Lemonade,Firstly, manufacturers have to recall a part if a certain percentage of these vehicles in the field have failed, and the failure threshold for recall is very low. Thus, automakers are more keen on recalling them before the Fed Authorities get involved to avoid massive bad PR, etc. Seriously, if you short circuit something in your car, a fuse will blow, quickly. If you overdrive an electric device that is being driven from your ECM/TCM/BCM, there are internal current shunts that shut the individual system down until the next drive cycle, and might possible set the Check-Engine-Light. Probability of anything going wrong in a dangerous manner is something like 1 in many many millions. Just goes to show, the more electronics and doo-dads we demand on our cars, the more likelyhood something can go wrong. Can't fault GM for this, things like this happen. Just like in society, you are going to have some bad apples, regardless of environment and breeding. This kind of thing happens to all OEM's.