On February 6, 2014, General Motors (GM) recalled about 800,000 of its small cars due to faulty ignition switches, which could shut off the engine while the vehicle was in motion, thereby preventing the airbags from inflating. The company continued to recall more of its cars over the next several months, resulting in nearly 30 million cars recalled worldwide and compensation paid for 124 deaths. The fault had been known to GM for at least a decade prior to the recall. GM faced significant criticism and several lawsuits from the public for failing to issue a recall sooner in spite of their knowledge of the design flaw. As part of a deferred prosecution agreement, GM forfeited $900 million to the United States.
Initial and subsequent recalls The first recall was announced on February 7, 2014, and involved about 800,000 Chevrolet Cobalts and Pontiac G5s. On March 31, GM announced it was going to recall over 1.5 million more cars of six different models, due to faulty power steering. Of these, over 1.3 million were in the United States, and three of the models were also involved in the faulty ignition recall. The total number of cars recalled during 2014 as of 1 April was 6.26 million. On May 15, GM recalled 2.7 million more cars, bringing the total number of recalled vehicles in 2014 to 12.8 million worldwide, 11.1 million of which were in the United States.
Most of these recalls were from Chevrolet, with a total of 1.4 million cars, and Cadillac, with a total of over 2 million cars, and the rest of the recalls branched from the smaller brands.
On June 16, 2014, GM announced they were recalling 3.4 million more cars, all of which were produced from 2000 to 2004. They also announced that they intended to replace the cars' keys, because if they did not, the ignition switches could rotate, causing the car's engines to shut off, disabling power steering.
On June 30, 2014, GM announced they were going to recall 8.45 million additional cars, almost all of which were being recalled for defective ignition switches. This announcement brought the total number of recalled cars in North America to about 29 million. In November 2014 emails surfaced that showed GM ordered a half-million replacement ignition switches nearly two months before ordering a recall.
Cause of ignition failure There are no specified torque or vibration standards imposed on a vehicle's ignition switch by the NHTSA. However, General Motors did create their own criteria and specifications as a guide for their engineers. It was found that the ignition switches subject to the recall did not meet two of GM's specific requirements — torque required and vibration environment — for the ignition switch. The torque, or rotational power that prevents the ignition switch from changing modes, was required by GM's own standards to be between 10 N·cm and 20 N·cm (Newton centimeters). However, it was less than 10 N·cm, a force so little that made it prone to changes in modes which could potentially shut off the engine. The switch was required to withstand exposure to a vibration environment without damage or loss of function. Yet, it was discovered that during extreme moments of vibrations, or even with the presence of heavy objects on a keychain, the switch would change modes from Run to Accessory without the intent of the driver. The ignition switch was designed to remove power from the vehicle's airbags when in the Off or Accessory mode. Therefore, this was a safety hazard: If the switch changed from Run to Accessory and the vehicle was involved in an accident, it would no longer have power to release the airbags, and it would be difficult for the driver to steer and brake. General Motors was aware of this potential problem, and held meetings about it, as early as 2005.
Compensation GM compensated claimants for 124 deaths potentially linked to faulty ignition switches. Originally, they linked the failures to 13 deaths and 31 crashes. The company only counted incidents resulting in head-on collisions in which the airbags did not deploy. It did not include, for example, an incident where after a car's ignition switch failed, the car "spun out, hydroplaned, hit an oncoming vehicle and rolled off the road, dropping 15 feet into a creek". In a collision in which two young women in a Chevrolet Cobalt were killed when the ignition switch shut off the engine, GM only counted the death of the woman in the front seat, because the death of the woman in the back seat was not caused by the failure of the airbag to deploy. Most of the victims were under age 25. On June 3, 2014, Reuters published an analysis concluding that the faulty switches were responsible for 74 deaths, based on Fatality Analysis Reporting System data. General Motors disputed its conclusion, and stood by their original figure of 13 deaths after the report was released as of June 3, 2014. By the end of September, Reuters stated in an article that 153 deaths were linked to the faulty ignition switch. As of March 2015, GM had offered compensation for 11 Category One injuries, along with 115 Category Two injuries./ In April 2015, GM officially noted that the death toll was believed to have reached 87, higher than the previous number of 74 they reported in March 2015. Upon its completion, the compensation fund established by GM had offered compensation for 124 deaths, nearly 10 times more than the 13 deaths GM executives reported in April 2014. However, the true number of deaths resulting from the ignition switch is likely higher, as GM's compensation fund rejected more than 90% of claims and it did not include claims that are part of the ongoing Multidistrict Litigation.
Public disclosure of the problem The defect was not disclosed by GM nor was it discovered by government regulators or transportation safety agencies. Instead, public knowledge came about because Lance Cooper, a Marietta, Georgia attorney who sued GM on behalf of the family of a woman who had died in a crash, obtained thousands of pages of documents from GM and took the depositions of several GM engineers. According to Sean Kane, the president of a vehicle safety research firm, Cooper "single-handedly set the stage for this recall."
Reaction to the recall The families of the 13 people who died in car crashes involving the recalled vehicles gathered outside the US Capitol prior to Mary Barra's testimony on April 1. They were joined by four Democratic politicians in support of tougher rules regarding the disclosure of automobile defects. At the Capitol, they also said that their relatives had died "because they were a cost of doing business GM style." The recall cost GM more than $3 billion in shareholders' value over four weeks.
One mother, Laura Christian, created a Facebook page to bring together the family, friends and those who support them.Bunkley, Nick (March 25, 2014) A mother's life mission Auto News
Testimony and lawsuits Congressional testimony
Mary Barra's testimony also stated that she does not know why it took nearly a decade to try to initiate a recall, but that she has accelerated efforts to fix the switches, and that she offers "my sincere apologies to everyone who has been affected by this recall, especially to the families and friends of those who lost their lives or were injured. I am deeply sorry."The GM Ignition Switch Recall: Why Did It Take So Long?: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, House of Representatives, One Hundred Thirteenth Congress, Second Session, April 1, 2014. These remarks were sharply criticized by some of the victims' family members, one of whom dismissed Barra's meeting with them as a mere PR stunt, and by Heidi Moore, who wrote that "[Barra] saying sorry to Congress won't cut it" and that GM "has been good at telling stories that the public wants to hear." Also attending the hearing will be David J. Friedman, the Acting Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), who will be asked why he did not act sooner to recall the cars with the faulty switches, since the NHTSA was aware of the problem before the recall. Friedman's written testimony blames GM for not conveying "critical information" to regulators which could have led to recalls years earlier As compensation to the victims' families, GM recalled 6 million Cadillac, 11 million Chevrolet and 9 million GMC vehicles in 2015. .
Barra made a number of statements during her testimony which received much media attention. She testified that General Motors would employ Kenneth Feinberg as a consultant to help them decide how to compensate families of those injured by the recalled cars. This decision was praised by Paul M. Barrett, who wrote in Businessweek that "...bringing in Feinberg is an excellent first step" because he has more than 20 years of experience in mass-injury cases. Barra also said that she asked attorney Anton R. Valukas to help find out why GM took so long to initiate a recall of the defective cars, and that a full account of why this did not happen sooner would have to wait until the results of Valukas's investigation were announced.
Another of her widely reported remarks was that she found GM's concern about the cost of replacing the faulty switches "disturbing" (this was in response to Congresswoman Diana DeGette telling the subcommittee that it would have only cost 57 cents to fix each faulty ignition switch). After being asked by Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill whether a GM engineer had apparently lied under oath, Barra confirmed that this had indeed happened (or at least seemed to). McCaskill later appeared on This Week, where she said of GM that "They've tried to lawyer up and play whack-a-mole with these lawsuits, and terrible things have happened," and that "Now it's time for them to come clean, be transparent and most of all make victims whole no matter when this deadly ignition caused heartbreak in their families."
During the hearings, Barbara Boxer asked Barra why, during the 33 years she worked at GM prior to becoming the CEO in 2013, she never heard anything about the faulty ignition switches. After Barra failed to give a substantive answer, Boxer exclaimed to her that "You don't know anything about anything," and that "If this is the new GM leadership, it's pretty lacking."Examining the GM Recall and NHTSA's Defect Investigation Process: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Insurance of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, United States Senate, One Hundred Thirteenth Congress, Second Session, April 2, 2014
Also in April 2014, federal safety regulators testified before Congress that they had expected the airbags in the defective cars to be able to deploy for 60 seconds after the engine stalled, but General Motors later told the Associated Press that they actually can only do so for 150 milliseconds.
Reactions to Barra's testimony In the Wall Street Journal, Holman Jenkins praised the fact that Barra did not argue that the failure to recall the defective vehicles was due to "...the problems of a company that no longer exists and a product that's no longer made." However, for the same reason, he also criticized her for suggesting that the company would be more customer-focused with her as the CEO than it was when GM first found out about the faulty switches.
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