A House committee investigating the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has found that federal regulators had ample information to identify the dangerous ignition defect in General Motors’ Chevrolet Cobalt and other cars as early as 2007, the New York Times reported today. The House report details how investigators from the agency repeatedly discounted information that did not match their assumptions — at one point a staff member referred to their efforts as “beating a dead horse.” As a result, many of GM’s small cars, which had defective ignition switches that were prone to turn off and disable air bags, continued to crash, sometimes with fatal results.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/16/business/regulators-are-faulted-in-de…
In related news, a program established by General Motors to compensate the families of people killed and those severely injured in accidents caused by defective ignition switches installed in 2.6 million cars received 445 claims and approved 31 in its first six weeks of operation, the law firm running the program reported Monday, according to the Washington Post. The flow of claims has not been as fast as what was anticipated by the law firm of compensation specialist Kenneth R. Feinberg, which the automaker hired to design and administer the compensation program. Of the 31 claims approved, 19 involve deaths related to the crashes, the law firm reported. Four are to compensate people left with permanent conditions, including paralysis, severe burns and brain injuries. And eight are for physical injuries that required hospitalization or outpatient medical treatment within 48 hours of an accident involving an ignition switch.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/general-motors-compensat…