“Why is it they keep having to recall cars for faulty components they should have perfected by about 1903?”
The government’s fingerprints are on this. modern cars have to have their steering locked if the key is removed. The cheapest way to do this is to put the lock on the steering column itself. On my older Mercedes, the key/lock is on the dash, and this type of problem is flat impossible mechanically.
Plenty of comments about the growing danger of increased safety equipment in this thread from yesterday.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3139629/posts
In this GM case, from what I’ve read, steering lock isn’t even part of the problem. As far as I can tell, this causes a loss of power and the airbags don’t deploy. It doesn’t explain how it causes people to crash.