On April 30 2003, about 6:30 pm I was driving my 2001 Chevrolet Venture minivan through a rainstorm near dalton, ga on I-75 heading North. Suddenly, without warning, the windshield wipers collided. The collision bent the wipers and jammed the driver's side wiper off the windshield to the left. I had no vision to the front and the area was dark due to the storm. Luckily I was able to pull off the road to the left. I was unable to repair the driver's side wiper as it spun freely. I was able to rebend the passenger side wiper blade and that one worked sufficiently to make it back on the road when the storm lessened. This vehicle is less than 2 years old. It is out of warranty because we have over 48,000 miles on it. Still, something as important as windshield wipers should not fail as soon as our Venture's did, and fail in such a way as to be acutely dangerous. We narrowly missed adding four deaths to the national highway totals. This part should have been designed and built in a more robust fashion. From now on I will be apprehensive whenever my wife or I drive this car in rain. After repairs at a local dealer, the wiper arm still sweep the driver's side blade past the outer (left) side of the windshield, causing the blade to hesitate before the return stroke. This was the cause of the original damage when the wiper arm became unsyncronized with the passenger side arm. These are very long arms and, unfortunately, this design creates considerable pressure on the point where the blade arm is attached to the driving shaft. The dealership stated that they are unable to adjust the windshield wipers to avoid the overlap without causing damage on the other end of the sweep. Obviously, this is a design fault. When windshield wipers fail by collision there is a probability of that failure to cause an accident, which is likely to be fatal. Chevrolet's dealer service departments are unable to cope with this problem.

- St. Petersburg, FL, USA