'You Were Right, Dad.'

I don’t hear those words too often. So when my son said them as I walked past his room this evening it stopped me in my tracks.

“What was I right about?” I asked.

“You were right about my car being recalled,” he said.

So, here, under my own roof I have a living breathing example of how recalls go without being remedied, how owners of cars with dangerous flaws fall through the cracks.

My son acquired his 2011 Chevrolet Impala a couple years ago from a local dealer. The car came from an Enterprise Rental fleet program. As such, it was not equipped with OnStar, but that was not unusual at the time.

What is unusual is that the car was purchased from one of the larger dealership chains in the area. It appears that no effort was made to locate or contact my son by either the dealer or GM.

I say “it appears” because we have no evidence of any physical mailings from the dealer, email or phone calls. My son simply looked it up because I suggested he do so.

On his own, my son located the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Website for recalls, Safercar.gov, which coincidentally launched today, but had some difficulty and proceeded to GM’s own Website for the ignition switch recall: https://gmignitionupdate.com/ or www.recalls.gm.com.

My son found the information he needed on the GM Website, contacted his dealer and learned that the parts were not available. The dealer representative said that the dealership would contact my son, when the part was ready, by mail.

The Website notes: “REMEDY NOT YET AVAILABLE.”

The flaw is described: “If the key ring is carrying added weight and the vehicle goes off road or experiences some other jarring event, it may unintentionally move the key away from the run position.”

It describes the “Safety Risk” thusly: “If this occurs, engine power, power steering and power braking will be affected, increasing the risk of a crash. The timing of the key movement out of the run position, relative to the activation of the sensing algorithm of the crash event, may result in the airbags not deploying, increasing the potential for occupant injury in certain kinds of crashes.”

A parts delivery process infographic (pictured above) notes that 2.19M vehicles are subject to the recall with replacement kit production dates and volumes noted running through Oct. 4. The safercar.gov Website, launched today, Aug. 20, includes comprehensive information on vehicle recalls, that can be searched by year, make and model or VIN#.

In addition to recalls, the Website provides space for owners to report “complaints” thereby creating a resource for consumers to look up complaints by vehicle year, make and model. This Website alone is a significant advance in consumer communications regarding post-purchase vehicle safety and reliability.

So, yeah, this time dad was right, for a change. In the immortal words of Bill Murray’s Carl Spackler in Caddyshack: “So I got that goin’ for me, which is nice.” Check your VIN today on safercar.gov.