Every once in a while, you have an experience that causes you too just shake your head with wonder.

Like the other day while driving my kids to school, a car next to me started to drift into my lane. As I moved over, to counter the move, I looked over at the lane intruder ready to launch a verbal barrage of histrionics when I saw some thing that totally shocked me. There, right there, in the now correcting back into his lane car, was a man brushing his teeth while looking in his rear view mirror! If that was not bad enough, just then, he opened his door, while moving at around 35 miles-per-hour, and…. spit.

Words escaped me at that moment. I just had to shake my head and wonder – what in the world can he be thinking?

For eleven years I tolerated a round trip commute of fifty-two miles a day. In that time I observed many fellow commuters doing some pretty amazing, and dumb things while driving. Women putting on make-up, men shaving, clothes being changed, but never some one brushing their teeth then spitting while still driving.

For all of those incidents, I just had to shake my head.

Such is the case with one of the latest recalls by the car manufacturers.

Recently, General Motors has had to recall a number of their Chevrolet Cruze compact cars due to, are you ready for this – the steering wheels not being properly installed. It seems that they were not attached tightly enough. The result – they can literally come off in your hands while driving!

So, imagine this, your driving down the road in your brand new 2011 Chevy Cruze. You’re enjoying the spring day driving with the windows down on your way to your mother’s house to show her your new purchase. You’re proud of the fact that you’re helping out Government Motors by purchasing one of their cars instead of a Toyota Corolla, the main competitor.

You approach the correct street. You see an opening in the on- coming traffic so you speed up a little to make a quick turn and just as your starting to turn the steering wheel onto mom’s street – it comes off in your hands! Now you’re in the street having started to turn and you have no steering wheel and traffic is approaching. That is what I call a driver’s nightmare! And it happened to at least one owner of a 2011 Chevrolet Cruze.

Now if that situation is not scary enough, the explanation of why it happened provided by Chevrolet to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) might be even worse.

According to Chevrolet, it traced the problem to the fact that the wrong steering wheel was put onto the car while on the assembly line. What? The wrong steering wheels in a plant that manufacturers the Cruze. Scary.

Later, how much later we do not know for sure, when the problem was discovered, the correct wheel was installed. However, the new wheel was not attached properly. It was not tightened enough.

So lets review. GM’s manufacturing plant – where the Cruze is being built – had the wrong steering wheel in place for assembly on the Cruze. No one notices this and the wrong wheel is attached. How many wrong wheels were attached? Well the recall is for 2,100 cars so we can assume that at least that many cars had the wrong wheel installed. Finally, the problem is discovered and the correct wheels are installed but, those wheels, or at least one of them, are not attached properly. How does this happen?

You just have to shake your head.

One must ask – how long has Chevrolet / GM been making cars?

General Motors has been building cars since 1908 and Chevrolet since 1911. I will take a leap here and guess that in all of that time, most, if not all of the vehicles built by both have had steering wheels. And yet, here we are a hundred years later and they are having problems with the steering wheels.

As I have said before – these are the expert manufacturers that we are supposed to trust for all of our parts and service? These are the people that, according to them anyway, produce better parts than the independent aftermarket?

For some time now the original equipment manufacturers have been trying there hardest to scare the American people into believing aftermarket parts are inferior and even dangerous. All this sanctimonious talk from them and they can’t even get a steering wheel on right. Shame on them!

Makes you want to shake your head… and wonder.