At some level, I am horrified at what was done with prior knowledge by this institution. At another, this incident makes me wonder how this ties into the diffused nature of responsibility within corporations. Was the diffusion of responsibility within these corporations was so great that they could perpetuate these acts without any one individual bearing the moral responsibility of what happened? If so, then these corporations inadvertently have created an entity that is independent of the individual stakeholders and their moral pangs. That is a very frightening prospect...

It is not only responsibility but also knowledge. The ignition switch engineer may not be aware of what exactly it turns on and off; even if that engineer is, other engineers are not. (See page 1 of the GM Valukas report)

Analogy: does your DBA know about flushing to disk?

Very good point. In huge systems such as a car everybody can not know everything. But in this case, if the ignition switch team does not know how their component affects everything about the car or how important it is the responsibility should move up to whoever writes the specs on the ignition switch. First of all for designing a system with a single point of failure in the first place, secondly for not loudly notifying ignition switch team that their component is vitally important and a single point of failure. As i also said in a post above, way too much attention is given to the faulty switch when this is actually a much larger system design error.

He was an ardent atheist who underwent a deathbed conversion. The person who administered the last sacraments to him - Father Anselm Strittmatter - said that he was so terrified of dying that he did his best to distract himself from that prospect. Even spending time reciting Goethe's Faust to his brother.

He was a brilliant man and he was understandably terrified of the very mortal fate that awaits all of us.