Actor crushed to death by his jeep, shines a spotlight on a known problem with the vehicle [View all]

[cali]

The death of the actor Anton Yelchin, killed when his Jeep Grand Cherokee rolled backward down a driveway and crushed him against a mailbox pillar last weekend, has cast a public spotlight on a problem with some models of Jeeps and other Fiat Chrysler vehicles.

But for the company, there is nothing new about the issue — which federal regulators first flagged last August.

The question is why, nearly a year later, Fiat Chrysler has still not come up with a fix for the problem, which has now been linked to hundreds of accidents, dozens of injuries and now — potentially — a well-publicized death.

The company, which issued a recall notice on more than one million affected vehicles in April, will say only it is still working on a solution, there was no decision about a recall until this year and there has been no delay. It has written to federal regulators that the remedy will include a software change and “an additional mechanism to mitigate the effect of operator error.”

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read:http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/22/business/anton-yelchins-death-highlights-a-known-issue-with-jeeps.html?_r=0

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/21/business/jeep-that-crushed-anton-yelchin-had-been-recalled.html