The continued decline of standards at a major manufacturer of automobiles, that's pretty interesting to me.

Poor design happens, but when given opportunity to resolve this they attempted to resolve it with zip ties. That's embarrassingly cowboy, especially in the wake of the emissions scandal. It's kind of impressive that the regulatory body permitted it too.

>The continued decline of standards at a major manufacturer of automobiles

Do you have any data to support this? I would argue that standards are increasing, and that cars are safer and better today than at any other point in history.

I'd say that the emissions scandal alone represents a pretty substantial decline in standards

That German regulators are so thoroughly captured by industry that they approve a zip tie for a safety critical fix and apparently didn’t order them to do crash testing again

There was a defect, they recalled the cars to fix them, the fixed cars go back to customers and the issue they were recalled for can still happen.

> The remedy is not a valid one, since the TM tested a recall repaired car and found that the zip ties snap apart at during a strong braking. This means after such an event the fatal flaw in Volkswagen seat belts remains in place, rendering the recall useless.

>There was a defect, they recalled the cars to fix them, the fixed cars go back to customers and the issue they were recalled for can still happen.

Right, it has been acknowledged that the fix did not work. Waste of time and money for everyone involved. How would you like a recall process like this to work? Not everything is a scandal.

So because it isn't a "scandal" it's not interesting news that a major company half-assed a fix for safety problem?

The fix was such that it never should have been approved?