Years after a car crash that killed a 42-year-old mother in the US, General Motors remains under scrutiny.
On a clear afternoon in November 2014, Glenda Marie Buchanan set off in her silver Chevrolet Trailblazer SUV from her home in rural Georgia. Several minutes into the drive, she started veering off the road. Buchanan swerved left and lost control, and the vehicle rolled onto its side into a ditch.
A Reuters review of hundreds of pages of documents submitted in the Buchanan litigation shows that GM has since 2007 confronted a series of issues with the steering sensor, including high levels of warranty claims and a manufacturing flaw, without recalling affected vehicles. Buchanan's case is the only one Reuters has identified in which a death is alleged to have stemmed from a failure of the steering sensor.
GM decided against recalling vehicles after the internal probe found it inconclusive as to whether electronic stability control was inoperative at the time of Buchanan's crash, according to employee testimony reviewed by Reuters. The probe made no determination on whether the sensor was defective. But NHTSA said it decided in late January against opening an investigation. That previously unreported review included confidential documents related to the litigation that GM provided to the agency in March of last year, in response to an informal request for information, according to court documents.
The sensor-related data scrutinized in GM's 2018 investigation included the warranty claims as well as 3 other legal claims and more than 5,800 complaints from dealers and customers. GM declined to comment on the complaints and the volume of claims. GM is fighting an attempt by Cooper to depose its chief executive, Mary Barra. In a sworn affidavit, Barra has said she knew nothing about the automaker's inquiry into the steering sensor. Barra, via the company spokesman, declined an interview request.
"Taking it away makes the car more dangerous, and that's likely an unreasonable risk to safety," Friedman said, adding that he believed it warranted further investigation."Imagine if your seatbelts, before seatbelts were required, didn't work." Cooper expressed disappointment with NHTSA's decision, saying the risk of sensor failure"unquestionably relates to automotive safety.
The maximum fine for compliance failures is about $100 million, a small fraction of the billions of dollars in annual sales for many large automotive companies. Criminal liability for failing to disclose a safety defect is limited under federal law, so prosecutors looking to bring charges usually need to pursue other allegations, such as illegal coverups or fraud.
Cooper told Reuters that GM's approach to the alleged sensor issues drew parallels with the automaker's years-long scramble to make sense of concerns related to vehicles with defective ignition switches before launching a recall.GM previously admitted it kept regulators and consumers in the dark about the faulty ignition switch despite clear internal evidence it could lead to dangerous airbag failures.
GM declined to comment on Reuters' analysis of the NHTSA data. But it said its experts usually cast a wide net when reviewing such consumer complaints early in investigations before zeroing in on information deemed more precisely related to the issue under scrutiny. A crash involving StabiliTrak improperly activating is distinct from allegations in the Buchanan case that the system disengaged, GM said.
In 2008, several wiring-related issues contributed to high levels of warranty claims potentially related to the steering sensor, Kennedy said in his deposition. GM instructed dealerships on how to fix them, Kennedy testified.LEGAL BATTLE. Robert Randall Buchanan poses for a portrait at his home in Douglasville, Georgia, March 4, 2021.Glenda Marie Buchanan purchased her previously-owned 2007 Chevrolet Trailblazer 3 years before her crash.