Thursday, March 13, 2014

303 deaths in GM air bag cases

303 deaths!  However much tort deters, it doesn't deter enough. Another regulatory failure too.  Obviously we are crushing businesses with the burden of government regulations .  The only hero - the Center for Auto Safety which filed this report  on airbag non-deployment.  (Mostly Republican) legislators and commentators talk about getting government off our backs.  What do they have to say about this? Why do they believe what they say? Is it just ideological blinders? - GWC

303 died in airbag failures, safety group reports - NY Times
by Danielle Ivory and Hillary Stout

As lawmakers press General Motors and regulators over their decade-long failure to correct a defective ignition switch, a new review of federal crash data shows that 303 people died after the air bags failed to deploy on two of the models that were recalled last month.
The review of the air bag failures, by the Friedman Research Corporation, adds to the mounting reports of problems that went unheeded before General Motors announced last month that it was recalling more than 1.6 million cars worldwide because of the defective switch. G.M. has linked 12 deaths to the defective switch in the two models analyzed, the 2003-5 Chevrolet Cobalts and 2003-7 Saturn Ions, as well as four other models.
The analysis by Friedman Research, a company that analyzes vehicle safety data, looked at cases in which the air bags failed to deploy, but did not attempt to evaluate what caused the crashes.
The Center for Auto Safety, a private watchdog group in Washington, commissioned the study, and, in a letter to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, criticized the agency for not detecting the air bag failures, as well as the defective ignition switch.


1 comment:

  1. I think GM motors should really start looking into their cars and see where their manufacturers have gone wrong. Having more than 300 cars to have failed airbag deployment and result into various accidents is very alarming.

    Shaun Stille @ Global Parts, Inc.

    ReplyDelete