Poor Leadership in American Auto Manufacturers and US Government Create Child Danger – Opinion
As a prudent consumer, I observed this a long time ago. But last night it became a personal matter when my 9 year old son’s windpipe was almost crushed by the power window in my family’s 2000 Ford Excursion.
The problem is that the rocker switches installed in the flat switch panels of many American cars such as Fords and Chevrolets are ready to roll up the window when any pressure is indiscriminately applied to the switch. That means when a child or a family pet puts their head out of a window, as children and pets do, and they support their weight on the arm rest containing the switch and they inadvertently push down on the switch, the window rolls up on the loved-one’s neck. This is what happened last night when we were parked at the store and my son went to spit out some candy. Fortunately he was able to make enough sound to get the attention of the other family members to alert me of the situation. At first I did not understand what was going on, but when I finally did I fumbled with the switches on the driver’s panel to roll down the correct window, though my son was still pushing down on his which was still trying to roll up the window. We got lucky – or blessed. But many others are not so fortunate.
The cause of the problem is, in my opinion, lack of leadership in the management ranks of US Automobile manufacturers. Speaking from personal experience, my 1994 Lexus sedan had many standard expected features that my ‘99 Suburban and 2000 Excursion failed to provide:
- Positive pull roll-up window switches: the passenger had to intentionally pull up on the switch in order to roll it up; there was no way that putting one’s weight on the switch could crush someone’s neck in the window. 1994 and earlier saw imports with it, and 2000 and later the American car companies were still putting faulty technology into their new cars.
- Rear door child safety locks: My old 1994 Lexus had them, but the ‘Suburban did not.
- SUV rear window wipers: My 1995 Toyota 4Runner had one, but the 1999 Suburban did not.
- Designed to drive like new to 150k miles and beyond: My 1994 Lexus drove like new with minimal maintenance needs to 176k miles, While my 1999 Suburban was beginning to have tons of costly minor and major problems at 100k miles (A/C, Power Steering, Fuel Pump, Door Locks, Stereo Failure, Interior lighting and wiring problems, and more). My 1997 Lexus is at 175k miles and runs and drives like new with no major repair expenditures and few-if-any minor ones (actually, no repairs – just maintenance such as battery, wipers, headlight bulbs, etc…). And my 2000 Excursion already has the door lock solenoids going out, CD Player problems, 4WD mechanism problems even though it has only about 92 miles and looks like it is in great shape.
OK, thanks for listening to my rant. But if the US Car companies want to do business, then they need to do it well. And if the US government is going to tax American car drivers to make laws and bail out US Auto Manufacturers, then it needs to make the latter do things well and do them safely. In this case, the US should have long-ago mandated a recall to replace all such faultily-designed (“irresponsibly-designed” in my opinion) switches with recessed-pullup ones.
Just my two cents!
Michael
