[Taras]

In my view, the recall is less about penalizing the offending party, and more about warning all manufacturers to take safety seriously. Also, I doubt the latter as a good solution that truly addresses the safety problem for the consumer.

Although the corporation may be a legal entity with rights and responsibilities, the mistakes leading up to the safety defects were made by individuals at different levels within the company. I doubt that any one of those individuals will see consequences passed on to them to bear. As a result, the penalty will create very limited incentive to create a better product for those that are actually personally involved in creating the product.

As someone with knowledge of the typical engineering processes, I realize that no one individual should have had the capacity to single-handedly design, test and approve a defective system. As such, Chrysler, and anyone else hit with similar fines, probably shouldn’t try to pass on the penalty down directly to those that may have been responsible. It will neither benefit the corporation’s bottom line, nor the ultimate productivity of their employees.

As Eric mentioned in the video, recalls and potential litigation is part of the calculated financial risk. You can be assured that this occurs in every conceivable business from pharmaceuticals to oil drilling to food production. The expectation of larger fines on the books surely encourage manufacturers to avoid lawsuits. The recent waves of recalls from many manufacturers is a sign that the larger fines (and greater publicity) are working. But is this really a solution we as consumers want? After all, longer design lead times –> higher costs to consumer. More of us will end up driving in older and older vehicles… I’m not sure whether statistics support my prediction, but it is not too much of a stretch.

As for possibly more frequent trips to dealerships for recall work; this can have problems of its own. For instance, I had to take my car for a replacement of cooling fan resistor that can melt and become a fire risk. After the replacement procedure, my cooling fan was left unplugged, leaving my car to overheat and become a fire risk on its own. Is the manufacturer at fault if my car caught on fire? I doubt that I would be able to start a lawsuit against the technician that did not perform the job correctly.

On another occasion, my compressor was replaced under warranty, and the system leaked out within the same day; one of the o-rings was missing. My experience may be anecdotal, but I should think that factory assembly would be more reliable for the manufacturer than work performed at dealer shops.

Bear in mind please that I work on cars, so I understand that things do go wrong. Not blaming anyone for mishaps. However, as a manufacturer, I would really want to avoid having to bring cars in for any kind of recall or warranty service. This will sorely hurt the quarterly, and not only due to the extra labour and parts costs, but due to the slew of miscellaneous problems that will inevitably occur during the recall work.

So, besides making for interesting headlines and tense boardroom meetings for Chrysler, how will the penalty help the consumer? Will this really make for safer cars?

In my opinion, the answer is yes, but the benefits may be meager.

A true and simple solution may not exist just because the problem is so large and almost intractable. I mentioned a few times individuals and their mistakes that lead to problems, be they in the design department, or the dealer warranty shop. Much can be improved if people took pride and personal responsibility to their work. This isn’t something that any one corporate department can easily address.

Apologies for the winded post. This subject touched on many things I care about.

Cheers

[Author]

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