'I want to be clear: NHTSA did not shrug,' said the agency’s top official, David Friedman. Congress blasts auto safety regulator

Congress delivered a stinging rebuke to the nation’s auto safety regulator on Tuesday, saying the agency failed for years to spot the defects in General Motors’ cars that killed at least 19 people and injured hundreds.

House Republicans laid out their indictment of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in a 44-page report by the majority staff on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) accused the agency of being “more interested in singing ‘Kumbaya’ with the manufacturers than being a cop on the beat” as she blasted NHTSA for failing to take responsibility for its shortcomings.


But the agency remained defiant, insisting it had dealt with automakers aggressively, and it placed the blame for the recall delays squarely on GM’s shoulders.

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“I want to be clear: NHTSA did not shrug,” said the agency’s top official, David Friedman, rebutting criticism during the McCaskill-led hearing of a Senate Commerce subcommittee that the agency failed to act on known safety problems. “NHTSA aggressively pursues these issues.”

Neither Democrats nor Republicans were satisfied with Friedman’s answers.

“I simply do not have the confidence that NHTSA will take more aggressive action in the future,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said at the hearing. Sen. Richard Blumenthal said the agency has “neither bark nor bite” and accused it of “nodding off on safety.” McCaskill said she wanted an admission that NHTSA had fallen down on the job and said Friedman was “digging himself a hole.”

Friedman, NHTSA’s deputy administrator, eventually conceded that “there are things that we need to improve.”

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Despite the criticism, there was no clear sign that Congress had any answers that would have prevented the recall scandal at the nation’s largest automaker, and House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton gave no indication any legislative proposals were imminent.

“It is tragic that the evidence was staring NHTSA in the face, and the agency didn’t identify the warnings,” Upton said. “NHTSA exists not just to process what the company finds but to dig deeper. They failed.”

Upton’s report sought to zero in on NHTSA’s failure to investigate the link between the defective ignition lock and airbag nondeployment that was first noted by a Wisconsin state trooper in 2007. And the report asserts that the regulator shared some of the blame with the automaker — an idea agency officials have repeatedly dismissed by noting that GM hid information from the regulator.

“NHTSA was actively trying to find the ball,” Friedman said at the Senate hearing. “General Motors was actively trying to hide the ball.”

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The report said the agency had a “NHTSA shrug” that is no different from the infamous “GM salute,” in which it identified a problem but failed to do anything about it, and it accused NHTSA of having “operational tunnel vision” and failing to share information among units. It also said NHTSA employees failed to understand how the advanced airbags that failed in many GM cars actually worked.

Democratic Reps. Henry Waxman of California and Diana DeGette of Colorado criticized the GOP-backed report for “almost completely [ignoring] the role played by GM.” Waxman is the committee’s top Democrat, and DeGette is the ranking member of its investigations subcommittee. The duo asked to pass legislation levying a $3 fee on every car sold in the U.S. to pay for NHTSA’s safety operations and increasing the fines the agency can impose.

Much of the questioning in the Senate committee seemed directly pulled from a New York Times report published Monday on NHTSA’s failings. Friedman repeatedly disputed the accuracy of the report, saying it “completely mischaracterized” the agency’s work in some cases and was “flat-out wrong” in others. One major point was the agency’s popular five-star safety rating system, which automakers frequently use in advertising.

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) questioned why NHTSA would give five-star safety ratings to cars even if they’ve been included in a safety defect recall.

“If you see five stars, that’s the Good Housekeeping seal of approval,” he said. “The consumer is misled.”

Friedman said the program has prompted automakers to drastically improve vehicle safety but noted the agency has had internal discussions about how to work recall concerns into the star safety program.

Despite their criticisms, Democrats look ready to give NHTSA both more money and new powers, some of which have already drawn opposition from the auto lobby. McCaskill has already introduced NHTSA reauthorization legislation that would eliminate the $35 million cap on fines NHTSA can hand out to automakers, increase its vehicle safety funding authorization to $258 million over six years and make it easier for federal prosecutors to charge manufacturers with auto safety violations.

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers said there was no need to increase those fines or make prosecutions easier.

“The alliance does not believe that increasing fines for the auto sector or potentially criminalizing interactions between auto manufacturers, suppliers and NHTSA will help make vehicles safer,” the alliance Vice President of Vehicle Safety and Harmonization, Rob Strassburger, said in his prepared testimony.

McCaskill and Heller also questioned why the White House hadn’t yet nominated a replacement for the last permanent NHTSA administrator, David Strickland. Strickland left the job in December. McCaskill urged the White House to make finding a replacement a “top priority.” Friedman, the agency’s deputy administrator, had been serving as acting administrator, but his 210 days in the top post recently expired, and he reverted to his prior title.

The scandal blew open in February, when the automaker recalled more than two million Chevy Cobalts and Saturn Ions because of the ignition switch problem. GM CEO Mary Barra ordered an overhaul of the company’s safety processes, eventually prompting the company to recall more than 16 million vehicles. An internal company investigation blamed GM for having a broken corporate culture, and Barra dismissed 13 employees, including some senior executives.

The company has also set aside between $400 million and $600 million to compensate crash victims through a fund run by famed lawyer Ken Feinberg. On Monday, Feinberg said he had received 125 death claims related to the defect and verified 19 of them. GM had long said it knew of only 13 deaths conclusively linked to the problem, even as auto safety advocates and lawyers insisted the number was much higher.