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GM Names and Fires Engineers Involved In Faulty Ignition Switch
An anonymous reader writes 'Thirteen people have died because of faulty ignition switches in General Motors vehicles. The company has recalled 2.6 million cars, paid a $35 million fine, and set up a fund to compensate the victims. Now, an internal investigation into the incident has shown that the company was aware of the problem since 2002. 15 employees have been fired over what CEO Mary Barra calls "misconduct and incompetence." The report singles out Ray DeGiorgio, an engineer who allegedly approved a part that did not meet specifications and misled coworkers who were investigating complaints. "He actually changed the ignition switch to solve the problem in later model years of the Cobalt, but failed to document it, told no one, and claimed to remember nothing about the change."
"There's no evidence anyone else knew the switch was out-of-spec at the time, the report says; neither did DeGiorgio tell anyone when issues with the part were brought to his attention multiple times. When one engineer specifically asked DeGiorgio in 2004 whether the switch met torque specifications, DeGiorgio didn't respond. Evidence the investigators gathered showed that he started two e-mails but never sent them. ... Instead, DeGiorgio was consumed by a problem in which cars with the switch were failing to start in cold weather, something the report says was "a personal embarrassment to DeGiorgio.'"'
"There's no evidence anyone else knew the switch was out-of-spec at the time, the report says; neither did DeGiorgio tell anyone when issues with the part were brought to his attention multiple times. When one engineer specifically asked DeGiorgio in 2004 whether the switch met torque specifications, DeGiorgio didn't respond. Evidence the investigators gathered showed that he started two e-mails but never sent them. ... Instead, DeGiorgio was consumed by a problem in which cars with the switch were failing to start in cold weather, something the report says was "a personal embarrassment to DeGiorgio.'"'
This may not be a conspiracy, but it is an indication of a systemic, cultural failure endemic to the company.
Why did GM write into their bail-out a few years ago the clause that they cannot be held responsible for malfeasance which occurred prior to that bail out?
Makes me sick thinking about it.
...but very dark.
And how many were fired believing that doing the dumb stuff their superiors told them to do would let them avoid being sacrificial goats because higher chains of command would take responsibility? Suppose I should RTFA...
Sarbanes-Oxley dude.
I hate sigs.
Of course.
I'm somewhat surprised that the company named names. I suppose the result of the investigation made it clear that his intention was only to cover his own ass, which must have tipped the scales.
Now if only we could get names of lawbreakers out of government agencies. I know it will be a cold day in Hell before that happens, but it would be nice
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
It's always the little people that do the real damage! Not anybody at the top!
I didn't see any mention of who the other 14 fired individuals were.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Heard this on NPR, at one point a company representative said something akin to "the only test of if the company changes are enough is if this happens again". In other words, "just wait, if we don't kill a bunch of people again everything worked out!".
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
According to this NPR story:
http://www.npr.org/2014/03/31/...
Scott Oldham of Edmunds.com had a test drive of the Cobalt in 2004, with a GM engineer in the car. Multiple times Oldham's knee hit the key fob and car shut down.
Also, a major factor preventing identification of the ignition switch issue (or at least providing plausible deniability) is the part number. GM had 2 sets of cars: one set supposedly had this issue, the other did not. Both had the same ignition switch, so if there was a difference between the two sets, the ignition switch was not it.
Now we know the ignition switch was changed, but the part number stayed the same, making it difficult to correctly identify the issue. We're supposed to believe a single engineer was responsible for changing a part but not the part number?
Not that it matters much to me. My car searches start with Consumer Reports reviews and reliability ratings, and so no GM car has been in consideration for a while.
As expected, the report exonerated the CEO, executives who report directly to her and the company's board of directors. Fifteen employees have been dismissed from GM because of misconduct or failure to respond properly as evidence of the ignition switch's defects mounted, Ms. Barra said. More than half of those officials were executives, and Ms. Barra said five other GM employees have been disciplined but remain with the company. Ms. Barra wouldn't identify the employees by name, except to confirm that two low-ranking engineers involved with the design of the defective switch were dismissed. Also fired were lawyers and officials responsible for safety and dealings with regulators, according to people familiar with the matter.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Can you say "patsy" ?
Isn't GM an LLC? Which means management and owners are protected from liability for any wrongdoing?
Yes, but the question is WHY did this one person feel it necessary to hide some defect from management? Me thinks there has been a scapegoat here as I believe most, if not all, of these types of cases involve employees at various levels feeling pressured into delivering some end result but not be provided the resources and/or support needed for that to occur. Unless someone is just plain evil or sick at heart and is hiding defects in critical car parts to somehow kill other people it really doesn't make sense and is simply difficult to believe. I don't buy one guy did this of his volition without any reason...something stinks in this story...
Assuming that was under the corporate umbrella at the time
...punish in private!
Unlike a lot of nay-sayers, I'm a big fan of GM and will continue to buy specific products from them. However, I'm *not* a fan of this move. Always praise in public and punish in private. They should have simply released a press statement with something like, "We've determine who was responsible for this ignition switch issue, and they've been terminated or dealt with accordingly." Done. Naming them serves no purpose whatsoever.
Jason Van Patten
Was a friend. I want someone in jail for this.
Step 1: assign blame.
Everything about this says bad corporate culture.
It took quite a lot of time, but the NYT posted the report and I downloaded it and read all the report up to the point it makes recommendations about reorganizing some of GM's administrative structure, which I skimmed. The folks involved in this debacle behaved like they were in a Marx Brothers movie. There's the GM Nod in which committee members all nodded that things would be done and when they left the room did nothing and the the crossed arms pointing which meant the individuals crossed arms pointing to others meaning they weren't going to do anything. There seemed to be hundreds of instances when folks couldn't remember what went on in the multiple meetings about the ignition switch issue. There apparently is an urban legend at GM that became standard operating procedure that notes were not to be taken at meetings as well as minutes. No wonder no one remembered what they were told or said. What's it called, probable deniability?
Just one situation out of many struck me as showing the engineers' incompetence: At one point it became clear that model year Cobalts after 2007 did not have the problem with the ignition switch where it would move from run to accessory just by brushing the key fob hanging from the inserted key with clothing. A couple of guys, including an intern, went to a junk yard to examine a car that had been involved in some kind of accident. The intern noticed that the ignition switched required very little torque to switch from run to accessory so the group got a fisherman's scale to measure the torque. They then got appropriate torque meters (Snap-on tools has nice ones which I have used) but only looked at the newer cars because they couldn't find any older ones to test. DeGiorgio had asserted there was no change in the switch torque from the initial design, so I'm guessing they just ignored the junk car result. My guess is they could have looked for old cars at used car dealers or car auction lots for testing or even got hold of the Michigan state motor vehicle department to find owners of older Cobalts. GM should also have a database of Cobalt VINs connected to registered owners. And of course, the ultimate incompetence was that no connection was ever made that when an ignition switch moved from run to accessory mode the air bag sensors were disabled and would have solved the mystery of why air bags did not deploy during accidents when the switch was turned.
This is a very interesting, fascinating and engrossing report and I encourage people to read it. I wonder if it might become required reading for discussion in engineering and law schools.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
So I, sitting with .0000004% ownership of Company XYZ through Mutual Fund ABC via my employer's 401k plan, am now partially liable for Company XYZ fuck-ups?
Um, no.
Having worked in large organizations before, even surfacing problems to management in meetings the issues get ignored. Perhaps the guy wasn't smart enough to create a paper trail saying there was an issue. Seems like too nice a scape goat. Where is the QA? Anyone that designs makes mistakes, but the point is you have a team helping verify what you produce is up to spec. Telling me none of the other thousands of people involved in the vehicles didn't catch the issue either?
Because the old GM is gone. The shareholders and management switched. It's a new company with the same name and it doesn't deserve to be liable for the past company.
"Doesn't deserve"? Gotta disagree with you there. Sure the company technically is incorporated as a "new" company and some (but not even close to all) of the management has changed but fundamentally it is still the same company. You are giving them a pass based on some legal technicalities which they do not deserve. In all practical terms it is the same company, selling the same products, under the same name, with mostly the same employees and the same facilities.
I run a company that supplies parts to GM. (we're a Tier 3 supplier) I honestly doubt there was much if any cover up. Frankly in my experience GM is too incompetent for that. I see their engineers do stuff all the time that is borderline retarded and the company is so large it's hard to even find a person responsible for a specific issue, much less hold them accountable. While I can't say for certain either way, I tend to think the cause of this fiasco is more structural than criminal. I think this is probably a case of incompetence of such a degree that it appears as malfeasance.
Without reading the article (as is usual on /.) I do hope they also fired the manager who was supposed to, you know, manage the guy.
If not, expect a repetition in 3, 2, 1, 0 years.
If he was a licensed PE he had a professional and legal obligation to intervene with the switch, regardless of how he felt about it. If he wasn't a PE, then whomever the PE was that was managing him and approving his designs is to blame.
In automotive engineering PEs are a rarity. There is no requirement whatsoever that a PE be involved or that one signs off on any designs. You find PEs in civil engineering and some aerospace and a few other fields but most engineering does not require such a certification. There would be a production part approval and there would be an engineer of some sort who would be responsible for the design and production. Most parts in US automotive production require a PPAP document to be completed for both design and production processes. It's usually a pointless waste of time but there is a formality to the process and it does assign responsibilities.
a) There was no change management?
b) A single engineer can replace a critical component without anyone ever needing to sign off?
c) Not answering an e-mail does not make one culpable, it merely points to a time management problem or not enough time to respond
d) Even when an e-mail did not get answered, nobody cared enough to follow up?
These things point to serious managerial issues. Engineers can make mistakes, covering them up and pointing the finger is a managerial issue.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
"More than half of those officials were executives, and Ms. Barra said five other GM employees have been disciplined but remain with the company. Ms. Barra wouldn't identify the employees by name, except to confirm that two low-ranking engineers involved with the design of the defective switch were dismissed. Also fired were lawyers and officials responsible for safety and dealings with regulators"
Do you know what you're talking about?
Did GM also make the bus they just threw those people under?
Heard this on NPR, at one point a company representative said something akin to "the only test of if the company changes are enough is if this happens again". In other words, "just wait, if we don't kill a bunch of people again everything worked out!".
Not to defend GM when they don't deserve it (they don't) but how else will you really, truly know for certain if the changes worked? Just practically speaking the only way to really know if certain types of changes are effective in the real world is to try it in the real world. You can plan and evaluate until the cows come home but sooner or later you have to try the solution out for real. Yes it's scary but sometimes there aren't any alternatives.
Any dog-and-pony show to protect the executives...
This all boils down to a supplier mix-up. The ignition switches used by GM were headed for Toyota cars, and the system used by Toyota should have gone to GM. The GM cars would have kept the airbags on, and the Toyota's could have been turned off once they found themselves in an unintended acceleration condition.
Hearing from someone that got disabled for the rest of their life because of a faulty Toyota vehicle, I tend to disagree. Toyota tried to cover up what happened repeatedly by claiming it was the mat, the brake pedal.. Anything but the real cause.
And this "real cause" was what exactly? Seriously, be specific. What do you know that countless automotive engineers and NTSB investigators couldn't find?
I've heard NOTHING that leads me to believe me to believe that these cases of "uncontrolled acceleration" were anything of the sort. Every example I've seen sounds exactly like people stepping on the gas when they think (mistakenly) that they are stepping on the brake. If you step on the brake it will overcome the accelerator every time no matter how hard you rev the engine. None of these vehicles are drive-by-wire - they use hydraulic braking. Same accusations were made with Audi years ago, with the same media circus.
There are forum threads a hundred pages long covering the same faulty ignition switches in '99-'05 Impalas, yet the recall doesn't cover them why? GM waits until their customers are rendered into bloody piles of death before recalling a model. The bean counters make the decision.
Yes, but the question is WHY did this one person feel it necessary to hide some defect from management?
If you'd just RTFA, you'd see that the defect had been widely reported within GM and brought up at many, many review meetings. What let things go wrong was that no engineers were willing to declare that the result of the malfunction would be a safety issue rather than an annoyance (like VW window switch issues that just cause the window to stick).
No GM engineers were willing to pull an Allan McDonald http://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/news/researchernews/rn_Colloquium1012.html ala the Challenger launch. A difference between GM and NASA being that GM had lawyers who knew that once an engineer categorizes a defect as a "safety" issue they're screwed if they don't fix it. It can be scary for a late-career engineer to take responsibility for committing that much spending until they're very sure that it can be justified.
And there's not a durn thing GM execs can change to prevent thus from happening again because they can't accept the costs of treating every sneeze like its MERS.
The fact is that corporate America runs on fear. No one would lie unless their boss taught them that bringing him or her bad news was a career ender and/or they would be blamed for it.
Why not? You benefit from that partial ownership, you should share in the responsibility proportionally.
Having thousands of owners screaming at you, as well as being financially culpable, would be good cause for the people in charge to actually be careful about what they do.
=Smidge=
I think it's more than the corporate culture although the corporate culture is also associated with the development of a committee hierarchy that produced the insulated silos at GM. I lived in the Detroit area for many years - did not work in the auto industry - and it was well known that at GM any decision required working through interminable committees to get an action decision. This is clearly the case with the ignition switch/air bag situation discussed in the report.
One of the conclusions in the report was that no one at GM knew completely how their cars worked. It appears that the department responsible for keyed locks was asked to design an ignition switch that used a printed circuit board for low voltage/current control of its output. It looks like it would have four output signals: one for off, one for accessory one for run, and one for crank-and-start. The switch output would go to a computer that decided what to do in each case, i.e., in run, keep the engine running, allow some lights to turn on, energize the air bag detectors, etc., in accessory, turn off the airbags, let the radio work, etc. The engineers, however, didn't know what the four signals actually controlled since the computer group was in a different department and the computer was obtained and programmed by Siemens. There was a wall between the two departments. Furthermore, another wall/delay was established because GM could only read very basic stuff from the computer and had to send the devices to Siemens after an accident to get significant output data. And there were two versions of the computer software, one for the Cobalt and one for some Saturns that stored less data even though both use the same ignition switch. This siloing of engineering responsibility prevented understanding what and how the device in one part of a car was controlling a device in another part of the car. Was it corporate culture that insulated the two groups from understanding the interaction between the parts made by each? Maybe. Corporate culture is surely responsible for never taking responsibility for any work you did or decisions you made, i.e., pass the buck.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
What the media fails to mention is that nearly half of the fatalities related to this ignition switch problem also involved some combination of alcohol, drugs, and lack of seat belt use. Please see the latest issue of Car & Driver for more details, I just read the article last night. This is not meant to downplay the engineering/management mistakes that were made but simply to illustrate all the factors involved with the loss of life attributed to this mistake. I also own two Toyota's that only accelerate when I tell them to...
Well, no one would start companies then. If they did, the customer would be charged with ridiculous markups (compared to current prices) to pay the high company insurance premiums.
They could add laws such that "criminal behavior" would result in "piercing the limited liability veil." But this is also problematic as a few rotten apples in the company could destroy the company, and the lives and careers of the rest of the employees. So the solution is not clear.
But in the meantime, there should at least be big payoffs to the victims (much larger than current payoffs) that would form a deterrence to companies being negligent. If speeding tickets were only $10 and they would not get on your driving record, there would be a lot of speeding.
The main fault is in almost all brands and models of cars that use an automatic gear box, but it's not an ignition switch. The main fault is the fact that cars become difficult to control when the engine stalls for whatever reason. Sure, that could be an ignition switch, but running out of fuel could be just as dangerous, a loose wire or any other minor defect could create the exact same circumstances.
Instead of mandating rear view cameras, maybe a mandate that all cars should retain steering and braking capacity regardless of the engine running should be put in effect. Judging by the amount of people actually getting killed because of a flawed ignition switch, the effect would be a lot bigger than a silly camera would render.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
This sort of crap has been happening with vehicles forever.
I had a runaway problem with my '90 Jeep Cherokee. 4.10s in the axle is more than enough to defeat the brakes at WOT but throwing it into neutral and letting it bounce off the rev limiter did the trick. In this case, it was the lever arm on the throttle body that caught on a rust bubble, of all things.
My '92 S10 blazer had the the pedal problem, except it was the interior carpet interfering with it. That I trimmed away with a knife. Prevalent enough a TSB was issued.
My Dad's 2001 Honda Gold Wing had a recall for people flying across the parking lot. On a hot day the fan would be on constantly, draining the battery, and the computer would over-compensate (some sort of ratio without an upper limit) with a really high idle. Motorcycle clutch levers don't have enough throw for decent feathering; they always catch. The mean age of the typical GW rider may have had an influence on this, but really, even at cruise it's a quiet bike. More than enough torque to wheely in third gear, too. Brake and clutch to launch!
My grandmother's '79 Ford station wagon with the 302 and VV carb would compensate for A/C drag with a pneumatically driven link to the throttle. It was incorrectly adjusted one winter which resulted in an interesting spring drive.
TLDR, don't trust a machine, ever!
Suppose you stepped on the brake and the car messed up and triggered the accelerator. I think the natural tendency would be to think that you had accidentally stepped on the accelerator, lift up on your foot, realize it was still accelerating, then try to brake--by which time you might have hit something.
There was an interesting article a while back about designing for robustness in vehicle ECUs. Things like putting variables at the bottom of memory so that a stack trampler would be less likely to overwrite them. Can't remember where it was now, but it was a good read.
If you own .0000004%, and the company owes amount X and doesn't have enough money to cover it, then I see nothing wrong with you as an owner being sued for .0000004% of the outstanding debt if the company goes bankrupt.
I don't know where that particular entry is, but Wozniak did come on here and confirm that he experienced the same issue, under controlled conditions. I believe he took his Prius on a relatively empty stretch of highway and purposely recreated the situation in which accelerator control failed. Per his account, it did happen. I generally trust what the Woz says (why on earth would he need to lie about anything)--so I suspect Toyota did indeed have an issue on its hands.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
If you are responsible for a subsystem and you discover a potential fault then the temptation to quietly fix it in future versions and not worry about the 'probably OK' past is huge. This is human nature but the company needs to have schemes in place to allow people to say that something is wrong without worrying about being sacked.
If you buy a car then you are buying a complex machine with many failure modes. There is a huge business dedicated to saying that these failure modes are due to human failure or engineering oversight. Both are possible but the human element dominates - at a guess for every mechanical/software failure there are at least 100 human failures. The insurance industry loves this kind of issue. I suspect that when safe computer controlled cars become practical the insurers are going to be a issue.
“If words of command are not clear and distinct, if orders are not thoroughly understood, then the CEO is to blame. But, if orders are clear and the employees nevertheless disobey, then it is the fault of their managers.”
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
And why all computer users need free software in all of their computers. I don't want someone I don't trust vetting the software that has the ability to ruin my project or kill me. Those who get to audit code may be expert in someone else's opinion, but I would rather have software freedom.
Digital Citizen
You were using the wrong control. A brake is what slows a vehicle.
Note how it was the e-brake that actually worked in your case. A better solution would have been to use the service brake.
I call bullshit. Assuming a large team of 100 people spending 5 minutes per document and working 8 hour days that would have taken 16 years if they took no holidays...
If you are potentially profiting from your .0000004% ownership in said company, yes. I'm sure that 1.5 cents will really bankrupt you.
How much hideous behavior has been justified as "protecting shareholders interests?" How much outright abuse, fraud, profit-whoring, corner-cutting, safety bypasses, etc, just get shunted up the chain from low-level schlep to manager to executive to CEO to Board Members who just claim "Shareholder Interests" only to see any responsibility disappear into that nebulous void?
Only way I can see out of that particular chain is to make corporate conduct actually *matter* to the people who ultimately, even if in a very distanced and disassociated way, own that company. If the only way to do that is to get rid of limited liability, then I'm all for it.
Indifference and absentee owners haven't done much to fix the rampant problems of corporate shittiness in the world.. maybe it's time we try the opposite approach.
What executives? 8+ "executives" fired? How many executives do they have? Couldn't that be part of the problem?
Learn to love Alaska
Thank you, sir :-)
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.