Fiat Chrysler’s ‘Confusing’ Gear Shifter Has Caused Over 100 Crashes
USA’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has significantly expanded its investigation into the apparently ‘confusing’ gear shifter found in around 400,000 Grand Cherokees. The organisation is now looking at 856,000 vehicles in total, covering 3.6-litre V6 Grand Cherokees from 2014 and 2015, Dodge Chargers from 2012-2014 and Chrysler 300s from the same period.
The issue is that the electronic shifter - a part made by German firm ZF - returns to the middle position after each selection. It doesn’t feature a park button either, and according to the NHTSA, these two factors have resulted in numerous owners inadvertently exiting their vehicles with the car is still in drive.
The organisation reckons that 306 roll-away incidents involving Grand Cherokees can be attributed to confusion over the selector, allegedly leading to 117 crashes and 28 injuries in the USA. The NHTSA stated that their testing revealed “poor tactile and visual feedback to the driver, increasing the potential for unintended gear selection.”
It’s worth mentioning that the cars in question do have an audible and visual warning that appears if the driver’s door is opened while the vehicle is not in park.
A recall has not yet been issued, but Fiat Chrysler Automobiles says that it’s cooperating with the NHTSA’s investigations.
Source: Detroit News
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
With all new technology you’ll have people who fail to use it properly and who blame the technology for their own inadequacies and ignorance.
Basicly you are saying is that because people are so lazy to drive stick shift so they buy an automatic, but they are too stupid to drive one (even doe its easier then stick shift, i would put this kind of ppl out of the road). Hell its almost same as sequential which i honestly dont use often but whne i do i remember geas im in, i dont have to look at dash and see what gear i am in.
Problem is peopel getting lazy and stupid each day, dont be like them, drive stick and dont complain!
I was a valet and got messed up by many shifters like these… but only similar ones, I don’t recall any issues with the jeeps in particular.
I’ve driven a Jeep with this shifter once and after a few shifts it’s really not that bad. It was hard to get use to the lack of feed back at first but nothing I couldn’t live with.
I bet way more people leave their keyless entry hybrids on when they walk away. I saw that a ton.
Why this kind of sh…ituations only happen in USA?
A magical device called “Hand Brake” don’t exist there?
You don’t need a park brake it you have an automatic
It is there, just a lot of Americans think that the park on the transmission means that is all you need
When you buy crap from FCG, you get what you pay for. the only good thing is that when your car randomly rolls away, a wheel may randomly fall off or catch on fire and that’ll stop the car. Both things I have seen FCG cars do in the past few months….
As a person who has a friend who owns one of these vehicles in question (and judging from the comments, I’m not the only one), I can confirm that this shifter issue is legit. Many times I have tried shifting my friend’s Jeep into Reverse and ended up putting it in Drive. Luckily I triple and quadruple check what gear I’m in, regardless of transimission type.
so, they become tl;dr with the user manual and when they didn’t understand how to use it, they blame the maker?
Muricans so dumb!