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Think of a scenario involving a younger driver - maybe female - maybe slight of build driving one of these cars going around a curve or making a turn , in the midst of this the car hits a bump and the ignition dies - maybe the driver realizes the car has stalled and has the mental presence to quickly think - oh I should try to restart the car - but maybe her hands are both locked on the wheel and struggling to keep the vehicle under control , and braking seems to be compromised as well.
We have a daughter who has right sided weakness from CP but was able to pass a driver's test and be licensed, but her right arm just isn't that strong, I shudder to think of her driving a car like GMs that just suddenly dies after hitting a bump in the road.
In the Toyota case of sticking accelerators - I think the only fatality was a CA state trooper who apparently panicked and didn't go into neutral or turn the ignition off. People can freeze in certain situations and not think clearly.
Toyota picked up a $1.2B fine for trying to avoid recalling the cars.
Why bother with all the other safety equipment required in vehicles today if the attitude is crashes will happen and the safety equipment fails to operate it's not the fault of the mfg because it was poorly designed.
Factually the number of fatal crashes has been significantly decreased since the imposition of safety standards, it's the main reason why some of us drive Saabs - because they are designed to be safer.
I know enough people complained to the US NHTSB to influence a recall of the Saab DIC in Saabs and I've seen the posts on here where the DIC died and the people were thankful to have escaped an accident - but a few were not . Should have the NHTSB just have shrugged it off and said "you need to be able to control the vehicle in all situations, so grow up and stop whining that it failed when you were making a turn into oncoming traffic, sh*t happens so don't bother us with this kind of trivia"
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