It was a long day for David Friedman and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration during congressional testimony Tuesday, admitting before a Senate panel that his agency has more work to do to improve itself, and that General Motors made "incredibly poor decisions" as far as recalls were concerned.
Automotive News reports Friedman and the NHTSA came under harsh criticism before the U.S. Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation committee's consumer protection subcommittee during this second round of testimony. Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri made the deputy administrator aware of the panel's overall frustration with the excuses for why the NHTSA did not act swiftly in forcing GM to recall vehicles affected by an out-of-spec ignition switch now linked to 19 deaths and 31 injuries.
In turn, Friedman deflected criticism of the agency by placing the blame upon the automaker, proclaiming the execs "were more worried about [the NHTSA] getting information about problems than they were about actually fixing problems." He added that a "new normal" has since been established upon all automakers, whereupon any defect is immediately reported to the agency, and that it would have "zero tolerance" on those who fail "to act quickly and aggressively" on reporting such flaws.
Regarding the original case, Friedman said that his agency lacked "ample information" in 2007 to determine whether or not a defect was to be found in the aforementioned ignition switch, despite a report by a House committee issued earlier in the day stating the opposite.
After testimony, Sen. McCaskill stated she found Friedman's statements troubling, proclaiming he was more concerned with rebutting the news media than with taking responsibility for his and his agency's role in the GM recall crisis.
The post Friedman: GM, Not NHTSA, Most To Blame For Recall Crisis appeared first on The Truth About Cars.
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