Actor Anton Yelchin, who reached mainstream success for playing Pavel Chekov in the new Star Trek films, passed away on June 19th when his car rolled backwards when he was behind it and crushed him against his security fence. His car was a 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee, a car that is currently under a massive recall of 1.1 million cars by Fiat-Chrysler Automotive (FCA), the parent company of Jeep, for “defective design” of its shift knob after many complaints from drivers getting confused as to what gear they are in and ending up rolling their cars. Following Yelchin’s death, a group of Grand Cherokee owners filed a $5 million class-action lawsuit against FCA for not doing enough to quickly address the issue that supposedly caused 266 crashes and 66 injuries prior to Yelchin’s death. So is Jeep’s new shifter design really flawed? No. So why are people demanding millions of dollars? Why is there a massive recall over this supposedly “flawed” design? What really caused Anton Yelchin’s untimely death?

This is the shift knob in question, used in new Jeep Grand Cherokees.

Here is a conventional shifter in a new Dodge Charger, another car made by FCA.

This design is the traditional automatic transmission shift knob that we are all familiar with; push three notches down from park to put the car in drive, and push three notches up from drive to put the car to park.

But the Grand Cherokee’s shift knob, the shifter in question, uses a monostable configuration, which means the shift knob always returns to the center position after being pushed forwards or backwards to change gear. It’s a common configuration in electronic gear shifters, which are becoming more and more common as manufacturers are switching to electronically controlled transmissions for efficiency and fuel economy. BMW and Mercedes-Benz also used designs similar to the Grand Cherokees.

With a conventional automatic transmission shifter design, you would depress the brakes, then push the shift knob forwards three detents, or three clicks in order to put the car in “park”. Everyone with a driver’s license knows this. With Jeep’s shift knob, you do the exact same thing to put the car in “park”; press the brakes and push the shifter forward three detents. The only difference is that the Jeep’s shifter will come back to its center position.

The argument against Jeep’s shifter design is that people who are not familiar with the design or in a hurry could potentially only push the shifter forward one detent into neutral, which would allow the vehicle to roll forwards or backwards depending on the incline, and because the shifter always returns to the middle, people don’t know what gear position they’re in, leading to accidents.

However, the fact is that the Grand Cherokee has all the warnings that alert drivers that they are not in park before they get out of the car. Firstly, there’s the light in the shifter, which illuminates the gear position that you are in (notice how in first picture, the letter ‘P’ is illuminated blue for parking), then the car’s dashboard screen always displays what gear position you are currently in. Secondly, in the Grand Cherokee, when any of the doors are opened when the shifter is not in parking, a chime rings--just like it would in any other car--and on the dashboard screen, the text “Vehicle Not In Park” will appear, and the dashboard screen is six inches wide.

But I am not saying that Jeep is completely faultless for the accidents and the tragic death of Anton Yelchin. Far from it, actually. Jeep is currently starting a recall program where they are installing software that would automatically engage the parking brake if any of the vehicle’s doors are opened when the vehicle is in neutral, and in all honesty, that’s a safety measure that they should’ve thought of before launching a car with a brand-new shifter design. Different people take different amounts of time when getting used to new designs and technologies, and as a multinational auto manufacturer, they should’ve realized that.

Most importantly, though, the Grand Cherokee’s shift knob should not be classified as a “design fault”. No owner should be hounding Fiat-Chrysler Automotive for millions of dollars because as owners, it is their responsibility to understand how their vehicle works for their own safety, their family’s safety and the safety of other drivers on the road. All cars come with owner’s manuals for a reason.

The death of Anton Yelchin is untimely and tragic. The same goes for the 66 people who were injured because of this whole matter. However, this is not just one party’s fault. It’s a case of mutual clumsiness of both Jeep for not thinking of a rather simple safety measure, and for the owners who do not take time to fully understand how their vehicle works. Hopefully, some good will come out of this tragedy and teach a valuable lesson to every car manufacturer and their customers. As cars get more advanced with more technological features and innovations, manufacturers should realize that not every customer is a tech-savvy youth who’s going to instantly understand how those new features will work, and go the extra mile to look into smaller details to make sure their cars prevent an accident from user errors like this. Owners should not start driving their vehicles before they take time to study and understand their car and its features in order to guarantee their safety and safety of other drivers.