Apr 03 2014
General Motors Under Fire For Fatal Auto Defects
When did General Motors know about fatal defects in their cars and why did it wait so long to do anything about it? Those are some of the questions that members of Congress asked GM CEO Mary Barra this week in a series of public hearings.
To date, at least thirteen people have been killed over the past few years, tied to faulty ignition switches as well as air bags that failed to deploy in GM cars like the Chevy Cobalt and the Saturn Ion. Fixing the ignition switches would have cost GM less than a dollar per vehicle.
While Barra admitted that GM has both legal and moral obligations to the families of the victims, she maintained that since GM filed bankruptcy in 2009 and is actually considered a new company now, they are not legally responsible for accidents prior to that.
Ms. Barra acknowledged the current need to recall about 2.6 million GM vehicles but assured members of the Senate subcommittee that they are safe to drive until the parts arrive as long as ignition keys are not weighed down by heavy objects on the same ring.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is also under scrutiny to oversee GM’s product defects.
GUEST: Rosemary Shahan, President of Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety
Visit www.carconsumers.org for more information.
One Response to “General Motors Under Fire For Fatal Auto Defects”
Of course, no one thinks about the consequences of cutting taxes, or railing against government that is too big. People somehow fail to consider that there will be an accounting at some point. Well, deaths due to faulty cars, broken down infrastructure and tainted food, which that can’t be monitored or inspected because the funding for the agencies responsible have been cut to the bone, is what results. You get what you pay for folks. Still, GM has done a terrible job handling the crisis, as this article shows….http://bit.ly/1ouHq1J