Jeep vehicles linked to dozens of deaths are still being connected to collision fatalities a year and a half after they were recalled by Chrysler.
More than 1 million Jeep Liberty and Grand Cherokee vehicles with gas tanks that can explode and catch fire during rear-end crashes have not yet been repaired, and at least six people have died in five highway crashes since the recall in June 2013, Bloomberg reported.
"It's a callous disregard for human life by Chrysler," Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety, told Bloomberg. The safety advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., provided the six-person death count.
While they've been distracted by disasters like General Motors' fatal ignition switches and Takata's faulty air bags, federal regulators have been urging Chrysler for months to speed up the Jeep recall.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in July that at the given rate, Chrysler would spend most of the next five years to fix the 1.56 million Jeep Grand Cherokee and Jeep Liberty models affected in the recall, which includes 2002-'07 Jeep Liberty and 1993-'98 Jeep Grand Cherokee sport utility vehicles.
For its part, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles has said that the recall poses a significant challenge because it involves tracking down owners of vehicles as old as two decades, many of which have been passed on to second or third owners.
When the six deaths in the last 18 months are added, the total number of fatalities related to Jeep vehicles with exploding engines is at 62 people. In comparison, GM's ignition switches installed in 2.59 million small cars have been linked to at least 42 deaths.
Carmakers have to report to federal regulators each quarter regarding how many cars have been fixed for each recall. NHTSA Deputy Director David Friedman said in November that FCA had completed repairs on a mere 3 percent of the 1.56 million affected vehicles in a six-month period. Bloomberg puts that repair rate as the lowest for any recall of more than 1 million vehicles in the last five years.
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