General Motors is petitioning the NHTSA to not recall certain 2014 Chevrolet Silverado and 2014 GMC Sierra trucks for a technical hiccup that could result in the instrument panel display being temporarily interrupted.
According to a non-compliance report sent to the NHTSA last October, under certain rare circumstances, when an owner uses the steering wheel controls to browse songs from an external device plugged into one of the vehicle’s USB ports, the instrument cluster could reset. When the instrument cluster resets, the analog gauges and identifications, the shift position indicator, and the cruise control could briefly turn off. In addition, some of the instrument cluster warning lights may also illuminate briefly without a condition being present.
GM’s report to the NHTSA states that the subject noncompliance is inconsequential to motor vehicle safety because the problem is extremely unlikely to occur. The driver must operate a media device inserted into one of the vehicle’s USB ports in a very specific way, and the driver must browse songs in which the total information in titles of the buffered songs exceeds 2,000 bytes.
GM said it is aware of only two incidents, both occurring on test fleet vehicles which had already logged over 7 million miles. All trucks built since October have already had the issue corrected.