The consequences of General Motors’ long-delayed recall of defective small cars hit a grim milestone this month, when the company’s compensation fund said it had approved the 100th death claim tied to faulty ignition switches in the US.
The toll far exceeds the 13 victims that GM – which owns the Opel brand in Europe – had said last year were the only known fatalities linked to ignitions that could suddenly cut off engine power and disable airbags.
And as the number of victims mounts, the ignition-switch crisis is cementing its status as one of the deadliest automotive safety issues in American history.
The number of fatalities will most likely fall short of the 270 people killed in Ford Explorers equipped with Firestone tyres in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Notoriety
But while the Ford-Firestone accidents were obvious incidents of tyre failures and SUV rollovers, the ignition switch has gained notoriety because the defect was hidden for a decade until GM began recalling 2.6 million affected cars last year.
Lawyers involved in litigation against GM have accused the company of deliberately understating the magnitude of switch-related deaths in congressional hearings last year.
"The success of the cover-up for over a decade leaves most of the victims unaccounted for," said Robert Hilliard, one of the lead lawyers in a consolidated group of lawsuits against GM. "One hundred is not even the tip of the iceberg."
A GM spokesman said this month that the company cited 13 deaths for so long because it based those fatalities on extensive accident reconstruction efforts. Kenneth Feinberg, an independent compensation expert hired by GM, has made settlement offers to the families of people who died in the vehicles with faulty ignitions.
"The Feinberg facility is a settlement programme," said Jim Cain, the GM spokesman. "It is designed to settle claims, rather than make rigorous engineering or legal judgments about the definitive causes of the accidents."
In the fund’s regular weekly update released on May 4th, Feinberg said more than 4,300 claims for deaths and injuries had been filed. Of that total, the fund has so far approved payments for 100 deaths and 184 injuries. There are still 37 death claims and 589 injury claims that are under review, the fund said.
Camille Biros, the deputy manager of the programme, said many of the eligible death claims involve victims in their teens and early 20s. She said the fatalities involved passengers as well as drivers, including people sitting in the back seat of vehicles.
Some of the claims were made for accidents that occurred after GM began recalling the small cars in February 2014. There was no precise number available for post-recall victims.
GM set up the compensation fund last year after its internal investigation showed dozens of engineers, lawyers and investigators inside the company had known about ignition problems for years but failed to fix them.
Mary T Barra, GM's chief executive, dismissed 15 employees as a result of the internal inquiry, overhauled the automaker's vast engineering operations and changed its safety protocols.
GM paid a $35 million fine to federal regulators for failing to report the defect in a timely manner. The company is still under investigation for possible criminal charges and civil penalties.
Recalls
The switch crisis led to dozens of other recalls last year by GM, for a wide range of vehicle defects. The company has spent about $3 billion overall on the recalls, including setting aside $600 million for ignition-switch victims.
Biros stressed, as did GM, that Feinberg’s standard for reviewing claims was more lenient than those used by the company or a court to determine whether the defect caused an accident. “Ours is not a legal nor is it an engineering review of these claims,” she said.
© 2015 New York Times News Service
