A devastating year-long government audit finds sweeping problems at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and says the agency failed repeatedly over a decade to discover the General Motors ignition switch defect now linked to more than 110 deaths.
The scathing 42-page report by the Transportation Department’s Office of Inspector General says that NHTSA, the nation’s auto safety regulator, fails to carefully review safety issues, hold automakers accountable for safety lapses, carefully collect vehicle safety data, or properly train or supervise its staff. And it says NHTSA rejects most staff requests to open investigations into suspected defects.
“Collectively, these weaknesses have resulted in significant safety concerns being overlooked,” the report found.
The report makes 17 major recommendations for widespread reforms. The agency’s new administrator, Mark Rosekind, who took office in December, has agreed to “aggressively implement” them by next June.
The report says NHTSA personnel, for years, ignored complaints that air bags failed to deploy in GM cars — and charges that the agency didn’t document why it didn’t investigate them. In November 2007, the agency declined to open a formal investigation into deaths in the cars. But an associate administrator said NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation should keep an eye on the issue. A screener assigned to keep tabs on it left the agency in 2008, and nobody was reassigned that responsibility.
Last year, 2.59 million Cobalts, Saturn Ions and other cars were recalled for defective ignition switches that can inadvertently shut off the engine and disable power steering and air bags. The automaker delayed recalling the cars for nearly a decade after some within GM became aware there was a problem. GM paid a $35 million fine in May 2014 because it failed to disclose ignition switch defects to NHTSA.
In February, the White House asked Congress to triple the budget for the beleaguered NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) and double its staff. NHTSA said its defects investigation office ideally would have another 380 workers; it now has 60.
The inspector general’s report suggests NHTSA has suffered severe systemic problems for years in how it trains staff, and in deciding when and how to investigate defects. It said NHTSA’s investigation decisions “lack transparency and accountability. Specifically, ODI does not always document the justifications for its decisions not to investigate potential safety issues and does not always make timely decisions on opening investigations.”
Furthermore, the audit says NHTSA ignores 90 percent of consumer complaints that arrive daily. A single reviewer spends just “seconds” reading each. Last year, NHTSA had a screener initially review 78,000 complaints — roughly 330 complaints each day. And that person had to spend half the workday on other duties.
One screener said meetings focus on reasons for not opening an investigation rather than reasons for opening one; another called them “dog and pony shows.”
To see the original story go to The Detroit News.
