Fiat Chrysler is speeding up a recall of 1.1 million vehicles with confusing gear shifters like one in the SUV that crushed and killed Star Trek actor Anton Yelchin.
Yelchin, 27, known for playing Chekov in the rebooted series, died Sunday after his 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee pinned him against a mailbox pillar and security fence at his home in Los Angeles. His Jeep was among the vehicles recalled in April due to complaints from drivers who had trouble telling if they put the transmission in “park” after stopping. Many reported the vehicles rolled off after the driver exited.
Los Angeles police are still investigating the cause of the crash, but the U.S. government’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Yelchin’s death “is the first fatality we’re aware of that may be related to this safety defect and vehicle recall.” Fiat Chrysler said it was premature to say what caused the crash.
On Wednesday, FCA said in a statement that it started providing its 2,427 dealers with a software update last week, days before Yelchin died. Previously the company had said the update would be ready in July or August.
Yelchin would not have known about the software fix because car owners hadn’t yet been notified. Fiat Chrysler said Wednesday that it would start sending letters to owners on June 24 telling them to make a service appointment. Safety advocates have questioned why the fix was taking so long.
The recalled vehicles have an electronic shift lever that toggles forward or backward to let the driver select the gear instead of moving along a track with notches for each gear like a conventional shifter. A light shows which gear is selected, but to get from drive to park, drivers must push the lever forward three times. If a vehicle is in drive and the lever is pressed just once, it goes into neutral and could roll if on a slope.
Dealers will be able to load the software into the vehicles, and it will automatically shift the cars into park if the driver’s door opens while the engine is running. The software will repair vehicles with 3.6-liter and 5.7-liter engines, which account for the bulk of those being recalled. FCA said software availability for the rest of the vehicles is “imminent.”
The recall also covers the 2014 Grand Cherokee as well as the 2012 through 2014 Dodge Charger and Chrysler 300.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
Pure insanity for years we have ad a simple mechanica linkage to the transmisiion that means all the way up is park It worked perfectly everybody on the planet understood it, but for some reason chrysle decided to change it. and just what is the NTSC doing?? NOTHING!! A simple one sentence order to Chrysler resoter the old stlymechanically linked shifter with park. No ifs and or buts. But do ya think that the Fed guv which regulates everything Mostly un neeed will ever tkae this simple logicval action??? As for me, Hell will freeze over before I will ever buy a Chrysler product.
I’m going to stay with GM and Ford.
You think they’re not jumping on the bandwagon? Only a matter of time. After all, the Toyota runaways didn’t give us mechanical braking and throttle back, they just got us another layer of software in the electronic pedal box.
Unfortunately, the Government is in favor of electronic this and electronic that. They WANT everything in the car to be software-controlled, because software can make records that can be collected and monitored, and humans are an unpredictable, unmeasurable factor that needs to be neutralized.
Um, don’t a lot of drivers casually allow the door to close if they get out to, say, open a gate or door? And wouldn’t that allow the vehicle to go back to whatever gear it had been in?
So what happens if the vehicle gets onto a situation where the driver decides to bail? (Or is that an additional means of stopping the car if the brake pedal doesn’t work? Old automatics had a “safety” feature that prevented them from going into park if the vehicle was traveling at speed.)
If ‘Somebody’ intended to bring the World to a sudden halt at a particular moment in time, they would ensure that virtually everything was controlled by Electronic devices. These could be destroyed instantly by detonating a high-energy device that will immobilize everything electronically operated. This is why a 10 year-old cranked-engine trumps modern technology. Crazy old man? I think not. Take control of your life!
There’s a method in their ‘madness’ and it’s not what you imagine.
All vehicles sold in usa need to have identical park features, windshield wiper controls, light controls, heater controls, window and seat controls, etc and these NEVER to change. My favorite car was the 1949 chevy I owned. Got twenty mpg in town, would go a hundred miles an hour. No one needs to drive over a hundred mph. And the engine could be tuned up in about twenty minutes. Just change the plugs points and condenser. Under ten bucks. Could change the oil and filter in twenty minutes. under five bucks. You could pull the engine and overhaul it in a day for the cost of rings, gaskets, and bearings. Under thirty dollars. Six cylinders, but could bark the tires in all three gears if a stick tranny.
Oh, yeah.. and the headlights could be changed in five minutes with a phillips screwdriver for five dollars.
Sounds like a complictated system, & one that I would not even look at if I were going to purchase. So now with the update, it will automatically (maybe) go into park if you open driver’s door & motor is running…..So you can still maybe kill someone (like a child) if you exit & the motor is turned off, (or stalls)???? If this was known to Chrysler in April, it takes them until NOW to recall them?
All the more reason to stick with my old faithful GM. I have 3 of them ages 39 yrs,17 & 18 yrs, none of them were ever recalled for anything. And they still get great mileage.