No NHTSA Officials Fired or Disciplined Over GM Recall

Although it looks like complaint data was handled improperly regarding GM’s ignition switch recall, no employees have been fired or disciplined at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

In late 2007, NHTSA decided not to open a probe into a massive amount of GM cars, even after a senior agency official pointed out that four of the accidents resulted in death due to the airbag not deploying. In 2010, NHTSA had teams investigate three different crashes in small GM cars, but still decided that there was not enough evidence to open a formal probe. Meanwhile, NHTSA routinely opened probes into other vehicles where death had not occurred.

“We and I are willing to check our own math here. I’ve asked our inspector general to go through and do an after-action on this GM situation to see if there is anything we didn’t do that we should have done,” said Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx (seen above). “We will learn from that report, and until that time we have our team intact.”

SEE ALSO: US Looks to Increase Fines in Untimely Recalls

Both Anthony Foxx and NHTSA Administrator David Friedman say that the there was not enough evidence for the agency to initiate a formal investigation. Later this year, the House Energy and Commerce Committee along with the Senate Commerce Committee will hold hearings to look into how NHTSA failed to connect the dots.

The undiscovered issue was the failure of the ignition switch in these cars, which allows the vehicle to inadvertently turn off, causing the airbags to become nonoperational. GM fired 15 employees, at least half of which were executives within the company, over the ignition switch issue.

[Source: Detroit News]