How does your ignition switch kill you?

I think GM's lawyers should spin it the other way. Drunk leaves roadway at high rate of speed, ignition switches off, by design, to protect the driver and others.

If you are wearing a seatbelt-- in most crashes an airbag won't even come in contact with you when it deploys. Airbags are mostly safety devices for people "living on the edge" and not wearing belts. (hence the SRS tag)

I understand parents need to keep their kids safe, but all the emphasis put on having 8-12 airbags in every vehicle and needing a "5-star" safety rating always seemed silly to me. If you want to make the roads safer---- make stringent driver education mandatory. Our problem isn't unsafe cars, it's unsafe / incompetent drivers.

CarKid1989 wrote: While the design could be better, the consumer with the 15lb key ring has a lot to do with the problem.

My father beat it into my head. Do not use heavy key rings. They will destroy any ignition. Difference is, it doesn't usually shut of the ignition. He has seen them allow the keys to slide out and in some cases, pull the entire ignition out.

Kenny_McCormic wrote: Since when do airbags deactivate on key off? Though I can kinda believe this with GM bean counter wiring like the diag port and horn being on the cig fuse.

IIRC, back when they first introduced airbags, one thing that vandals liked to do was to kick the bumper really hard right where the airbag sensor was on a parked car to pop the airbags. One of the fixes for that is to go with multiple sensors, but there's really no reason to expect that a car should need airbags if the ignition is off.

Joe Gearin wrote: If you are wearing a seatbelt-- in most crashes an airbag won't even come in contact with you when it deploys.

Not sure that's true, Joe. The dummy in this video is wearing a belt, and it hits the airbag hard.

wbjones wrote:

Curmudgeon wrote: The kiddo's ION3 is involved, we got the notice the other day. I already know exactly what causes the problem. See the 'run' position in this graphic? The key has a long slot in the head instead of a central hole. That means a heavy keyring will slide to the lowest and most rearward part of the key and yes a sharp jolt can flip the ignition OFF. The real fix is to have the key vertical in the run position, that way a bouncing keyring won't easily shut the ignition off. She has a light keyring anyway, just the ignition key, the house key and the keyless remote with an aluminum butterfly. FWIW, a LOT of cars are made this way: the Trooper's key angles forward but not as much as the ION's, my newsed Xterra does the same. The Jensen does not; the key is nearly vertical in the RUN position. And also in the FWIW dept, back in the 1908's I saw Tauruses do the exact same thing for the exact same reason: huge heavy keyrings.

dang ….. you're older than I thought … well preserved though

Alcohol does have preservative properties.

jstein77 wrote:

Joe Gearin wrote: If you are wearing a seatbelt-- in most crashes an airbag won't even come in contact with you when it deploys.

Not sure that's true, Joe. The dummy in this video is wearing a belt, and it hits the airbag hard.

I am of the belief that airbags are not made for those who wear seat belts.

(EDIT) I guess that's what Joe was saying.

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: Locks the wheel?

That's a popular fallacy.

Steering doesn't lock if the car is not in park.

SVreX wrote:

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: Locks the wheel?

That's a popular fallacy. Steering doesn't lock if the car is not in park.

Manual transmission?

N Sperlo wrote:

jstein77 wrote:

Joe Gearin wrote: If you are wearing a seatbelt-- in most crashes an airbag won't even come in contact with you when it deploys.

Not sure that's true, Joe. The dummy in this video is wearing a belt, and it hits the airbag hard.

I am of the belief that airbags are not made for those who wear seat belts. (EDIT) I guess that's what Joe was saying.

Agreed--- I'm not saying airbags are worthless, just that if you are wearing a seatbelt chances are you won't need them. They seem to have been designed to "save" unbelted drivers. IMHO their importance has been overstated by the media. Not buying a car that passes all the NHSA tests because an inferior-driving machine scored slightly better is folly to me.

in that video the seatbelt seems to stretch / give a ton. Perhaps the pre-tensioner wasn't working?

anyway--- sorry to hijack. Back to the key ring / recall discussion....

SVreX wrote:

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: Locks the wheel?

That's a popular fallacy. Steering doesn't lock if the car is not in park.

On my kid's (and also the Trooper)the way it is set up is that the steering wheel doesn't lock until the key is in the off position so the key can be removed. That's only possible if the shifter is put in park.

During my driver training when practicing parallel parking the EPS motor would get hot, this typically took 10-15 minutes of constant lock to lock maneuvering. The EPS will shut itself off when this happens, I just unplugged the module waited a few seconds then plugged it back in, it has never done that again. My kid's skinny as a rail, the steering got a lot stiffer at low speeds but she could still steer it. At anything over ~5 mph it was noticeable but not bad.

Gimp wrote: I don't think the wheel was locked. Just a loss of power steering and power brakes due to the engine cutting off. I don't think they were having issues with the wheel locking.

All affected vehicles have electric power steering in the column. You can turn the ignition off with the car rolling and the power steering will stay on until vehicle speed drops below 5mph.

At least, it did on the Malibu where I discovered this feature by accident.

Heavy key rings causing intermittent ignition switch issues is an OLD problem. There's nothing special about the recalled vehicles either way. This may be stereotyping but I note with some humor that the affected vehicles seem to be mainly owned by younger women, who are also the worst offenders as far as hanging crap off of the keyring is concerned. Other vehicles that use the same hardware but have a generally different clientele are not under recall...

codrus wrote: One of the fixes for that is to go with multiple sensors, but there's really no reason to expect that a car should need airbags if the ignition is off.

Sure there is. Battery or one of the unfused main cables shorts to ground in the initial stages of the collision, effectively pulling the entire system down hard. That is why airbag modules have internal capacitors that keep it alive for a handful of seconds. I was always taught that it was 30 to 300 seconds depending on the module in question...

Im thinking that most of the cars on the recall list have the ignition on the dash, not the steering column. That would make sense for the swith to turn off with weight on the key. Key would turn left (off) and right(on) vs foreword and back. I have NEVER been a fan of the key in the dash, having to remove broken keys or trying to replace the switch, most of the time taking 3/4 of das the dash apart for

N Sperlo wrote:

jstein77 wrote:

Joe Gearin wrote: If you are wearing a seatbelt-- in most crashes an airbag won't even come in contact with you when it deploys.

Not sure that's true, Joe. The dummy in this video is wearing a belt, and it hits the airbag hard.

I am of the belief that airbags are not made for those who wear seat belts. (EDIT) I guess that's what Joe was saying.

They initially WERE specified to retain unbelted people, in the US, which is why the airbags were killing short adults and children. This somehow was the automakers' fault.

IMO if you're unbelted, you are requesting to die in the crash anyway, so who cares? Just make sure you're on the organ donor registry.

Sounds like the consensus is, they were all drunk, speeding, without seatbelts, and went off the road.

That's how GM killed them with their ignition switch, right?

SVreX, Please note that the GM engineers that found this problem before the Cobalt was released were probably not drunk and off the road when the car cut out. The airbag failure is just a symptom of something else that shouldn't be happening, namely the car shutting off seemingly on its own. It appears to be a combination of three issues:

1. The turning torque for the key was way too low. Unsurprising to me, since my experience with a Saturn SL2 says GM has used crappy ignitions for far longer than this is going on. Yes, this issue is exacerbated by people hanging a bunch of crap on the key ring, but it is an issue.

2. The run position for the key sets up the issue where the weight from the keychain could assist in turning the key when the car is getting jolted.

3. Finally, (and this is the one GM engineers seemed to have known about), the placement of the key in the cars was such that it was not hard for a person's leg to bump the key, get it to rotate, and shut the car off. That alone is a safety issue, drunken morons notwithstanding.

SVreX wrote: Sounds like the consensus is, they were all drunk, speeding, without seatbelts, and went off the road. That's how GM killed them with their ignition switch, right?

No! My ignition switch approached me from behind with a knife. I'm lucky. The 27 way, heated, power seat put itself between us or I might have been killed.

all cars should have saab's ignition switch in the centre console. Takes care of that problem

Too bad they couldn't get together with Toyota so that once the steering chose a target they could speed into it.

I had an accident where I hit the air bag with my seatbelt on. I also broke the seat, dash, roof and floor so it was a pretty hard hit. I probably could sue Ford for not doing a better job of idiot proofing the car and there were no labels telling me that if I flung the car into a mountain everything in the trunk would knock down the rear seat and hit me from behind.

mad_machine wrote: all cars should have saab's ignition switch in the centre console. Takes care of that problem

Until they dump a soda in it, can't turn the car off and have to drive for hours until it's out of gas.

Wally wrote: Too bad they couldn't get together with Toyota so that once the steering chose a target they could speed into it. I had an accident where I hit the air bag with my seatbelt on. I also broke the seat, dash, roof and floor so it was a pretty hard hit. I probably could sue Ford for not doing a better job of idiot proofing the car and there were no labels telling me that if I flung the car into a mountain everything in the trunk would knock down the rear seat and hit me from behind.

Thanks for the laugh.

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote:

SVreX wrote: Sounds like the consensus is, they were all drunk, speeding, without seatbelts, and went off the road. That's how GM killed them with their ignition switch, right?

No! My ignition switch approached me from behind with a knife. I'm lucky. The 27 way, heated, power seat put itself between us or I might have been killed.

That's terrific!

I think we should all lobby Congress to require seats like that in ALL vehicles, since they are so good at saving lives!

Lol!

eastsidemav wrote: 1. The turning torque for the key was way too low. Unsurprising to me, since my experience with a Saturn SL2 says GM has used crappy ignitions for far longer than this is going on.

I wouldn't judge GM based off of an S-series Saturn. GM seemed to do their darndest to make everything on the Saturn different from everything else GM. They had their own chassis, electronics, switchgear, suspension and brake bits, everything. Even "why bother make that different?" things, like (if I'm remembering right, from my Saturn-enthusiast days) the speedometer is 7000 pulse/mile instead of 4000/mile like every other GM ever. Why? Why not? I'm surprised that they even use Group 75 batteries instead of something weird like a reverse terminal Group 41 or something.

To give you an idea of how "different" Saturn is to the aftermarket, when you boot up an OTC Genesys scantool and go into Domestic, your choices are GM, Ford, Chrysler, Jeep, and Saturn.

It wasn't just a clever bit of advertising. It was a different kind of car altogether.

Both myself and my wife made contact with the airbags in a 35 mph collision while belted in.