What Did Federal Investigators Do When It Delayed Action in GM Recalls

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Federal safety investigators put General Motors beneath a microscope earlier this week, asking the troubled automaker 107 detailed questions regarding its decade-long delay in recalling cars with a deadly defect. Now, it may be the government government’s turn to face questions.

The Center for Auto Safety, among the nation’s leading automotive safety organizations, wishes to know why federal regulators failed to act even though they had knowledge of the ignition-switch problem since 2007.

In a letter sent today, Clarence Ditlow, the organization’s president, said the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration not only failed to protect motorists, but charged it kept details of its preliminary inquiries secret and effectively helped GM hide this defect.

While GM bears completely responsibility for failing to recall these vehicles by 2005, when it knew what the defect was and the way to fix it, NHTSA has responsibility for failing to order a recall by early 2007, Ditlow wrote. … People died and the agency shares responsibility for their deaths with GM.

Although documents show General Motors knew about the dangerous ignition switch problem in 2004, the company failed to recall any vehicles until February, when GM announced it would recall more than 1.37 million vehicles, including certain kinds of the Chevrolet Cobalt and Chevrolet HHR, the Saturn Ion and Saturn Sky and Pontiac G5 and Pontiac Solstice.

Thus far, 13 deaths and 31 crashes happen to be attributed to the situation, in which the ignition switch inadvertently moves through the run to accessory position, and cuts power to the airbags and engine.

Could the death toll grow? The Center for Auto Safety says NHTSA received at the very least 51 reports of death claims from GM via its Early Warning Reporting system between 2012 and 2004. Federal investigators sought more information in no less than 29 of the 51 reports, including 17 records before a meeting in 2007.

On March 29 of that year, NHTSA investigators and GM representatives met to discuss an accident that killed a 16-year-old Maryland girl whose airbags did not deploy in a 2005 Cobalt.

Following it, NHTSA stopped seeking more information about similar crashes, even though details from that meeting are unknown. According to the Center for Auto Safety, ahead of 2007, NHTSA sent GM inquiries on 90 percent of crashes published to the Early Warning Report system; after 2007, the agency sought more information in just 38 percent of deadly cases.

Americans need NHTSA’s Early Warning Reporting system to actually provide early warnings, instead of just a rear-view mirror look into what has already gone wrong, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said Friday. If NHTSA won’t take action to greatly increase public disclosure of information linked to potential safety defects, I am going to introduce legislation ensuring that it does so.

Former NHTSA administrator Joan Claybrook echoed Markey’s displeasure together with the agency she used to lead. On Friday, she sent a letter to the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Transportation asking for an impartial investigation into NHTSA’s failure to demand a recall.

Nobody is evaluating why NHTSA failed to carry out the law, she said. I am asking you to undertake a whole evaluation of the failure, taking into consideration the overt secrecy the agency now imposes on most from the defect investigation work in order that the public is deterred from pressing the agency to act.

Earlier this week, Claybrook called upon new General Motors CEO Mary Barra to send a recall notice to consumers that underscores the severity of the ignition-switch problem.