By now, its common knowledge that General Motors has issued a recall for 2.6 million small cars over a faulty ignition switch. The company has been lambasted by lawmakers and criticized by the media for its failure to do something about the switches earlier on, which it may have known about since as early as 2003. The latest outlet to expand on the GM recall saga is CNBC, who ran a special feature titled ‘Failure to Recall: Investigating GM’ on TV Monday night.
The documentary focuses largely on why it took GM, as well as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, so long to recall the affected vehicles. At one point, they catch up with NHTSA director David Friedman at the New York Auto Show and confront him about why the organization didn’t act sooner when it had evidence in regards to the matter stacked against GM. It also shows how much force it takes to knock the ignition switch out of place and how difficult it becomes to steer the car once the power is off. The film might not tell us anything new about the recall and the events surrounding it, but they do give us an inside look at the matter and more importantly, the families who were affected by the faulty switch.
We’ve embedded four preview clips from the film below to give you an idea of CNBC’s approach for the documentary. Additionally, the entire thing can be streamed on CNBC’s website, right here. After watching, feel free to let us know if the documentary changed your perspective on the situation in the comments below.
Comments
This is insane. Why in the world did Toyota not get this much negative publicity/media attention for their recall fiasco?? People are blowing this WAY out of proportion. Guess i need to watch the rest of the documentary before i say anymore…
Yeah, Toyota’s acceleration issues were linked to over 85+ deaths and not one documentary on the subject. And they still didn’t fix the real problem.
GM is a big target since the bail out. I think things will take a couple years to settle down after this ignition problem. Truth be told, out of 2500+ vehicles our dealership sold now included with this issue, we have 2 complaints from customers who have had it happen. Neither had trouble stopping or controlling the car and both occurred during rush hour traffic. Yes it was more difficult to steer and you had to press the brake harder, but the car was still controllable.
While they are using #InvestigatingGM I’ll use the #F***YouCNBC
This isn’t gm’s fault, it’s the UAW’s for being so damn greedy forcing GM to sign contracts that they couldn’t fulfill, then cut corners wherever possible in an effort to turn a profit which resulted in them doing some shady stuff like this. I’d like to also blame some of the parents who had children dead or injured and possibly even the DMV for not preparing drivers in case of a situation like this occurs.
Lastly I’d also like to blame society a little. Why? Well because we live in a culture where the average American person doesn’t care about owning a car. And because of them not caring, they don’t want to learn anything about their cars like the fact that when a car is off (one that has power steering that is) you don’t have a complete loss of steering, it simply takes some old fashioned muscle to move it. At the same time, you don’t have a complete loss of brakes, it just takes a little bit of effort to get the brakes to bite due to the lack of power (older people who have driven cars with drum brakes on all corners have possibly experienced this) at the same time there’s always an emergency parking brake to save you what do you think keeps your cars from rolling back when parked at an incline? Now I don’t think this last part is true but I heard that you can still shift the car into neutral and start the car which might not be true as I’ve learned in my auto class that there’s a device within the starter that keeps the car from starting unless it’s in park.
I had a 2005 Tacoma that you could start while in neutral, so I think it’s possible in most, if not all cars, but that might be different for some, I’m not sure.
Since when that any usa made possessed some sort of quality? Nope, never! Every usa brand is one big lie, over priced yet antiquated crap poor quality garbage.
What a very touching documentary. I appreciate the fact that while they aren’t targeting GM in a vulgar sort of way, they want to get to the bottom of this. May God bless the 13 people who lost their lives..
I am curious as to why they did a documentary now? Wouldn’t it be better to wait until the official investigation is done to see what exactly happened and who was at fault (the actual person)?
I can appreciate they want to get the story out there, especially about the families. But the families have to also realize that half the accidents involved excessively either high speeds or alcohol, which would be an even larger factor in their deaths as a person can control and stop the vehicle if it shuts off, just with more effort; if they are sober and driving legal speeds.
This is the media we’re talking about, they love “uncovering things” in other words they love taking an issue small or large and blowing it out of proportion just to make people or companies they don’t like receive negative publicity, especially GM which has been a major target for the media since the bailout. That’s how the media works, it’s simply a matter of I hate this person for no reason and I like this guy even though he’s a complete a**hole. Toyota had 6-7 times as many deaths in their unintended acceleration issue, but the media didn’t say much about it.
I just remembered that tesla didn’t get any attention what so ever (wasn’t even mentioned) when one of their machines failed and sprayed hot metal all over a couple of their workers.
Why are they doing a story now. For ratings as CNBC needs ratings bad. But for GM this is good as CNBC has about the lowest ratings of all accept MSNBC.
If you note most of the media stories never tell all the facts or put things into real perspective.
Once the investigating is done and unless they uncover some kind of massive cover up you will never hear the real results. Few will do a story if GM is cleared or if there is no major scandal. None will apologies or admit they over played the story.
Even if you win vs. the media it is never a win because you are never covered.