Chrysler Knowledge Of Vehicle Crashworthiness

During my two-year tenure as chairman of the Chrysler Safety Leadership Team (1992-1994) I was required to make numerous safety recommendations to upper management. Included in that group was Francois J. Castaing, Executive Vice President of Engineering. At this time Castaing was also Product Executive assigned to all Jeep products and Jeep business planning.

In severe injury product litigation (Tenaglia v. Chrysler) the crashworthiness of a Jeep product was examined. During the deposition of March 14, 1996, plaintiff attorney Larry Coben asks Castaing, executive of all Chrysler vehicle engineering, to define the term 'crash-worthiness' for the jury. The relevant Castaing testimony appears on Page 11 of the transcript and beginning at five-minutes-forty-seconds on the attached video:

Q: What does the term crashworthiness mean in terms of the design of a product?
A: I don't know. Tell me.

Q: You don't know the phrase?
A: No.

Q: As the chief engineer of the company, are you at all familiar with the use of the phrase crashworthiness by the engineers of the company?!
A: Crashworthiness is so vague that you have to tell me what you intend by that.
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http://links.veronicachapman.com/CastaingTenagliaDep-Jeep-Partial.pdf
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The Tenaglia case was settled out-of-court very quickly and quietly after this Castaing deposition and after the Judge had agreed to issue a trial subpoena for Castaing .

For those who would like to go-beyond Chrysler public relations rhetoric, and learn the truth about that company's historical thru current approach to safety, I recommend that you download/read the letter I wrote to Attorney General Janet Reno in October 1999:

http://links.veronicachapman.com/Sheridan-to-Reno-1.pdf

You might wish to review the COLORED TAB and TAB 27 as a quick introduction. This readership will introduce you to the stark reality behind the PR machinations about "meets or exceeds all applicable federal safety standards."
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Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• chrysler
• jeep
• safety
• minivan
• lawsuit
• crash
• crashworthiness
• engineer
• engineering
• NHTSA
• dodge
• plymouth
• Mercedes

[Anothercoilgun]

Typical. Do not want to listen. And they wonder why their company is in the crapper. I never had nor will I ever touch chrysler.

[dodgechryslersucks]

Listen to customers?

I guess customers can't speak when they're dead due to massive widespread safety defects as with Gen3 Seatbelts, unsafe Latches, Seats that collapse backward, no Brakeshift, LH Steering that can cause sudden loss of control.

[dodgechryslersucks]

This genius is also responsible for the LH Platform's (world's worst steering design in automotive history) as well as another one of his home runs in stupid automotive engineering.

TRW who was to supply Chrysler with the Rack and Pinion assemblies for LH Vehicles advised Chrysler AGAINST this design saying they had limited experience with such a design and tried to get Chrysler to go for a proven, standard end take off design, but no Chrysler had to have this guys POS center take off design