General Motors CEO Mary Barra will testify before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations on April 1 regarding the handling of a recent recall.
GM announced in February that it was recalling six vehicle models because of an alleged faulty ignition switch that the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration has received complaints about over the last decade.
NHTSA acting Administrator David Friedman has also been invited to testify on April 1.
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Chairman Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) said they look forward to Barra’s and Friedman’s testimony.
“Their testimony is critical to understanding what the company and NHTSA knew about the safety problems, when they knew it and what was done about it,” Upton and Murphy said. “The problems originated long before Barra and Friedman took the helms of their respective organizations, but their actions and input now, as our investigation proceeds, will be essential to getting answers about what went wrong. We want to know if this tragedy could have been prevented and what can be done to ensure the loss of life due to safety failures like this don’t happen again.”
In GM’s recall announcement, the company said the ignition switches could be linked to 31 frontal crashes that caused 13 fatalities.
The Transportation Recall Enhancement, Accountability and Documentation Act authored by Upton to improve communication between vehicle manufacturers and the federal government was signed into law in 2000.
“To better protect the public, I sponsored the TREAD Act back in 2000 so that regulators and companies could better identify safety defects in vehicles before they escalated into an ongoing problem,” Upton said. “Congress passed this bipartisan solution with the intention of exposing flaws and preventing accidents and fatalities. Yet, here we are over a decade later, faced with accidents and tragedies, and significant questions need to be answered….”