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When General Motors Co Chief Executive Mary Barra faces Congress next week she will have to explain how the top brass at the biggest US automaker can say they knew nothing for more than a decade about a faulty ignition switch linked to crashes and at least 12 deaths.
For lawmakers trying to find out who to blame for the lack of responsiveness by GM and its regulator to the tragedies, and in particular the multi-year delay in recalling potentially dangerous vehicles off the roads, it may turn out to be a frustrating couple of days.
GM built a system to deliberately keep senior executives out of the recall process. Instead, two small groups of employees in the vast GM bureaucracy were tasked with making recall decisions, a system GM says was meant to bring objective decisions.
It means that lawmakers may also focus on asking who is responsible for a system that failed so badly that there weren't red flags raised for those higher up the food chain.
"In this day and age, to think that stuff like this can be kept quiet or forgotten is ridiculous," independent auto analyst and author Maryann Keller said. "The right question to ask is who knew, when did they know and why was this not brought forth to be dealt with. Did they hope that it was just going to go away?"
The company has recalled 1.6 million cars for a problem first noted in 2001, spurring the congressional enquiries as well as investigations by federal safety regulators, who will also testify, the Justice Department, and GM itself.
