Just when we thought General Motors was doing the right thing by recalling all current generation Chevrolet Camaros before the key fob issue began taking any victims, a fresh report reveals that the automaker has been aware of the problem for more than a year now.
U.S. safety regulators received a complaint about a Camaro driver accidentally shutting off the car with a knee more than a year ago. On June 13, 2014, GM announced the recall of more than 500,000 Camaros from the 2010-2014 model years to fix the issue.
According to Reuters, regulators have received at least 18 consumer complaints since 2009 about Camaros that involved engines stalling or sudden loss of power. The first of two complaints describing turning off the car with a knee is from April 2013.
“When the ignition switch/ key is slightly bumped with knee, the car shuts off. Three times now. Dealership not responsive. Taught my teen drivers what to do if this happens and this saved my daughter’s life when it happened to her,” one of the complaints said.
Most of the 18 complaints do not refer to knees or ignition switches, and it is not clear whether they were related to the key fob issue. According to GM’s recall announcement, a driver’s knee could bump the Camaro’s key fob and move the ignition switch out of the “run” position, turning off the engine.
GM said it discovered the problem during internal testing but didn’t track consumer complaints for Camaros. The automaker is aware of three crashes causing minor injuries and no deaths linked to the key fob issue. The air bags did not deploy in any of the crashes.
By Dan Mihalascu
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