A few days ago, I was on one of my favorite car forums when the topic of the GM ignition switch lawsuits came up. A user on the forum offered his two cents by expressing his "sincere" belief that the whole thing was illegitimate. He laid down some "knowledge" on the topic from the perspective of a concerned citizen. It was a real make-you-think kind of a statement, and several of the forum's visitors thought he made some good points.
The problem is that I know that forum member in real life, and what he failed to mention is that he's a defense lawyer who has been paid a fortune by carmakers to argue that they're innocent.
In Case You're Not Familiar With The Controversy, Basically GM Killed a Bunch of People With a Really Simple Design Flaw
Think about your car's ignition switch. You put in the key, then you turn it one click. It's now in "accessory" mode. Turn it all the way forward and the starter engages and cranks the engine. Then, when you let go, the ignition switch cycles back to the "on" notch. This is where the key sits 99% of the time that the car is running.
It's quite apparent to most people that each notch that you turn the key to engages different systems. When the car is being cranked (key all the way forward), the radio shuts off and the headlights dim, for instance, and the only thing getting juice from the battery is the starter and various ignition components. With the key turned one notch only, things like the radio work, but the engine is off and the air conditioning and power windows don't function. And, of course, when the key is turned two clicks to the "on" notch, all of the car's systems work, but only after the starter has engaged. The key takeaway is that you need to have the key turned to different notches in order for different systems to work.
But what is less apparent is that various behind-the-scenes systems, like the car's airbags, power steering, power brakes, anti-lock brakes, etc., only work when the ignition switch is in the "on" notch. The whole issue with this defect (which the news seems incapable of explaining clearly) is that there is too little resistance built in to the ignition switch assembly, resulting in the switch cycling to the wrong position at the wrong time. Whereas a well-designed ignition switch will stay put with the key in the "on" position until such time as the driver willfully turns the ignition switch to the off position, these faulty GM switches can unintentionally rotate out of the "on" notch and into the "accessory" notch. In other words, the car can turn itself off.
If you're an experienced driver who recognizes the problem and knows what to do AND you have a car with a manual transmission, you just push the clutch pedal in, crank the starter again, and go on about your business. But if you're driving a car with an automatic transmission and the ignition switch rotates out of the "on" notch, you cannot restart the engine without the transmission being shifted into "park," and the transmission cannot be shifted into "park" without the car being completely stopped.
What this means is that you're driving along in your Chevy Cobalt equipped with an automatic transmission, the ignition switch spontaneously rotates out of the "on" position, and suddenly the engine dies, and you're coasting. In the best case scenario, you bring the car to a full stop, put it in park, re-crank the engine, shift into drive, and then you're on your way. But it doesn't take much imagination to see how this could easily be deadly if there are other cars on the road. If you were driving down Highway 75 in Dallas and all off a sudden you had to stop your car in the middle of the highway to restart it, there is a really good chance that some car behind you going 70+ mph is going to mow you down.
But it's actually a lot worse than that.
The thing that GM says "makes" the ignition switch rotate into the wrong position is the weight of other keys on the driver's keyring. Now, every other carmaker in the world simply designs enough resistance into their ignition switch assembly to make it "sticky" enough that the weight of keys on a keyring doesn't matter, but since it's GM (allegedly) designed their ignition switch poorly, this is a problem. But even in a car with a poorly designed ignition switch, the weight of the keys doesn't normally cause this to happen. So what gives?
Chances are, the answer is an increase in G-forces. The mass of the keys, dangling from the keychain, doesn't normally put too much "pull" on the assembly, so the ignition switch stays in "on." But when you're going around a corner, for instance, there's a bit more pull on the keychain which rotates the switch into accessory mode. In other words, it's quite possible that this defect is most likely to manifest itself while a car is going around a bend. Naturally, this is an even worse place for such an event to happen than when a car is traveling straight.
But it's even worse than that.
The car doesn't just suffer from an engine that is turned off and the accompanying risk of getting hit by another vehicle as the driver comes to a stop to put the car in park and restart the engine. No, since the car's engine computer thinks that the key moved out of the "on" position because the driver deliberately turned the car off, it's programmed to think, "Well, the car is now parked, we don't to waste electrical power on things like airbags and anti-lock brakes," so those systems are turned off.
But it's even worse than that.
Additionally, certain mechanical systems that most drivers take for granted only operate when the engine is running. For instance, virtually all modern cars have power steering. Without power steering, drivers have to really manhandle the steering wheel, because the friction between the tires and the road has the tendency to want to snap the wheels back to their forward position. This is the result of a geometry and leverage, and automakers design the front suspension of most cars to have this natural "return to center" tendency. Power steering lets a driver easily turn the wheel and resist this tendency for the front wheels to straighten themselves out.
Further, all modern cars have mechanically assisted power brakes. In a car with non-powered brakes, pressing the brake pedal takes a lot of force. But on cars with powered brakes, a device called a brake booster supplements the pressure the driver puts on the brake pedal, making it easy to engage the brakes.
Power brakes and power steering are kind of like a self-propelled lawnmower. You can push a lawnmower that has no assist feature, sure. But if you were pushing an assisted lawnmower and all of a sudden the assist feature turned off, it'd instantly get a whole lot harder to push the mower. Turning a steering wheel in a car without power steering or pushing the brake pedal in a car with non-powered brakes is a heck of a lot harder than pushing a non-powered lawnmower, though. In terms of effort, it'd be more like pushing a wheelchair through the sand. Again, not impossible, but there is a marked difference in the amount of force required.
Even though these are mechanical systems rather than electrical systems (like the airbags and anti-lock brakes are), they're both still powered by the engine. The brake booster gets its "boost" from engine vacuum (the engine sucks in air and creates a vacuum, the brake booster hijacks some of this vacuum pressure and uses it to help the driver push on the brake pedal). Likewise, the power steering pump is a hydraulic accessory that is driven by the engine's rotating assembly. In other words, when the engine is turned off, these two mechanical systems fail to work as well.
You add all of this together and you end up with a scenario where a car's ignition switch repositions itself, turning the car off suddenly and without warning, likely while going around a turn. In a fraction of a second, the power steering wheel becomes de-powered, which means that the force the driver was putting into the steering wheel to keep the car turning is suddenly not enough, the steering wheel snaps back toward center, perhaps yanking itself out of the driver's hands, the driver pushes on the brakes but finds that they feel like someone crammed a rubber ball under the pedal, the anti-lock brakes aren't working, meaning that even if you can muscle the non-powered brakes enough for the brakes to clamp down, they're very likely to lock up, causing a loss of control, and, most importantly, the airbags are no longer activated. So when this confluence of events results in a collision, there's nothing to soften the blow.
Suffice it to say, this is a serious problem.
It's easy for armchair racecar bros to hop on the internet and say, "Pssshh. I'd steer my way out of it, shift into neutral, enter a controlled slide..." But they don't just sell Chevy Cobalts to racecar drivers with godlike reflexes, and most normal drivers would know something was wrong but not know what to do if their car suddenly turned itself off. At a minimum, this ignition switch defect makes these cars unreasonably dangerous for the average driver.
Here's How It All Played Out
As I've probably mentioned in past articles, I am a bona fide car nerd. Endemic of my obsession with all things automotive, I read about cars all the time, which usually takes the form of perusing car discussion boards and enthusiast forums.
Since cars are so heavily regulated and are tied to so many deaths and injuries, they're inherently political objects, and it usually doesn't take long before any given discussion about cars to to bring out the participants' philosophical or political leanings. I do my best to be the voice of reason in such discussions and to explain how the law works related to the topic at hand. But I avoid like the plague taking a unilaterally pro-plaintiff position just because I work for a firm that represents plaintiffs. If someone rants about how some particular car-related lawsuit is frivolous, I'll hear them out and agree with them if the facts and circumstances of the case illustrate that they're likely right. If I think they're wrong, I respectfully disagree and argue my position.
But what I most certainly do not do is conceal the fact that I work for a law firm and engage in subtle propaganda in favor of lawsuits. Apparently, not everyone in the legal field is on board with that plan.
I don't want to post the exact text that this undercover lawyer wrote, say what forum it was on, or out him by name. Well, technically, I really want to do all of those things, but I'm not going to, because my boss generally doesn't like it when I stir up trouble with firms who we're not litigating against.
But the gist of what he said was (paraphrased):
I've been following the GM ignition switch lawsuits closely, and I'm of the opinion that driver error is to blame in all of them. Plaintiffs lawyers cooked up the whole controversy. If you look at the facts and circumstances of these cases, you'll find that these people were all already in the process of wrecking their cars. The ignition switch had nothing to do with it.
Interesting how he failed to mention that by "I've been following the GM ignition switch lawsuits closely" he actually meant "I've been following them closely... from the courtroom... as an attorney... working for GM."
As I mentioned, I know this lawyer in real life. I don't know him particularly well, nor do we hold hands and take walks through the park. But in the limited time I've spent talking to him, he mentioned that his firm defends GM in products liability lawsuits. It's something that anyone who is acquainted with him knows about it.
Now, you may be thinking, "But, Cory, maybe he really just believes in his client's innocence. Sure, it's kind of deceptive that he makes it sound like he's just Joe Citizen, but maybe he's right." There's only one tiny problem with that: GM has openly admitted fault and has accepted responsibility for dozens of deaths. Once the word spread that Chevy Cobalts have been killing people, this opened the flood gates for anyone who had ever lost a loved one in a Chevy Cobalt under any circumstances to decide that they should look into whether or not their deceased loved one was killed by this defect as well. GM was inundated with claims, and their legal team has rejected the majority of them, citing that driver error truly was to blame in the majority.
But that doesn't change the fact that they admitted that they killed more than 100 people.
What's worse, many people believed they lied about this defect and engaged in a cover-up. The best theory as to why they did so is that this info came to light around the time of the financial crisis, and they knew that if word got out about it that the government wouldn't bail them out. Once the bailout was over, though, they admitted that their defect had indeed killed numerous people, they set aside a large pile of money to settle these cases, and they appointed a special attorney to disburse these funds.
Whatever you may think about the other claimants out there whose cases GM rejected, you can't change the fact that this happened and that it was awful.
I don't know if this lawyer is just drinking the Kool-Aid and buying into the narrative that his firm tries to sell in defense of automaker defendants who have, objectively speaking, caused numerous fatalities, or if he's just willfully lying for propaganda reasons. All I know is that it rubbed me the wrong way that he was out there trying to win hearts and minds with half-truths and subterfuge.