GM’s Barra: ‘I cannot tell you why it took years for a safety defect to be announced’
GM’s Barra: ‘I cannot tell you why it took years for a safety defect to be announced’
(about 5 hours later)
General Motors chief executive Mary T. Barra faced a barrage of questions on Capitol Hill on Tuesday afternoon on why the automaker had ignored complaints about faulty ignition switches for a decade without reporting the problem to federal regulators or acknowledging a safety defect.
General Motors chief executive Mary T. Barra on Tuesday deflected a barrage of questions on Capitol Hill about the automaker’s failure to fix a deadly ignition-switch flaw, telling lawmakers that she was unaware of the decade-old problem until early this year.
“I cannot tell you why it took years for a safety defect to be announced,” Barra said during her opening testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “I can tell you that we will find out.”
While she repeatedly apologized for a defect that GM has blamed for the deaths of at least 13 motorists, Barra also repeatedly ducked lawmakers’ sometimes testy queries, saying she is awaiting the results of an internal investigation.
GM has recalled 2.6 million vehicles to search for the faulty switches in Chevrolet Cobalts and five other small vehicles. The switches have been been linked to 13 deaths.
A GM lifer who became the company’s top executive in mid-January, Barra took pains to make a distinction between the cost-conscious “old GM” — which, she admitted, missed a series of red flags and may have engineered a coverup — and the post-bankruptcy “new GM,” which Barra said is focused on customer safety.
The crowd that filled the hearing room included family members of people who died in accidents in the recalled vehicles. About a dozen of the victims’ photos were lined up on a ledge along the back of the hearing room.
“I cannot tell you why it took years for a safety defect to be announced,” Barra told a House Energy and Commerce Committee investigative panel. “I can tell you that we will find out.”
In her statement, Barra expressed her “sincere apologies to everyone who has been affected by this recall… especially to the families and friends of those who lost their lives or were injured. I am deeply sorry.”
In her opening statement, Barra announced that Kenneth Feinberg, the lawyer who has helped mete out payments to victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and to victims of BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010, had been hired by GM to “explore and evaluate options in its response to families of accident victims.”
Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) noted that for more than a decade GM and auto regulators missed evidence of a defect that should have triggered a recall much sooner.
The move suggests that GM expects to face additional claims on behalf of people killed or injured in the recalled vehicles. Feinberg said Barra has asked him to examine options for compensating victims of the defect, which could include a broad settlement fund.
“Why didn’t GM and NHTSA put the pieces together for 10 years?” he asked Barra. “Why didn’t anyone ask the critically important questions?”
“Over the next 60 days, we hope to propose some objective claims-resolution approach that meets the needs of the victims, the company and the public interest,” Feinberg said in an interview.
Murphy went on to list nearly a dozen instances laid out in documents submitted to investigators where regulators and GM should have taken action.
GM has recalled 2.6 million Chevrolet Cobalts and other small vehicles because of the faulty switches. Lawmakers said GM could have fixed the defective switch for as little as 57 cents per vehicle. Still, the automaker waited more than a decade to issue a recall, despite mounting evidence of a problem, including 133 complaints to dealers and numerous legal settlements paid to families of people who perished in related accidents.
“To borrow a phrase, ‘What we have here is a failure to communicate -- and the results are deadly,” Murphy said.
Barra’s testimony seemed to do little to mollify lawmakers, many of whom appeared to have scoured the thousands of pages of documents the company submitted to congressional investigators. One after another, they grilled her about questionable company decisions, such as installing switches that did not meet GM’s technical specifications and quietly approving a new switch design in 2006 without assigning a new part number or initiating a recall.
Barra said she found “very disturbing” a statement made by a GM official who in 2005 rejected a proposed fix for the flawed switch because it was not cost effective.
“Ms. Barra, I know this isn’t the most enjoyable situation for you. But we’re in a situation where we don’t trust the company right now,” said Rep. Gregg Harper (R-Miss.).
The panel also heard from David Friedman, the acting head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which also failed for years to recognize the problem. Friedman pointed the finger at GM for not providing regulators with timely information that could have led federal regulators to order a recall.
“Our ability to find defects also requires automakers to act in good faith and on time,” Friedman said.
Asked by Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) whether GM had acted in good faith, Friedman said NHTSA has opened an investigation “to answer that exact question. And if we find they were not, we will hold them accountable.”
But lawmakers were also interested in NHTSA’s failures, demanding to know why the agency did not take action to determine why air bags in the Cobalt failed to deploy in a series of accidents — and to demand that GM remedy the problem.
Friedman defended the agency, saying it had compared the Cobalt’s track record with other vehicles and found no consistent trend. “When it came to [air bag] non-deployments, Cobalt was not an outlier,” he said.
Moreover, NHTSA investigators looking into specific crashes were not convinced that the air bags failed to deploy because of a faulty ignition switch. At the time, Friedman said, the idea that the switch could be jostled, flip to the “accessory” position and disable power steering, brakes and critical electronics, including air bags, was “one theory.”
“But in the crashes we looked at, investigators thought it was more likely that the air bag did not deploy because of the circumstances of the crash,” Friedman said.
“I know it looks like it should have been clear,” he added. “But it’s clear now in part because we have that clear connection from GM.”
The hearing took place in a room packed with observers, including the family members of people who died in the recalled vehicles. Photos of about a dozen crash victims — smiling young women, a Marine in his dress blues — were propped on a ledge at the back of the room.
Barra, who held a tearful meeting Monday night in GM’s Washington offices with nearly two dozen family members of crash victims, expressed her “sincere apologies to everyone who has been affected by this recall . . . especially to the families and friends of those who lost their lives or were injured. I am deeply sorry.”
She was less forthcoming about other matters. Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.), the chairman of the subcommittee conducting the hearing, noted that GM had missed evidence of the defect for more than a decade. Citing documents submitted by GM, Murphy listed nearly a dozen specific instances where he said GM — or federal regulators — should have taken action.
“Why didn’t GM and NHTSA put the pieces together for 10 years? Why didn’t anyone ask the critically important questions?” Murphy said. “To borrow a phrase, what we have here is a failure to communicate — and the results are deadly.”
Barra said she found “very disturbing” a statement made by a GM official who in 2005 rejected a proposed fix for the flawed switch because it was not cost-effective.
“That is not how we do business at today’s GM,” she said.
“That is not how we do business at today’s GM,” she said.
In her statement, Barra also announced that Kenneth Feinberg, the attorney who has helped mete out payments to victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and to victims of BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010, would be hired as a consultant to the company “explore and evaluate options in its response to families of accident victims whose vehicles are being recalled for possible ignition switch defects.”
Throughout nearly two hours of testimony, Barra remained even-tempered and contrite. But she was also tight-lipped and, at times, evasive.
The move seemed to indicate that GM expects to be facing additional claims and perhaps reopened claims linked to the faulty part.
Asked how often the automaker uses parts that do not match its specifications, Barra said the company always aims to use parts that are safe and reliable. Parts that do not meet technical requirements, she said, are not necessarily defective.
Several members of the panel pressed Barra on the company’s decision to use the switch even though it did not meet GM’s specifications. Barra explained that the decision is one of the questions at the center of an ongoing internal investigation.
“What you just answered is gobbledygook,” shot back Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.).
But she also added that just because a part does not meet specifications does not necessarily mean it is defective.
Later, after Barra had left the hearing room and been replaced at the witness table by Friedman, Barton summed up lawmakers’ reaction to her performance.
“What you just answered is gobbly-gook,” said Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.).
“I think it’s obvious,” he said, “that GM has some real questions that they’ve not done a very good job answering today.”
Pressure continued to mount on General Motors this week as House investigators determined that GM dealers fielded 133 complaints about the faulty ignition switches over nearly a decade. In the past week, House staffers reviewed the warranty claims database for the Chevrolet Cobalt and other small vehicles recalled by GM in February and March. They found recurring complaints about cars stalling or turning off when going over bumps or when the ignition key was jostled. Often, customers complained that they were traveling at highway speeds when their vehicles suddenly lost power, making it more difficult to steer and depress the brakes.
In many cases, service technicians and car owners pointed to faulty ignition switches as the likely cause of the problem, according to a memo released just hours before the House subcommittee hearing.
During the hearing, GM announced its monthly sales figures for March, with retail sales up 7 percent from a year ago and total vehicle sales up 4 percent from the previous year.
Earlier in the day, dozens of people gathered outside the Capitol in advance of the hearing to demand that lawmakers hold GM and the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration accountable for years of inaction.
“GM hid the problem for years. NHTSA missed the obvious warning signs. And people needlessly died in crashes,” said Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Auto Safety. “This is a complete failure of the recall system, and we must change the law to reform that system.”
Many of those present either lost family members in Cobalt crashes or experienced firsthand the frightening loss of power typical of the ignition switch defect, which caused Cobalts and other small GM cars to suddenly shut off while in motion, stiffening their brakes and steering, and disabling their air bags.
Samantha Denti of Tom’s River, N.J., said her red 2005 Cobalt lost power three times on the highway, nearly causing accidents as following motorists swerved to avoid hitting her.
“All of a sudden, my car went from 45 to 0 within seconds,” Denti said. “This car was surely a death trap. . . . My hope is that the horror stops right now.”
The birth mother and adoptive mother of Amber Marie Rose, 16, the first known victim of the ignition switch failure, appeared together to lament Rose’s death in the predawn hours of July 29, 2005, when her new Cobalt crashed at the end of a cul-de-sac in Charles County, Md.
Rose had been drinking, and she was not wearing a seat belt. But a police officer noted that her air bag — which could have saved her life — had not deployed.
The family hired an investigator, who turned his findings over to GM. Within weeks, the automaker offered the family a financial settlement. But it was not until a few weeks ago that they learned that the air bags did not deploy because the car’s ignition switch had shifted into the accessory position.
“GM needs to be held accountable to the public,” said Terry DiBattistia, Rose’s adoptive mother. “It is clear that GM is only concerned with their bottom line and not the safety of our loved ones.”
Rose’s family is not alone. Several families said they realized only in recent weeks that the accidents that claimed their sons and daughters involved a defective part that GM — and federal regulators — had long been aware of.
Sarah Trautwein, 19, lost control of her blue 2005 Chevrolet Cobalt on Interstate 95 near Charleston, S.C. as she headed home from visiting friends in June 2009. Her car began to run off the road, authorities said, causing her to overcorrect and hit a tree in the highway median. She died instantly.
Her family took small comfort in the idea that she had fallen asleep at the wheel. At least, they thought, she died in peace. So they were shaken to learn just last week that Trautwein’s air bag had never deployed — as was the case for 13 people who died in accidents that GM has linked to the defect.
“This opens up a whole new thing. It is kind of crazy,” Phil Trautwein, Sarah Trautwein’s brother, said in an interview.
Barra met with several family members late Monday at the automaker’s D.C. offices. She repeated her apologies about the company’s mishandling of the defect and vowed to use the results of an internal investigation being led by former federal prosecutor Anton Valukas to hold company executives accountable.
“There wasn’t a dry eye in the room,” said Bob Hilliard, a Corpus Christi, Tex., lawyer who sued GM on behalf of several victims’ families and attended the meeting.
Barra, who took over as GM’s CEO in mid-January, is expected to face tough questions in the House and on Wednesday in the Senate from lawmakers alarmed that the company installed the ignition switches manufactured by a supplier, Delphi, even though they did not meet all of the automaker’s technical specifications.
“This information raises important new questions about what GM knew, when GM knew about the risks from this faulty ignition switch, and how the company has handled the recalls of affected vehicles,” Democratic Reps. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.), Diana DeGette (Colo.) and Jan Schakowsky (Ill.) wrote in a letter to Barra on Monday.
David Friedman, acting head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, has also been summoned to testify. NHTSA is under fire for not doing more to recognize the defect and requiring GM to fix it, despite mounting accident reports, consumer complaints and a 2007 recommendation by a top staffer for a full-scale investigation. That recommendation was rejected after a review by a panel of NHTSA officials.
“This was a difficult case pursued by experts in the field of screening, investigations and technology involving air bags that are designed to deploy in some cases, but not in cases where they are not needed or would do more harm than good,” Friedman said in his prepared testimony. He added: “Advanced air bags are not intended to deploy in all crashes, even frontal crashes.”
Friedman said NHTSA suspects that GM did not provide regulators with timely information about the faulty ignition switch — a violation of federal law — complicating the agency’s handling of the problem.
As inquiries by GM engineers and NHTSA employees led nowhere, evidence of the defect mounted in private lawsuits. That prompted GM to assemble a team of engineers to review the problem, resulting in the first of several ignition-switch recalls in February.
Last month, Barra appointed a new vice president to oversee safety issues at the giant automaker; the company has since issued an unusual number of recall notices.
On Monday, GM released another one: The company said it will recall more than 1.3 million U.S. vehicles at risk of unexpectedly losing power steering. The latest announcement brings the total number of vehicles recalled this year by the automaker to more than 6 million.
For the survivors of accidents involving the faulty ignition switches, the recalls have come far too late.
Susan Hayes, 49, of Ticonderoga, N.Y., said she received a recall notice in February for her son’s silver Chevrolet Cobalt. By then, her son, Ryan Quigley, 23, had been dead for more than two years. He and a friend were killed when Quigley’s Cobalt, purchased just four months earlier, veered off the road and plunged over an embankment, landing upside-down in a small stream not far from the family’s home. The force of the crash was so violent that it broke her son’s sternum.
After the accident, Hayes learned that her son had been drinking and that he was not wearing a seat belt. His 19-year-old passenger had fastened her belt but died anyway.
“My son was a very good human being who made a poor choice,” she said.
Hayes settled on that as an explanation for his death, until she learned about the ignition-switch problems. That prompted her to meet with the police officer who investigated her son’s accident. Just last week, she learned that the air bags in the car had never deployed.
“I’ve read an awful lot recently about the knowledge that GM had about this problem, and how it was buried,” Hayes said, before reading words from a GM document that she had written down on a small pad. It said that GM had rejected an ignition-switch fix in 2005 because “none of the solutions represents an acceptable business case.”
“My son wasn’t a business case. He was a human being,” she said. “As were the other people who died because of this problem.”
Steven Mufson contributed to this report.
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