After a two-month investigation of General Motors last week, the Feds lambasted the company for its “ability and willingness” to fix defects and said there’s a “broken safety culture” at the automaker.
Last week, General Motors paid a $35 million—the maximum allowed by law—for mishandling its ignition switch recall for 2.6 million cars. Automotive News reports that U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx is urging Congress to increase the maximum penalty for future penalties to $300 million as he feels GM’s mishandling is worth more than $35 million.
“What we will never accept is a person or a company who knows danger exists and says nothing. Literally, silence can kill. These penalties should put all automakers on notice that there is no excuse and zero tolerance for failing to notify the federal government when a defect puts safety at risk,” said Foxx at a Washington news conference.
Meanwhile, General Motors may face more fines from the U.S Justice Department, who not too long ago hit Toyota with a $1.2 billion fine related to delayed recalls.
Documents turned over by General Motors show that it was aware of the link between a faulty ignition switch and airbags not deploying before the company filed for bankruptcy in 2009, giving fodder to the argument being made in federal bankruptcy court this month by lawyers for some customers and crash victims who claim GM acted fraudulently by not disclosing the ignition-switch defect as a legal liability five years ago.
“We have learned a great deal from this recall. We will now focus on the goal of becoming an industry leader in safety,” General Motors CEO Mary Barra said in a statement on Friday. “We will emerge from this situation a stronger company.”
Comments
By the same token, every other manufacturer has been serious about rear seat headrests for safety reasons for quite some time, but GM can’t be bothered to put real ones the new crew cab pickups.
I understand the average new Silverado buyer is 105 years old, but I am sure this glaring omission has turned some prospective buyers with children to look elsewhere.
Are you having fun judging GM?
I’ve been following this for a while. What I thought I have read is that GM, the old GM told the NHTSA, which is part of the government about this defect. The NHTSA, investigated it and didn’t find a defect. Now, I guess the old GM could have taken it upon themselves to voluntarily recall back during that same time frame, but the obvious fact is, they didn’t. Why do we have incompetent and/or stubborn politicians in this country, that fail to look back on the facts? Or is the government still trying to avoid the fact that they also screwed up, similar to other situations in this country?
Another thing, isn’t the so called fraud, that has been declared between the bankruptcy court, old CEO Rick Wagoner, and maybe a few others? So is this supposed to maybe prove that the government possibly botched that part of the bankruptcy? Again, whatever the case, that happened 5 years ago, the newer company has reacted. We are looking at the government, old GM, and Delphi, from 2009 to previously. Sometimes I want to resurrect the three stooges to run this country, they couldn’t do any worse. Does the culture need improvements? Yes, but it seems like GM is changing that on their own, but we’ll have to wait and see. I know if this company as it is today was the company instead of the older company back then, they would have fixed the issue asap.
The old GM culture was dominated with meeting price points and standards set by the company systems. Too often VLE or vehicle line executives would do what they had to do to meet these goals to make their bonuses even at the detriment of GM and the customer. The system was flawed as it not only hurt GM in cases like this but also it hurt them when they could add something that may have taken them a little over budget to make the car sell better. In other words the goal system hurt GM in many different ways.
Lutz started to move them away from working like this but it was late in the game buy the time they started to make progress. The work is still continuing on this and for the most part much of it is removed but there are still pockets.
Case in point GM today has handled this well for how bad it has gotten with the public etc. Just imagine if this had happen to Old GM and the unrepentant culture back then. This would have been a total crash and burn. As it is they will get through it and If anything I expect them to be a much better company than most as they will be more in the spot light. This has even scared the other MFG as they are watching and will be making changes of their own.
As for the Government they are covering their ass on this one. The media has let them off easy.