Report: Regulators had role in GM deaths
House panel says problems were right in front of agency
WASHINGTON — Auto safety regulators played a significant role in General Motors’ failure to promptly report and recall cars with defective parts that led to at least 19 deaths, a congressional report said.
The report, made public Tuesday, said officials at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration repeatedly failed to identify the problems with the faulty ignition switches.
“It is tragic that the evidence was staring NHTSA in the face and the agency didn’t identify the warnings,” said Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which released the findings.
Representatives for the agency could not be reached immediately for comment.
NHTSA Deputy Administrator David Friedman has rapped GM for its “flawed” culture on recalls, saying the automaker put its repu- tation ahead of the safety of its customers.
According to the House panel’s findings, NHTSA staff had the power and information that it needed to act on the faulty GM switches.
But the staff was hampered by “lack of knowledge and awareness regarding the evolution of vehicle safety systems they regulate,” the report said.
Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Pa., head of the House panel’s investigative subcommittee, said congressional investigators found that some of the same problems at GM “also plagued its regulator,” including “a lack of accountability, poor information sharing and a fundamental misunderstanding of the vehicles.”
“Both GM and NHTSA had a responsibility to act, and both share culpability in this safety failure,” he said.
A defective ignition switch in millions of GM cars can cause the engine to suddenly switch off, disabling the power steering. A number of drivers crashed and were killed as air bags failed to deploy.
At least since 2007, the agency had in its possession reports that looked at air bag nondeployments and questioned, particularly in the case of a Wisconsin crash that killed two people, whether the air bags could have been disabled because the ignition key moved to the “accessory” rather than the “run” position.
NHTSA’s data pointed to enough of a problem with air bags that some officials wanted a deeper investigation.
But on at least two occasions, the Office of Defect Investigation i nside NHTSA ruled that data on nondeployments in Chevrolet Cobalts didn’t warrant it.
Those probes, which could have resulted in a safety recall years ago, were also hampered by NHTSA investigators believing that the air bag systems were designed not to deploy under certain off-road conditions.
Because several of the crashes occurred under those conditions, investigators believed the air bags were operating correctly.
Detroit Free Press contributed.