737 Max was the same thing, and we all know how that went. One of the side effects of the hollowing out of the public sector under neo-liberalism that results in "self-regulation".
The one time I saw a federal regulator at my last job, I was coached for literally a week on exactly what to tell him by management. Day of, I just ignored them and pointed out all the obvious safety issues once we were in the private meeting. No advisories were given based off of my advice anyway. :yea:
my only directive when i was a manager and a usda guy came in was to immediately run to get the manager on duty and basically flee the scene lol minimize who contacts them.
probalbly for reasons like what you did! because i would have brought some stuff up too
we had USDA inspectors at the pork plant I worked at for a few months... they were required to make the rounds every shift
i only ever saw them maybe a handful of times and each time they didn't actually walk through the packaging dept to inspect anything.. they just came, checked all the boxes on the sheets hanging on the wall at the entrance/exit, and disappeared again
I looked at this at the time; they only test vehicles they want to, essentially. They don't HAVE to test anything, and they frequently don't test low production cars, sports cars, exotics, etc
I imagine at some point they will test the bazingamobile, but only because of how high profile it is and how frequent things like this will be