NHTSA Complaint #11515480 — 2015 CHEVROLET IMPALA

My son (a brand new driver) was driving to school with me in the passenger seat on surface streets at approximately 45 mph at 0600 and an error message came on the console about “Service Power Steering - Drive With Care” or something akin to that and my son was unable to steer the car. He was able to slightly steer it into a turn lane (right hand turn into a neighborhood) and almost struck an oncoming car. He was able to stop and switch seats with me. Thankfully traffic was light enough and no one was behind us for me to back up about 10 feet to enable me to muscle the car into the neighborhood side street to pull over. I immediately turned the car off, waited ~30 seconds and restarted the engine…still couldn’t drive and error message came up again. Waited another 5-10 minutes and turned the ignition and was able to turn the wheel with ease, so I drove the car the ~5 miles home with no issue, but immediately called a service repair shop; they told me that this was a known issue. (WHAT THE WHAT?!?! Losing the ability to steer while careening down the road is a FLIPPING KNOWN ISSUE AND THERE HAS NOT BEEN A SAFETY RECALL?!? WE COULD HAVE BEEN KILLED AND KILLED OTHERS!). I immediately took it to the repair shop as I refused to drive it as it was unnecessarily unsafe! The repair was quoted as $5,200 (brand new GM part replacement) or $3,800 (reconditioned part - which ironically had a better warranty on it than the genuine GM part!)…I needed my car so I authorized the repair. Not happy! (A side note and a huge slap in the face is that my father did and my husband actually still works for GM…I’ve seen all the near-misses reported here and NO ONE KNEW THIS WAS AN ISSUE UNTIL DRIVING AND THE ABILITY TO STEER WAS LOST! Thank goodness we were on a surface street and not interstate! My novice driver could have EASILY been killed if he was in a different driving situation. GM NEEDS TO ORDER A RECALL!!