Waiting for repair parts can be a problem with some recalls. However, the most important timing issue I have seen in many safety recalls relates to the timing of the recall notification. Altough the federal regulations require a company to file a defect report within five days of determining that there exists a safety defect, the manufacturers almost always try to avoid this rule. They do this by changing on the date on which they “officially” determined that such a defect exists, even if they actually knew about the defect for a long time.
For example, an engineer can often very quickly determine that one of his or her parts is defective or fails to comply with Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS), but that determination doesn’t start the five-day clock running. This is true even if the engineer designed the part and knows more about it than anyone else. The engineer’s manager and executive and even the chief engineer can agree the part is defective, and that usually still doesn’t start the clock running. The clock doesn’t begin running, according to the car companies, until they say it starts running: they usually make an official “determination” that there is a safety defect by a committee or very high level executive after input from lots of people who have no business deciding whether a defect exists, including the bean counters (financial staffs). Either the part is defective or it is not – how much the recall costs or deciding the best way to tell consumers about it does not change whether the defect actually exists.
Most people don’t realize that the time between when the engineer decides a part is defective and when the final committee “officially” determines it is defective can be many YEARS. Yes, you read that correctly: YEARS.
During that time period, the car company can be working on figuring out why the defect occured, whose responsibility it is, and designing a fix for the defect. However, during all that time, additional consumers are exposed to the defect without even knowing about it, which can literally kill them. Even if a fix is not readily available, notifying consumers about the defect can at least allow them to not use the vehicle, or, if they are considering buying one affected by the defect, they can buy a different vehicle. In some cases, the defect affects only a certain seating position; if the consumer knew about the defect, they can then make sure no one uses that seat until the fix becomes available.
In some cases, the car companies who dragged out the time before “officially” determining there was a defect then limited the affected cars to a certain mileage level. Thus, the longer they dragged it out, the less cars they had bring in for the recall, since the passage of time would mean that some cars would not longer qualify for the mandatory inspection and/or repair.
I don’t know how the people who intentionally delay telling consumers about a safety defect can sleep at night!
