General Motors President Dan Ammann, l to r, CEO Mary Barra and Executive Vice President Mark Reuss answer questions from media after Barra provided an update on the ignition switch recall investigation Thursday 5 June 2014 at the GM Vehicle Engineering Center in Warren, Michigan.
In a completely predictable move, the Center for Auto Safety, aka CAS, has called the internal GM investigation (the Valukas Report) into defective ignition switches that are responsible for at least 13 deaths, “little more than an elaborate whitewash that buys into GM’s arguments that it was a bunch of incompetent engineers, lawyers and mid-level managers who were fired as a result.”
It now looks like there are at least 20 Cobalt accidents that need scrutiny. Moreover, there are 2.6 million GM vehicles potentially with the defective ignition switch that suddenly moves to the ‘accessory position’ thereby disabling the airbags.
In a statement Clarence Ditlow, the head of CAS, which is funded by product liability lawyers, said, “The report further buys into GM’s argument that this is an airbag defect that limits the number of victims and liability. The report completely ignored the biggest source of information at GM on the defect – 2,004 death and injury claims reported to NHTSA by GM itself on the recalled vehicles through 2013. Despite claiming to have interviewed over 230 people and examined over 41 million documents, the report did not interview anyone or collect any documents on the fatal decision in 2001 to use the deadly short-plunger-detent ignition switch over the safe long plunger switch used as the silent remedy in 2006.”
The 2,004 death and injury number CAS is using comes from so-called Early Warning Reports, aka EWR, at NHTSA. The number is through 2013 as filed by GM on the models covered by the ignition switch recall. However, CAS claims there is a technical problem with EWR because the EWR system does not have a component code for ignition switch. GM has filed ignition switch claims under various component codes in CAS’s view.
“For instance, GM reported the involved component as “Unknown” in Brooke Melton’s 2010 death, as it also did in the 2006 Wisconsin crash that was investigated by NHTSA’s Special Crash Investigations and specifically noted ignition switch movement,” CAS said, citing other examples as well.
“The Valukas reports shrugs off the 2,004 EWR reports saying, “We do not understand that GM is alleged to have violated its obligation to submit these EWRs, and such routine reporting is not the focus of this investigation,” CAS claims.
CAS also said, “The Valukas report does confirm for the first time that both a less safe short plunger and a safer long plunger detent ignition switch were designed by Eaton for GM in 2001. However, the Valukas investigation failed to address who made the deadly decision to put the short plunger switch into production. No documents are cited and no one was interviewed. The report also confirms the 2001 long plunger detent was the change used in 2006 without a new part number and blames that on Ray DeGiorgio. The failure to probe deeply into why the safer switch design was not used in 2001 flies is simply inexplicable since the Valukas investigation gathered 41 million documents and did over 230 interviews.”
