Photo: IMDB.com/ Paramount Pictures and Indian Paintbrush Productions, LLC
Anton Yelchin, the Russian actor famous for the rebooted Star Trek series and movies like Alpha Dog or Broken Horses, died this June after he was crushed by his car.
The accident happened in his driveway, in front of his Studio City home, and was related to a confusing gear shifter design used in his 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee. According to court records, Anton’s parents, Victor and Irina Yelchin, have filed court documents to become the administrators of their son’s estate with the Los Angeles Superior Court.
Anton Yelchin died without a will, and had left an estate of approximately $1.4 million. According to the Associated Press, his family plans to sue Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, the corporation that owns the Jeep brand and builds the Grand Cherokee. The reported charges will be wrongful death, according to sources quoted by Associated Press.
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles has already expressed their sympathies to the late actor’s family, but company representatives have not commented the matter further. An investigation of the NHTSA has revealed 266 accidents involving the potentially confusing gear shifter design, and 68 people were injured because of it as of late June 2016.
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles has decided to issue a global recall action for 1.1 million vehicles fitted with a monostable gear selector, which can be confusing to use. As previously explained, the problem is that the gear lever always returns to the central position after selecting a gear.
In case the user wants to select Park, so that the vehicle is safely stopped, they must wait for the transmission to acknowledge the input, while going through Neutral and Reverse. In conventional gear selector designs, this is not an issue, as the level opposes a mechanical resistance to the actions of the operator.
Furthermore, other automakers with monostable shifter designs, like BMW, had the inspiration to place both a dedicated “Park” button on their selectors, as well as a button to “unlock” the shifter from the Drive or Sport gear, a switch that exists in the 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee and equivalent models.
Anton Yelchin died without a will, and had left an estate of approximately $1.4 million. According to the Associated Press, his family plans to sue Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, the corporation that owns the Jeep brand and builds the Grand Cherokee. The reported charges will be wrongful death, according to sources quoted by Associated Press.
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles has already expressed their sympathies to the late actor’s family, but company representatives have not commented the matter further. An investigation of the NHTSA has revealed 266 accidents involving the potentially confusing gear shifter design, and 68 people were injured because of it as of late June 2016.
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles has decided to issue a global recall action for 1.1 million vehicles fitted with a monostable gear selector, which can be confusing to use. As previously explained, the problem is that the gear lever always returns to the central position after selecting a gear.
In case the user wants to select Park, so that the vehicle is safely stopped, they must wait for the transmission to acknowledge the input, while going through Neutral and Reverse. In conventional gear selector designs, this is not an issue, as the level opposes a mechanical resistance to the actions of the operator.
Furthermore, other automakers with monostable shifter designs, like BMW, had the inspiration to place both a dedicated “Park” button on their selectors, as well as a button to “unlock” the shifter from the Drive or Sport gear, a switch that exists in the 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee and equivalent models.
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