Slashdot Mirror
An Engineer's Eureka Moment With a GM Flaw
theodp (442580) writes "Hired by the family of Brooke Melton in their wrongful-death lawsuit against GM, engineer Mark Hood was at a loss to explain why the engine in Melton's 2005 Chevy Cobalt had suddenly shut off, causing her fatal accident in 2010. Hood had photographed, X-rayed and disassembled the two-inch ignition switch, focusing on the tiny plastic and metal switch that controlled the ignition, but it wasn't until he bought a replacement for $30 from a local GM dealership that the mystery quickly unraveled. Eyeing the old and new parts, Hood quickly figured out a problem now linked to 13 deaths that GM had known about for a decade. Even though the new switch had the same identification number — 10392423 — Hood found big differences — a tiny metal plunger in the switch was longer in the replacement part, the switch's spring was more compressed, and most importantly, the force needed to turn the ignition on and off was greater. 'It's satisfying to me because I'm working on behalf of the Meltons,' Hood said. 'It won't bring their daughter back, but if it goes toward a better understanding of the problem, it might save someone else.' Next week, GM CEO Mary Barra will testify before Congress about events leading up to the wide-ranging recall of 2.6 million vehicles."
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.
Pretty much par for the course for these companies....
Monstar L
All he did was notice a change in parts, ie, the outcome of an Delphi engineer's actual discovery. Not at all news or noteworthy. It would have been if Delphi hadn't already fixed it and he did the initial discovery.
Cheaper isn't bad, cheaper is typically good in fact. Cheaper means more people can afford it, and often without sacrificing quality. During the 80's, 55" TVs were something only the super rich had. Now you buy them at wal-mart for $800, and they make the ones from the 80's look like complete crap, are much smaller and lighter, and make your electricity bill lower.
The poor become wealthier this way as a matter of fact. Remember that money isn't wealth. That said, nice things being cheaper makes it easier to acquire wealth.
That aside, I somehow doubt the revised ignition switches that correct the problem are more expensive (perhaps pennies worth of metal at best,) rather the original ones had a design oversight that the engineers didn't catch early on, otherwise they would have gone with the design they now have. I don't think it's morally reprehensible to make these kinds of mistakes; the engineers are humans, not machines. The problem would come from knowing that it leads to a disaster and then doing nothing about it. I don't think it occurred to the engineers that it would lead to a disaster (they don't anticipate anybody taking any action that could cause them to cut the engine while driving.)
Really your argument is as silly as saying "Phone manufacturers should stick with the multitude of 3" screens that came before our current 4" ones. Oh and get off my lawn."
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Yes. Manufacturers are always cutting. They'll cheapen everything they can. That in itself is not bad, but then they don't do adequate testing, because that costs money too. Nor do they calculate the costs correctly. Often they can't be bothered to consider future costs. All that matters is that the up front cost is as low as possible. They hope they can dodge having to do a massive recall a few years later.
In the late 1980s, Ford got so cheap with heater cores that in as little as 5 years, they all developed leaks. Saw this in an '88 Escort and an '88 Grand Marquis. That Escort was junk. The too small ball joints and too small clutch were worn out after just 50,000 miles, the light switch failed, the fittings for the A/C used O-rings that failed in a few years, the plastic used in the bumpers turned brittle and would crack under the least pressure after a few years in the sun, the ignition system failed regularly, and even the steering failed once. I don't mean only that the power steering went out, no, I mean that the rack and pinion were so underdesigned that they wore out in less than 150,000 miles and could not keep the 2 front wheels pointing in the same direction! Had the car been on a highway when that happened, it could've killed. A few more cents spent on these items would have made for a much, much better car. Was stupid to introduce such huge problems to save so little.
To add to the insanity, Ford did splurge on idiotic cosmetics. That Escort had a worthless tail fin and spoilers, and the visors had lit vanity mirrors. They couldn't even do the vanity mirrors right. They were covered with a flap held on by little pieces of velcro glued to the visor. When the visor was down and receiving a good bit of sunlight, the glue would soften up and release the flap, which would flop down and block the driver's view of the road. If the car was left parked with the visor down, the same thing would happen, and the little lights would come on. If away from the car for a few hours, the users would discover the battery was drained when they got back.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
The first few times you posted that, people informed you of your mistake. By now, you know that isn't true. Yet you still say it about once a week.
Here's a riddle:
What do you call someone who goes around saying things that they know are untrue?
Well, the point isn't priority of discovery, as it would be with a patent application. It is a question of whether Delphi engineers knew of a potentially fatal design flaw in the switch and failed to notify users whose life was endangered (including his clients' daughter, who was killed by a failure in that part, apparently).
A redesign is not necessarily a smoking gun, in my opinion. An engineer who worked on that kind of stuff could say whether a reasonable engineer would regard the original design as faulty, and make the changes seen to correct the fault.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The improved version could instead of being better be cheaper.
Smells like a cover-up.
What do you call someone who goes around saying things that they know are untrue?
Sales/Marketing manager ;-)
ACK NAK RST
A politician.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Ok, yes, sue evil GM. But you're still dead. Everyone reading about this: You should know how to control your car if the engine dies at speed. It should be a fundamental skill like "driving in snow" or "parallel parking"
1. If you have time, turn on your hazards
2. Put the car in neutral
3. Try the breaks, you likely have vacuum failure and they will be VERY hard. You may need to use both feet and literally stand on the peddle. But you need to at least know how they are going to react before you start your breaking procedure.
4. You have lost power steering. If you are moving at a high rate of speed this wont be noticeable yet but will become a real problem as you slow down. So get your car lined up with the shoulder, of, if you can't simply stop in your lane. If you try to make radical changes in direction that will slow you down very quickly and as I said steering will become dramatically more difficult, so try not to do that because the direction you swerve might not be a direction you particularly want to go and it may then be very difficult to alter your course any further.
5. You can use your horn continuously during this operation. In many states this is the only situation where continuous horn operation is permitted. i.e. you can lay into your horn until the car comes to a rest.
I've found myself in this situation twice in my life. I drive old cars so... anyways, if you're used to it, it's not so bad. When my father taught me how to drive one of the ways he tested me was to turn off the engine on me. Then, surprisingly, they did the same thing during my drivers test. Later in my life when those two engine stalls happened to me I was well prepared. One happened on an off-ramp in a large Buick, and that was a bit scary. But I was still able to control the car.
btw. if anyone is wondering why this is such a problem now, when not too long ago there was no power steering (and the power steering bit is most assuredly killed this woman) it's because of Rack and Pinion. It has no leverage/mechanical advantage. The ratio to the steering wheel is basically 1 to 1. They actually invented rack and pinion long before it was ever used and it had many advantages over recirculating ball steering, but they didn't think it was useful because of lack of leverage. It was later adopted after the invention of power steering... but now, of course, if you lose power steering, you have trouble turning the wheel. There's a full history of it on Wikipedia I believe.
How much is a death worth according to you, even in pure monetary terms? Conservative estimates are that a life is worth about 7 million dollars. 91 million dollars vs 800000 recalls. If the part is worth less than 100 dollars, which it sounds like it is, it is worth it.
Here's the story as I understand it:
- There's an ignition switch. If you have a really heavy key-ring, it is possible that the weight of your keys can turn the switch "off".
- Over the course of a decade 13 People have died in car accidents that might have had something to do with this.
- GM apparently, at some point over all those years, altered the ignition switch to require more force to turn it.
So somehow the car manufacturer is evil?
This sounds a lot more like ambulance-chasing lawyers hoping to use publicity as a lever to pry out a big settlement...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
But here the steering still worked, the brakes still worked so it was 100% the driver that was responsible. A driver should be able to drive and that includes handling some kinds of malfunctions.
Let's make one thing clear: An engineer who was specifically looking for a flaw in the actual part which had caused an accident could not find a flaw until he compared the part to one which had modifications to prevent that exact failure mode. If you're faulting GM for using a part like that, you're doing it wrong. The problem is that apparently GM eventually learned that the part was unsafe, knew what caused it to fail and didn't bother to fix it in the cars that they had already sold and delivered.
Pretty much every pickup truck of the 80s and into the mid-nineties ran all the headlight current through the headlight switch. Besides failures being common, this also can start a fire in a broad variety of locations. I say can and not could because there's tons of these trucks still running around. You can fix the problem with a couple of relays and a couple of fuses, but most trucks in the wild haven't had the fix.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
IHS, DOT, NHTSA.... GM
Definitely a regression they'll need to account for in the future. "Let's see do we have the 20lb keyring test results?"
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
If you can't figure out the problem from the original part, perhaps the problem is beyond your engineering capabilities.
This guy wasn't some random engineer pullled off the street - he was their expert witness. Someone who should know quite a bit about what it is he's going to testify about in court. And yet he was unable to identify a flaw that resulted in the deaths of 13 people. If I were defense I'd be discrediting him pretty quickly.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Why can't lawsuits touch CxOs?
They can but you have to first establish that the CxO was specifically at fault for something. Explain to me exactly what criminal action Mary Barra, the current CEO of GM, or one of her predecessors engaged in that failed in their duty of care. Exactly what action did they knowingly take given the information available to them at the time of the decision that resulted in people's deaths. Remember that just because they were in charge at the time isn't adequate proof of anything. A CEO relies on the technical expertise and advice of the people that work for him/her. Remember that the NTSB also had access to this information years ago and did not think it sufficiently serious to force a recall either.
I assure you that the CEO isn't pouring over technical data so if the problem was never presented to the CEO as a serious problem then how can we reasonably blame the CEO personally? Do you really think the CEO of McDonalds should be personally liable for every instance of food poisoning that occurs even if they have instructed their organization to take every reasonable precaution available to them consistent with accepted safety standards? Would you think it appropriate for you to be held liable for the actions of your coworkers even if you had nothing to do with them?
then why can't individuals at the top be held civilly liable for decisions that they make that kill people, especially when they kill in multiple discrete instances?
They can be but the standard of proof is necessarily high. The general reason is that perfect safety is impossible and just because someone is in charge does not automatically mean they were negligent. We don't sue the CEO of Boeing personally because of an engineering failure in a Boeing jet that he had nothing to do with because that is not reasonable or fair. The question is whether they met their duty of care. 30,000 people each year die in car accidents in the US alone. If we held the officers of the companies that made those products liable for each of those deaths then there would be no cars because no one would be willing to run the company. We have the corporate veil for a very good reason and the standard of proof is high for good reason. You have to establish that there was clear evidence of a serious safety issue, that the information was known to the person (or should have been known) you were suing, that they made a knowing decision to disregard that information and that it was specifically their actions that were a proximal cause of the injuries that occurred.
If a dock worker can be criminally prosecuted to serve almost two decades in prison because he set what he intended to be a small fire in a submarine compartment to get off work early
That is a criminal and negligent action that can clearly be tied to the actions of that person. I assure you that no CEO of any major car company is poring over engineering data from faulty switches. They are actually quite removed from the process until such time as it is brought to their attention.
It looks like it should be a fairly simple matter.
I assure you it is not at all simple. Not At All.
Sue them for the entire quantity of bonus that they made working for the company as a punitive action.
Ok, so then companies don't award bonuses and they compensate in other ways. What's your next move?
BTW there are going to be PLENTY of lawsuits over this and there is a very good change Delphi (the Tier 1 supplier that sold the switches to GM) may go bankrupt again over the matter. There is going to be plenty of fallout without us pointlessly making a scapegoat out of a CEO and probably the wrong CEO at that since GM doesn't actually make the switches.
Bullshit. As a Saturn Ion owner, I can verify that even though all of these switches may not have failed spectacularly, they have NOT functioned as expected and were know to be faulty. I have already replaced my own switch TWICE at my own expense. Spend a few minutes and surf the Ion web forums and you will see that bad switches are a know problem and have been for a very long time. GM denied there was a problem even when they were still under warranty (for Ions at least).
How many ignition switches have you ever had to replace on a vehicle? Counting the TWO I replaced on my Ion, I have replaced exactly two!
Admittedly I didn't phrase it too subtly... I was suggesting gross negligence with lethal consequences. That it is impossible to engineer everything 100% safe in the first iteration is fairly obvious, but what seems to have happened here is that they realized their mistake (they started making this part differently) and yet they did not initiate a recall.
So if the original part claims lives, after the manufacturer was aware of the problem, but decided not to address the problem for extant parts, then yes I think the manufacturer should be liable for these deaths. Additionally, the fact that they apparently did not use a new part number for the improved version gives at least the impression of wanting to sweep it under the rug.
Actually, I am opposed to capital punishment. The quip about a death sentence for corporations is meant to emphasize a kind of asymmetry about this whole corporate personhood idea, which is that proponents claim they should have all the rights and privileges of an individual person but typically remain quiet about the associated responsibility and accountability that individual persons have.
Finally, too big too fail (in terms of finances or jobs) doesn't exonerate even GM from wrongdoing -- if that is what will be determined to heve been the case here.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
I worked for a major automotive component supplier who designs and builds parts for most of the major automakers. I wanted to make a few of relevant observations from my experience.
First, all parts were extensively tested for function and safety. Designing a good test that is representative of years of field use is very difficult, but none of the automakers seemed lax in their testing requirements. Some were pretty quick to dump performance for a cost savings, but I don't know any who were, these days, willing to sacrifice on reliability. There weren't many arguments with customers about the cost of testing, and it was generally thought that some tests demanded by OEMs were needless, but we'd gladly take their money anyway.
Second, parts were regularly improved based on analysis of returned parts. The best source of these were fleet vehicles, which provided lots of high mileage parts back to the OEM--each and every one of these returns was examined, graded (often by some poor intern), then archived for future reference should a problem develop. I remember one incident where some tiny steel spring clip broke--this had never been seen before, so the entire engineering department was re-directed to determine the cause. Thousands of old parts were pulled out of storage and re-examined. I don't think we found another broken clip, but it was a big deal.
Lastly, parts were frequently revised for better performance, lower cost, or better reliability. Little bits and bobs, like switches, valves, fasteners, connectors, etc., were often used on numerous vehicles by a number of manufacturers. Each part had at least two sets of drawings and part numbers. One set was for our use, as the supplier, and had every detail labeled. Another drawing was prepared for the automaker, with only the details relevant to them called out explicitly. It was, in a sense, an engineering contract--we'd agreed to provide everything as described on that drawing as the same part number, but were free to change things not called out. Once I pulled up about thirty drawings produced for the same part, a tiny thing used in many of our products, to see whether we could change the part to an improved steel that was cheaper and tougher for this application. In all of the automaker drawings, the material spec was loose enough for us to change without asking for a change in the drawing. Our internal part number did change, but as far as they automakers were concerned, they were still using the same part.
Anyway, it's quite possible that someone might make a fix to the ignition switch without GM even knowing, and certainly without requiring a change in part number. In my experience, all of the majors are actually pretty good about testing everything and they all really do want to sell people reliable cars, as even the US big three have come to realize that each lemon they put out there can sour a family of customers on their cars for life. Management can be boneheaded about a lot of things, but I really don't think this is one of them. 100% safety isn't possible, no matter how much is spent--but they all get pretty close. Just look at how the fatality rate has plummeted over the last few decades, despite more traffic and more collisions.
I've had mine changed twice as well, though only once at my expense. In the first case, I couldn't shut off the car or remove the key and had to pull a fuse to do so. The dealership actually admonished me over this and told me I just needed turn the steering wheel until it clicked and I could remove it. And when I brought it in, I asked the service guy that was on the phone and dismissive to personally come out and take the key out and show me what I was doing wrong. Never got the apology and he told me that pulling the fuse caused it to stick permanently. What a fuckwad. It was replaced under warranty.
The next one happened while driving in Alabama. Should have been under warranty as well, but we were in back countries and the dude that replaced it wanted cold cash and while GM has said if I find proof, they can repay me for it. But I don't think a hand written receipt for a switch that was pulled out of a junker will work...
GM has really soured me on their cars. I for one won't be buying a new Saturn! (Sarcasm!!!) Actually, probably won't be buying a new GM after this.