Sudden Loss of Power Steering WHEN DRIVING

[Look44]

Holden is doing everything it can to deny there is a fault. Makes me kinda sick TBH.

Totally, repairing it case by case after the fault occurs and hoping they don't trigger a law suit if a accident is involved, still needing approval from Holden head office for each repair on a individual basis, likely into the thousands of vehicles now and calling it goodwill! Just issue the damn recall.
Check out this news article from 2016, the same fault received a recall in the US.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-...f-holden-caprice-power-steering-fault/7348812

 

[VS 5.0]

still needing approval from Holden head office for each repair on a individual basis

That may be the case internally, however it has no standing under the ACL.

The seller is reponsible for the make good, irrespective of their arrangements with the manufacturer. If Holden screws over the dealer then that is a seperate matter between Holden and the dealer for seperate determination.

 

[Skylarking]

I still feel that every JC member that had issues with their power steering should lodge a complaint with ACCC and DOTARS regardless if Holden fixing their specific issue as these safety concerns should be handled via a recall (so everybody gets the fix and thus the danger is mitigated).

Why Holden wants to wait for someone to die and the ensuing law suite I do not understand.

Maybe Holden execs don’t remember the 1970’s and the Ford Pinto well enough.

Holden is behaving much like Ford behaved back then. Sad...

 

[426Cuda]

Or, are we all overemphasising the risk / issue? Is this confirmation bias perhaps? There are tens of thousands of VF's. Has even one accident been attributed to power steering assistance failure?

 

[Skylarking]

Or, are we all overemphasising the risk / issue? Is this confirmation bias perhaps? There are tens of thousands of VF's. Has even one accident been attributed to power steering assistance failure?

One person in Darwin was injured (lost an eye from flying metal) and one person in Sydney was killed (jugular sliced by flying metal) by their airbags. That’s just two incidents out of millions of takata fitted vehicles yet the regulators forced a mandatory recall.

So just because the worst (a death) hasn’t occurred in a much much smaller vehicle base you think it may be conformation bias?

The unanswerable question is how many accidents have occurred that were related to loss of power steering yet were not officially attributed to such? The other unanswerable question is how many owners had issues but accepted the dealers bullish!t and paid $1000’s to have this fault rectified? The regulators seem uninterested, maybe because people aren’t complaining.

Me, I’d rather the regulators are on the side of caution and proactive in fixing this issue via forced recall, before someone is i juried of killed by this (since the dealers and Holden are dragging their feet by not wanting a voluntary recall). This likely requires people to lodge formal complaints to push the issue along.

 

[426Cuda]

One person in Darwin was injured (lost an eye from flying metal) and one person in Sydney was killed (jugular sliced by flying metal) by their airbags. That’s just two incidents out of millions of takata fitted vehicles yet the regulators forced a mandatory recall.

So just because the worst (a death) hasn’t occurred in a much much smaller vehicle base you think it may be conformation bias?

The unanswerable question is how many accidents have occurred that were related to loss of power steering yet were not officially attributed to such? The other unanswerable question is how many owners had issues but accepted the dealers bullish!t and paid $1000’s to have this fault rectified? The regulators seem uninterested, maybe because people aren’t complaining.

Me, I’d rather the regulators are on the side of caution and proactive in fixing this issue via forced recall, before someone is i juried of killed by this (since the dealers and Holden are dragging their feet by not wanting a voluntary recall). This likely requires people to lodge formal complaints to push the issue along.

Nope. I was posing a question. Although, almost any risk will result in catastrophic events if viewed from the extreme "chicken little" perspective.

 

[Skylarking]

@426Cuda, fair enough in posing a question.

But IIUC, globally, 20 deaths have been attributed to the grenading of the front Takata airbag and the issue has impacted around 100 million vehicles so far (1:50 million). Down under, the numbers are worse than global averages seem to indicate as we've had 1 death with around 4 million vehicles impacted by the recall (1:4 million). And i've read within the media where it was stated that without airbags in these impacted vehicles the death toll from crashes would be worse (implying it's an acceptable number).

So it can all becomes a statistics game with costs brought into the frey which is what reminded me of the Ford Pinto saga as captured in the 1991 movie Class Action (who knows how factually accurate the film was)....

As to the Takata issue down under, it wouldn't surprise me if manufacturers likley have agrued that it's an extream "chicken little" view and that the problem airbags still save lives which is probably why this airbag issue was (i think) the first forced motor vehicle recall in Australia.

Getting back to steering assistance failures, assuming that there are 100,000 VF's potentially impacted by steering (being very generous to simplify numbers), when we finally see a death attributed to this issue (which is not unlikely as some view it and only a matter of time) then this would result in a 1:100,000 ratio. This is some 500 times worse than the global Takata airbag issue or 40 times worse than what we have seen from the Takatta issue down under. Yet the regulators sit on their hands and allow Holden to risk the publics lives by not forcing a recall.

Oh, and as a last note, in a single vehicle fatality where a commodore ran of a mountain road into a ravine, i wonder whether the police or regulators would investigate if it was a steering assistance failure occured or would they rather put it down to a standard speed kills view that just happens to support the governments revenue stream. In other words, deaths may have already occured and simply have not been attributed to this issue.

So to all impacted by this issue, please, please, please, report this to ACCC or DOTARS or both... and hopefully we see some action before the deaths (officially) roll in.

 

[VS 5.0]

Or, are we all overemphasising the risk / issue? Is this confirmation bias perhaps? There are tens of thousands of VF's. Has even one accident been attributed to power steering assistance failure?

I wouldn't call it confirmation bias.....well not in my understanding of the term.

There have been millions of Takata airbags fitted to cars yet a relatively small number of injuries & deaths as a % of the total number of Takata airbags. Still a global recall.

I don't believe that the only people who have experienced the problem are those posting on here. The law of averages tells me that many, many more people outside of this forum have also experienced it.

The risk that one person could be killed by a malfunctioning component is real and needs to be mitigated / avoided wherever possible.

I don't own a VF, nor do I personally know anyone who does, however I don't want one of those tens of thousands of VF's to have a steering malfunction and cause injury or death to me, my loved ones or anyone else for that matter, when a recall is being avoided due to the mighty dollar.

The whole corporate approach is bullsh1t and needs to change.

 

[Anthony121]

At the end of the day you can steer the car. It's not as if you can't steer it and you crash into a wall or drive off a cliff. You just lose you power assistance. I have driven a car that failed. If a wheel was to fall off than yes it should be a recall.

 

[Look44]

Is this confirmation bias perhaps?

Peoples concerns are based on evidence such as the discrepancy between what Holden's director of communications Sean Poppit told the world, that this fault would only effect and require a recall on police cars because the cars have stresses much higher then ordinary drivers would see. This is false in hindsight because it occurs all the time on "ordinary cars" and taken by surprise at speed this fault has the potential to be deadly, don't forget about 1/3 of VF owners are women, including grandmas and here is a quote from a male taxi driver in the ABC news article i posted:
"My steering got so hard I can't move at all, so I was in a position to collide to the other car," he said.
Mr Singh said he had to lean on the wheel with some force, to get him over to the emergency lane.
This fault won't just go away, most VF's will have 2nd and 3rd owners, someones going to get hurt.