DETROIT (AP) — A government safety agency is fining
General Motors $7,000 a day, saying the company failed to fully respond
to its requests for information about a faulty ignition switch by an
April 3 deadline.
The National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration said in a letter to GM on Tuesday that the company
already owes $28,000 in fines, and they will accrue at $7,000 per day
until it provides all the requested information.
In February, the
agency began investigating whether GM was slow to provide information
and respond to problems with the switch that has been linked to at least
13 deaths. GM has admitted knowing that the switch was defective at
least a decade ago, but failed to start recalling 2.6 million compact
cars worldwide until this year.
In a two-page letter to GM North
America vice president and legal counsel Lucy Clark Dougherty, NHTSA’s
chief counsel, O. Kevin Vincent, said the company frequently stated that
it did not respond to all the agency’s requests because of an
investigation being done for GM by former U.S. attorney Anton Valukas.
But
Vincent objected, saying GM’s reasoning wasn’t valid. "Mr. Valukas’
investigation is irrelevant to GM’s legal obligation to timely respond
to the Special Order and fully cooperate with NHTSA," he wrote.
The
fines are a sign of a deepening rift between GM and the safety agency.
During congressional hearings last week, NHTSA Acting Administrator
David Friedman blamed GM for a failure to act sooner to warn consumers
about the faulty switches. Friedman testified that GM had information
connecting defective switches to the non-deployment of air bags, but
didn’t share it with the agency until last month.
GM said in a
statement it has fully cooperated, and will keep providing responses as
soon as they are available. "We will do so with a goal of being accurate
as well as timely," the statement said, giving no indication of when GM
would fully comply. GM said it has produced nearly 21,000 documents
totaling over 271,000 pages.
Vincent did acknowledge that the
safety agency had agreed to extend the deadline on certain technical
questions, but criticized GM for failing to answer questions that
weren’t technical in nature. He said there were several unanswered
questions about the approval of changes in the suspect ignition switch.
NHTSA
told GM that it was aware of GM’s approval of a design change on April
26, 2007, and the agency asked the company if there were any other
changes. But Vincent’s letter said GM did not answer the questions.
"It
is deeply troubling that two months after recalling the vehicles, GM is
unwilling or unable to tell NHTSA whether the design of the switch
changed at any other time," Vincent wrote.
On March 4, NHTSA
demanded from GM pictures, memos, electronic communications, engineering
drawings and other data to answer 107 questions about the recall. The
reply, which must be signed under oath by a company officer, was due
last Thursday.
Vincent’s letter says that if GM doesn’t fully
comply and hand over the information, the agency could refer the matter
to the Justice Department, which would seek a court order to comply with
the request as well as civil penalties.
GM says the ignition
switches can slip from the "run" position to "accessory" or "off" while
the cars are being driven. If that happens, drivers lose power-assisted
steering and brakes and the air bags won’t inflate in a crash. In many
crashes linked to the problem, drivers inexplicably lost control of
their cars and veered off the road or into other vehicles.
The
vehicles being recalled include: Chevrolet Cobalts and Pontiac G5s from
the 2005 through 2007 model years; Saturn Ion compacts from 2003 through
2007; and Chevrolet HHR SUVs and Pontiac Solstice and Saturn Sky sports
cars from 2006 and 2007. Most of the cars were sold in the United
States, Canada and Mexico.
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Jonathan Fahey contributed to this report from New York.
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