Photo: GM
After GM announced yesterday its 60th safety recall so far this year, more dirt has been uncovered about the manufacturer's lousy practices - through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Early Warning Reporting system, GM notified the agency that it had received a whopping 505 new death and injury claims from January to March.
Dear General Motors, you've received a great deal of bailout money from the government in the late 2000s and this is how you repay your customers and the American government for saving your ass? Building sub-standard cars that are basically coffins on wheels? You even managed to mess-up the roof rail airbags on brand spanking new 2015 model year vehicles. You declared that a number of recalled "vehicles are safe to drive," but you also claimed a few lines after that "GM is aware of one crash and three injuries but no fatalities related to this condition."
'Til recently, 13 deaths and over 50 crashes have been linked to the defective ignition switches fitted to millions of GM-built cars. However, with this latest Early Warning Report submitted by General Motors to the NHTSA, those figures hike dramatically: those claims cover 31 deaths and 2 injuries in Saturn Ion crashes, 15 deaths and 136 injured in Chevrolet Cobalt crashes, as well as 3 fatally injured and 32 people that sustained non-fatal injuries from accidents involving the Chevrolet HHR. Furthermore, the Pontiac G5, Solstice and the Saturn Sky have also been linked to 7 injured people.
Not all of the 505 new claims are directly linked to the glitchy ignition switches, but if you take into consideration the information submitted to federal safety regulators only recently by the manufacturer, it boggles the mind how these guys are still able to build passenger vehicles to their heart's content.
To be completely frank, this author wonders how so many people are still buying cars made by General Motors when these guys can't even make a damn ignition switch properly. That's only one component, while an entire vehicle is made up of at least 4,000 bits and bobs. Another thing that made us worry is that we've test-driven GM vehicles from the 2014 model year that are now involved in recalls.
Want one more reason why General Motors should just close shop? One GM death claim published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration was linked to a fatal crash that happened in December 2013. Who was behind the wheel of the vehicle in question? A former GM employee's teenage daughter. Wanna know what happened next? Her family filed suit against General Motors. Moreover, 3 General Motors employees were met recently with "unintentional ignition key movement" that shut off the engine, power steering and airbags of three 2012 Cadillac CTS models.
'Til recently, 13 deaths and over 50 crashes have been linked to the defective ignition switches fitted to millions of GM-built cars. However, with this latest Early Warning Report submitted by General Motors to the NHTSA, those figures hike dramatically: those claims cover 31 deaths and 2 injuries in Saturn Ion crashes, 15 deaths and 136 injured in Chevrolet Cobalt crashes, as well as 3 fatally injured and 32 people that sustained non-fatal injuries from accidents involving the Chevrolet HHR. Furthermore, the Pontiac G5, Solstice and the Saturn Sky have also been linked to 7 injured people.
Not all of the 505 new claims are directly linked to the glitchy ignition switches, but if you take into consideration the information submitted to federal safety regulators only recently by the manufacturer, it boggles the mind how these guys are still able to build passenger vehicles to their heart's content.
To be completely frank, this author wonders how so many people are still buying cars made by General Motors when these guys can't even make a damn ignition switch properly. That's only one component, while an entire vehicle is made up of at least 4,000 bits and bobs. Another thing that made us worry is that we've test-driven GM vehicles from the 2014 model year that are now involved in recalls.
Want one more reason why General Motors should just close shop? One GM death claim published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration was linked to a fatal crash that happened in December 2013. Who was behind the wheel of the vehicle in question? A former GM employee's teenage daughter. Wanna know what happened next? Her family filed suit against General Motors. Moreover, 3 General Motors employees were met recently with "unintentional ignition key movement" that shut off the engine, power steering and airbags of three 2012 Cadillac CTS models.
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