GM financial woes have begun

kaydeejay wrote:
Ya know, I was a GM engineer (now retired).
Not trying to defend the questionable activity behind switch changes etc which apparently took place.....
BUT
In my world there was no standard or test that covered kids driving drunk or angry (or both) with a hunk of keys on the keychain where the switch got turned off when the car left the road/hit a ditch/bounced off a tree.
Seems to be the case in many of the accidents where the key turning off was identified. Based on on-board computer log analysis some of the accident reports at least suggest the ignition was turned off AFTER the vehicle was out of control.

AFAIC this is what makes it a bit of a gray area. Not sure how an engineer with ANY car company could predict that!

Combined with the old reports that were never made public about switch specs and unauthorised changes, it sort of backed GM into a corner that they can't cleanly get out of without doing what they are now attempting to do - replace 2.6 million switches with a stiffer detent.

But now they are being criticised because they don't have 2.6 million switches sitting on a shelf somewhere and it's going to take months of 3 shift/7 day operations for Delphi to make them all.

Just seems the World is being a little hard on GM over this one. It's unfortunate that 13 people have died in the last 10 years as a result of switch "failure" - c'mon, we kill 40,000 people a year on our roads. 1.3 a year hardly registers on that scale!
And how many would not have survived even if the air bags had deployed?

OK, flame suit on!

Well said... In addition it's obvious that 1 Dodge and 1 Ford fanboy's have posted on this topic seams to have a alternative motive on a public forum.