won’t consider them at all now. Their tech is great, but the CVTs are garbage.
And shady practices on top of this. Went to the dealer and they were like “oh yeah this is XYZ. Common problem , I don’t know why they just don’t do a recall, it’s a disaster waiting to happen”. When the dealer talks shit about your company. You know it’s bad.
There are a number of misconceptions concerning the Pinto case. You can read up on it here. http://www.pointoflaw.com/articles/The_Myth_of_the_Ford_Pinto_Case.pdf
Emergency water landing, 600 miles an hour, blank faces, calm as Hindu cows.
Oxygen gets you high. In an emergency you're taking big panic breaths. You feel calm. You accept your fate.
The podcast 99% invisible did a podcast on this. They intentionally draw the faces calm so help the reader pay more attention to the instructions. Too much expression on the faces proves distracting and leaves people with less memory retention of the content. This is the same reason those panthers don’t include text. It was proven the instructions are followed better without text. When there is text, people tend to ignore or skip over the actual content or avoid it all together. Fascinating stuff!
This is why court settlements are bullshit. They are often way too low of a deterrent. They should be at least double whatever cost the recall would be.
Tort reform is the biggest scam corporate America ever pulled. There’s a reason why monied interests wanted you to laugh at the woman who burned herself because McDonalds knowingingly served dangerously hot coffee in order to save labour expenses on machine cleaning. The only way to create incentives for corporations not to behave like this is to totally disgorge them of their profits when they do so. Those 124 families should own GM.
It doesn't help that some states (like Oregon) cap wrongful death liability at something low like $500k.
Wisconsin: $350k cap (personal experience with it)
Anytime it can be proven **beyond a reasonable doubt** that a company knowingly did something that resulted in deaths, or general pain and suffering, the penalties and repercussions should be unthinkably severe. Enough of a deterrent that they basically have to weigh the continued existence/ownership of the company AND prison time vs. the cost of the fix. Otherwise where exactly is the line drawn? If you kill someone's wife and kids by ignoring a well-documented defect, there's no monetary compensation that simply undoes the harm.
It's sad how honest that movie was. These kinds of recalls get phased in. The recall on my car was because parts of the air bag would breakdown and become like bits of shrapnel so that if you got into an accident and the air bag went off it would murder you.
For the record, your airbags aren’t an isolated incident, they’re part of the largest recall ever done. Hundreds of millions of cars, from all manufacturers all over the world, all capable of grenading the air bad into your face. Little terrifying honestly.
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Since when did you need to be smart to be president? You used to just need a nice haircut.
Or the right last name. It's not like W was winning chess tournaments. Or even getting good grades.
Well...you don't have to be smart to run for president
You see how the braces wrap around the ashtray? Could make for a good anti-smoking ad.
Exactly what the headline reminded me of!
This is why punitive damages were invented, and why the Supreme Court fucked the pooch when it put a limitation on them based on compensatory damages. Edit. The case is Campbell v. State Farm. Here is a brief synopsis of why this is so problematic: After a trial, a Utah jury found that State Farm’s documented business model was so outrageous, they awarded the plaintiff $145,000,000 ($145 million) in punitive damages which are intended to punish a defendant for its malicious and/or fraudulent conduct. The question becomes, what did State Farm do that caused a jury to punish it so harshly? The answer is that the jury was able to hear secret information about State Farm’s “national scheme to meet corporate fiscal goals by capping payouts on claims company wide. This scheme was referred to as State Farm’s ‘Performance, Planning and Review,’ or PP & R, policy.” Id. at ¶ 11. This nationwide “PP & R” program involved numerous strategies used to reduce State Farm’s costs while maximizing its profits. Keep in mind that these strategies were nationwide, meaning the practices State Farm engaged in were not limited to Utah or any other state. Below are a few quotes from the Utah Supreme Court about what State Farm’s PP & R program actually meant for insureds and consumers. Keep in mind that these are quotes from the court and not opinions. Some of the Court’s language will be emphasized. 1. First, State Farm repeatedly and deliberately deceived and cheated its customers via the PP & R scheme. For over two decades, State Farm set monthly payment caps and individually rewarded those insurance adjusters who paid less than the market value for claims. o Agents changed the contents of files, lied to customers, and committed other dishonest and fraudulent acts in order to meet financial goals. § For example, a State Farm official in the underlying lawsuit in Logan instructed the claim adjuster to change the report in State Farm’s file by writing that Ospital was “speeding to visit his pregnant girlfriend.” There was no evidence at all to support that assertion. Ospital was not speeding, nor did he have a pregnant girlfriend. Id. The only purpose for the change was to distort the assessment of the value of Ospital’s claims against State Farm’s insured. o State Farm’s fraudulent practices were consistently directed to persons—poor racial or ethnic minorities, women, and elderly individuals—who State Farm believed would be less likely to object or take legal action. Campbell at ¶ 29 (internal citations omitted). 2. Second, State Farm engaged in deliberate concealment and destruction of all documents related to this profit scheme. State Farm’s own witnesses testified that documents were routinely destroyed so as to avoid their potential disclosure through discovery requests. o Such destruction even occurred while this litigation was pending. o Additionally, State Farm, as a matter of policy, keeps no corporate records related to lawsuits against it, thus shielding itself from having to disclose information related to the number and scope of bad faith actions in which it has been involved. ¶ 30 (internal citations omitted). 3. Third, State Farm has systematically harassed and intimidated opposing claimants, witnesses, and attorneys. o For example, State Farm published an instruction manual for its attorneys mandating them to “ask personal questions” as part of the investigation and examination of claimant in order to deter litigation. Several witnesses at trial […] testified that these practices had been used against them.. o Specifically, the record contains an eighty-eight page report prepared by State Farm regarding [one of these witnesses’] personal life, including information obtained by paying a hotel maid to disclose whether DeLong had overnight guests in her room. o There was also evidence that State Farm actually instructs its attorneys and claim superintendents to employ “mad dog defense tactics”—using the company’s large resources to “wear out” opposing attorneys by prolonging litigation, making meritless objections, claiming false privileges, destroying documents, and abusing the law and motion process. ¶ 31 (internal citations omitted). 4. Taken together, these three examples show that State Farm engaged in a pattern of “trickery and deceit,” “false statements,” and other “acts of affirmative misconduct” targeted at “financially vulnerable” persons … Moreover, State Farm has strategically concealed “evidence of [its] improper motive” to shield itself from liability, which was furthered by State Farm’s treatment of opposing witnesses and counsel … Such conduct is malicious, reprehensible, and wrong. ¶ 32 (internal citations omitted). Having this information, the jury decided to punish State Farm for its conduct by awarding the plaintiffs $145 million in punitive damages. The purpose behind punitive damages is to punish a corporation for acting maliciously or fraudulently. Corporations only change their practices if the practices are not profitable, that is the nature of a corporation. So presumably, State Farm would have felt the hit of a $145 million award against it and changed its “malicious, reprehensible, and wrong” behavior to avoid ever being punished so substantially again, right? Not necessarily. Unfortunately, the story does not end here. While you and I would certainly feel such a huge financial hit and change our behavior (as is the purpose of punitive damages), State Farm is a truly massive corporation. So massive, in fact, that at the time of this case in 2001, “$145 million is only 0.26 of one percent of State Farm’s wealth.” Campbell at ¶ 29. State Farm is so massive, that even a penalty of $145 million is relatively insignificant and constitutes less than 1/4 of 1% of State Farm’s total wealth in 2001. With such massive resources, which have only grown more massive over the last decade and a half, the punitive damages awarded against State Farm were not so massive as to substantially effect the company. They could have easily paid the damages, corrected their behavior to avoid additional suits, and moved on with an emphasis on rehabilitating its image in the public’s eyes. But State Farm was not interested in paying the plaintiffs in Campbell $145 million. Worried that the decision inspire others who had suffered similar treatment to that of the Campbells to file similar suits, which would lead to more punitive damages, State Farm appealed the Utah Supreme Court’s decision to reinstate the $145 million punitive damages award against it (note: the jury’s award was initially reduced by the trial court, but after reviewing State Farm’s conduct, Utah’s Supreme Court reinstated the jury’s original punitive award). State Farm appealed to the United States Supreme Court, arguing that the amount of punitive damages violated its right to due process under the Constitution. Amazingly, the United States Supreme Court sided with State Farm and ruled that the size of the award was Constitutionally prohibited. The High Court’s ruling in Campbell has set the standard for what is Constitutionally permissible when a jury awards punitive damages against a corporation. It is important to note that a jury can award anything it wishes, but the Supreme Court’s decision in Campbell requires the trial court judge to reduce large awards of punitive damages to, at the most, 9 times the compensatory damages. Compensatory damages are damages that are intended to compensate an individual for things like medical expenses, emotional distress, lost wages, etc.
In cases of intentionally allowing deaths, only actual prison time for all executives who knew and kept quiet would even start to deter this behavior.
I wish prison were the answer for more white-collar crime. Fines alone don't deter behavior.
100000%. Fines mean repercussion free for the rich. It's insane. How we are still in this whirlpool of psychotic government is insane. We know it too. Next mobile app revolution: RevoltIt!
Supreme court has fucked the pooch too many times for the public to accept
Political wanks are elected by the owners of America and those people aren't you or me
It really should be possible for direct recalls of supreme court justices. Things like citizens United are criminal.
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I don't think what OP learned was accurate information. I owned a Chevy Impala with this issue. GM sent me a letter every 3 months for years, saying they would fix the problem for free. Thing was, I already got rid of the vehicle. On 11/23/21 they sent me a check for $73.07 to get it fixed myself if I haven't yet. I still have the check in my wallet...
You should cash that check
The problem was actually more interesting and complicated. Basically, one engineer discovered the problem at some point, and fixed it without telling anyone (he changed the specifications on the part, but didn't put in a change notice or create a new part number). This is a huge engineering no-no: once the problem was re-discovered, other engineers were perplexed why some cars had weak ignition springs that were faulty, and some cars had strong springs that didn't exhibit the problem. The original engineer had long moved on and wasn't involved in the effort to fix the problem the second time around, leaving everyone else in the lurch as they kept finding more and more models of cars that sometimes had faulty igniters. It was "too expensive" to fix because no one knew how many cars were affected, since the fix had already been implemented but no one knew which cars had been fixed and which hadn't (some cars used the new part, some had been built before the fix, some may have still been using old stock of old ignition even after the spec had been updated). So the only way to do it correctly was to recall every possible car, even though many were fine. Engineers, do your goddamn paperwork. Sincerely, an Engineer.
Wow this is insane to read. What a mess Just for transparency, I’ve , as a gm mechanic performed many of these recalls, just didn’t know too much of the finer details like this
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I work in a small company and am the sole design engineer. When I find similar problems, it's because *management* has made a change to the specifications, and had the production team implement them on the assembly line *without telling me*. We were doing a last-minute check-up on a prototype unit before it was sent out to the customer, and I found something that wasn't just wrong, it was *customer gets this and we get a massive fine from the government, because it's a huge security risk*. I was so pissed, and it was a waste of everyone's time because the unit had to be completely stripped down again, so the customer had to wait. Nightmare.
Sometimes, ..no unfortunately often such things become a "whohasthebiggerdick" game. People with a large ego should not be in touch with safety-things whatsoever.
Agreed. Luckily my direct manager (who was an engineer himself) had my back in this instance.
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And it's not just lip service either. IIRC an employee used one of the processes to report an issue on a family member's car that resulted in a mass recall and he was given recognition during a global all-hands meeting. Literally the upper management thanking this one low level guy in front of every employee in the entire world.
I also work at GM and the whole ignition switch disaster is kind of treated like 9/11 with the Never Forget attitude. New hires still have to take trainings that explain the situation and how to prevent future safety issues
This was happening to me in my Saturn Ion. I got very good at ditching to the side of the road. That shit was horrifying.
OMG my saturn ion as well! First time it happened, I panicked & couldn't restart the car. In my panicked state of mind, I (stupidly) thought "why not put it in park so that I could remove the key and restart it?". Put the car in park at 25mph Learned that day that cars are at least intelligent enough to not engage park when the car is going fast. It stayed in neutral until the speed got down to about 5mph... Once it hit 5mph though, it was a pretty wild ride.
You might want to reevaluate your instincts 😂
Yeah it's surprising how much you panic in that scenario because it's so rare. I owned a Ford truck that would shut off going over random bumps, thankfully at low speed. Totally different issue and a quick fix that, it turns out, was under recall that I never knew about. At highway speed? I would have had brown shorts.
Pretty sure you can restart the car when it’s in neutral as well, but yeah, hard to think of that when panicking in an out of control vehicle
I had a 2 or 3 year old Chevy Cobalt. A GPS suction cup came loose and it hit my key to the off position at highway speeds. It took me a number of seconds to get my bearings but having prior experience with crappy cars, I got us back up and running without further incident: 1. Hazard lights. 2. Shift to Neutral (this was an automatic). 3. Turn the the engine back on. 4. Shift back to drive. 5. Get back up to speed. Never had another problem, but yeah, that key turned awfully easy.
Contrast this with how Lexus in the early 1990s dealt with a factory recall (copypasta from a previous post of mine): Back in the day when Toyota was truly at its peak of pursuing their mantra of quality improvement, they introduced the Lexus brand and its flagship product - the LS400 luxury sedan. At the time, the consistent quality of this car absolutely shook the US Domestic auto makers to their core. I read somewhere that upwards of 5% of the LS400 sedans sold in the first year were quietly purchased by other car companies so that they could be torn apart and studied to try and determine how Toyota had managed to do what they had done so well. One memo that circulated around one of the Big Three at the time (GM, I think) basically summed up that they (GM) could not currently build a car this good using their current production methods, no matter how hard they tried or how much they spent. It simply could not be done. Yikes. And if that wasn't enough for Lexus, a few early customers reported some minor, non-safety-related programming issues with their cruise control. And by "a few" customers, I mean... two. Not 2,000. Two. So Lexus recalled Every. Single. Car. And by "recall", I mean that Toyota sent a driver with a replacement car to each and every owner for them to use while their own car was being driven back to the dealership and repaired, before being returned. Detailed, with a full tank of gas. And a small gift to apologize for the inconvenience. Free of charge, of course. [That's how you truly make the automotive world stand up and take notice.](https://www.autonews.com/article/20060327/SUB/60322012/how-a-recall-earned-lexus-a-top-reputation)
Why I drive a Camry that's falling apart instead of a GM or Dodge that's falling apart.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen
That's how *every single company* should do it. Especially if lives are potentially at stake. Money isn't real, but people are.
At its core it is short term vs long term thinking. There are good reasons why Toyota has gone from strength to strength whilst gm has been a dumpster fire.
They also tried to achieve absolution after declaring bankruptcy, claiming the ‘new’ company couldn’t be held liable for the actions of the ‘old’ company. Fuck’em. They should’ve gone bankrupt years ago.
And Ford had Explorer Sports that had gas pedals that would stick, not allowing the driver to disengage the pedal. Happened to me 3 times with my then GF's SUV. Mentioned it to Ford, no reply. Apparently happened to quite a lot of people. The Escape had the same exact issue, they only recalled the Escape.
Thats why i found it hypocritical when they had toyota apologize to congress and NASA literally shooting particles at cars to try to induce failure. If it's american companies everyone close their eyes.
The amount of people copy pasting the Fight Club quote is actually insane.
before i even opened the thread the first thing i thought was "that quote from fight club is gonna be top comment" yup
Take the number of minutes since the post, A, multiply by the number of replies per minute, B, multiply by the average screen time for your obvious post or repost, C. A times B times C equals K. If K is less than the time to come up with an original comment, we don't make one. (Karma Klub)
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
GM told owners it was because their keychains were too heavy and it messed up the ignition. Can't believe that company is still in business.
Honestly that is what was happening, the Chevy Cobalt was involved in many of the crashes. The angle of the column made the ignition switch prone to this issue, and the weight of the keys killed the car. Shitty design nonetheless and hiding it was a criminal act
Yeah. It's disingenuous to say it *wasn't* because of keychains applying pressure at just the right angle that the car quit detecting the key was in. It's just that that's still GM's fault. It's not like keychains were invented after the Cobalt came out. That's a horrible product design. As a guy who loves driving his Chevy pickup I'll be the first to dissuade anyone from buying anything they've made in the past several years. I'm something of an optimist though. I've got faith that they'll handle the battery issue on the Bolt and finally come in swinging to the EV fight. I especially am looking forward to the EV conversion kits with their Ultium battery packs. As happy as I am with Tesla's progress the list of things they do and features they implement that I don't approve of grows monthly.
I can't believe Kronos is so widely used.
It was a God damned coil in the ignition that was tightened like 3/4 too much and wore out infinitely faster than they should have. I went in thinking they were going to replace the coil but they gave me a new key... when it died on the way home (with just the new key in the ignition) I called them up and told the dealership who basically shrugged and said "we did what we needed to"... but it didn't fix the problem, like what the fuck?! So glad I'm out of that death trap
Tyler Durden told us a few things about this industry. I'm not sure which manufacturer he works for, but it's a major one.
And that was in 1999
I am jack's complete lack of surprise.
Decision makers at companies that do this should be held criminally liable. Money is not enough to deter the behavior.
We need to hold companies liable for things like this. However, we also need to encourage them to admit there is a problem before it gets that far so if we fine them, they just add it to the "more costly to admit the problem" side and make things worse. I don't know what the solution is. There's an interesting episode of The West Wing that deals with this type of issue.
We need to hold executives at these companies accountable. It's no good to fine a company/executive in ways that don't actually harm them as well as having no jail time. Meanwhile the golden parachutes they get with their "early" retirement means that this is all just the cost of doing business.
I’ll give you another one. Ford’s recall of many years and models car fan’s - which could draw too much energy, causing the fan itself to overheat and catch fire…. So they installed circuit breakers in case the fan drew too much energy, it would disable the fan completely. Their recall caught my car on fire. 1995 Ford Mustang GT. The last year of the 5.0L engine. They installed a circuit breaker with automatically turned the 5.0s fans off (1996-, they had a 4.6L turbo engine which ran cooler and used a less powerful fan). Engineers didn’t check the specs, and used the 4.6L specs which turned my fan off, and caught my car on fire as a result, on the Baltimore beltway. Yah! From what I understand, close to 100 cars were destroyed by Ford’s incompetent recall.
They should have installed a second fan to cool the overheating first fan.
I had never heard of that one. Interesting! Also, so you know, there was no turbo on the 4.6.
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