Quote:
Originally Posted by McRat
Dirty little secret.
There is no such animal as perfection. The current goal it to exceed 6 sigma.
Nearly every part on an aircraft or car has a failure history. The MRB paperwork on a single 747 weighs more than the aircraft.
At this point, do you throw the airplane away? No, you do an assessment of failure probability and do cost analysis. This is what is taught in college.
Cars are no different and every brand of car now has govtlawyermedia at their throats for not being perfect. The automobile industry is required not only to sell you a cheap car, but to pile hundreds of GovLaw parts on to it that really aren't logical.
In this case, GM saw that if somebody hung a bunch of weight off the ignition, the lock could break. Which is true for all cars made that use key ignitions. And has always been true. But up until today, it was never considered to be a lethal flaw except a very, very small statistical element.
Today, it's the automotive industry. Other industries are already gone.
Here's the risk. If a govlaw can make a trillion dollars by proving the aircraft mfrs sell a dangerous product, and know about it, and sell it regardless...
Would govlaw do what is right for humanity, or would they destroy air travel?
We all know the answer to that.
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I don't have a problem with it not being perfect, don't have problem with recalls, stuff happens, things break, you can only do the best you can do.
My problem is when they knowingly sell a product that is defective, they knew its potentially injury or death causing, or why would they immediately go into cover up mode and hide the details..then use their lawyers to destroy anyone who implies this is an issue in order to further hide this. That's where I have a problem.
They sell a car and it starts rubbing holes in the convertible roof...that's a defect they probably didn't catch in manufacturing, they came around when there had been enough people consistently having the problem. I'm good with that kind of stuff, I don't expect everything to be perfect.
Its when they criminally cover things up and actively risk people unknowingly to the people who are buying their products.
Also I don't think putting GM out of business, not that I think it will come to that, would kill the auto industry. Someone would purchase the parts and keep on plugging on, but maybe they wouldn't be the rolling disaster of management GM has been aside from the short time Whitacre was CEO. And as I said in an earlier post, maybe it would at least make other companies pause before putting out dangerous products.