Comment by maxerickson

Defect appears to have a particular meaning in relation to vehicle safety. I'm just basing that on the way it is used here:

http://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/recalls/recallprocess.cfm

I guess it isn't that big a stretch to use such defensive language, there are a lot of things that can be tampered with on a vehicle that arise out of engineering trade offs.

I don't mean to dismiss the problem at hand, but it is only an issue if someone makes an effort to tamper with a vehicle, which is different than a critical part failing prematurely or whatever.