Page 461 of the book
In November 2004, Candice Anderson was driving her boyfriend, Gene Erickson, to pick up his car when her Saturn Ion swerved off the road ata slight curve and hit a tree, killing her passenger. The couple was not wearing seat belts, and the air bags did not deploy. The Texas State Police found traces of an antianxiety medication in Anderson’s system, and she was fined and charged with criminally negligent homicide. Over the next 10 years, Anderson constantly relived the nightmare and wondered how she lost control on such an easy curve.
On a cloudy Wisconsin night in October 2006, Megan Ungar-Kerns was driving with her friends Amy Rdemaker and Natasha Weigel in a 2005 Chevy Cobalt. The vehicle suddenly lost power and veered off the road into a utility pole and several trees. The air bags failed to operate, the driver was seriously injured, and both passengers died on the spot. The state police report noted that at the time of the crash, the key was in “accessory” mode.
Brooke Melton was driving in Georgia on a rainy March evening in 2010. It was her 29th birthday. Her 2005 Chevy Cobalt suddenly stalled, slid into an oncoming vehicle, rolled, and dropped 15 feet into a creek. Melton was wearing her seatbelt, but the air bags did not operate and she died on the way to the hospital. Police recorded driving too fast for conditions as the cause of the accident; she was going 58mph in a 55mph zone.
These tragic incidents had little in common except for three commonalities: in all of these cases (and, as it turned out, dozens more like them), the driver had for some reason lost control of the car, the built-in air bag protection systems had failed to deploy and the vehicles were made by General Motors (GM).
In February 2014, nearly a decade after Gene Erickson died, GM began a series of recalls that eventaully afected 2.6 million vehicles whose model years ranged from 2003 to 2011. The reason for the recalls was a faulty ignition switch that easily shifted the key from “run” into the “off” or “accessory” positions. When the key was not in “run”, the cars lost power, including to the steering, braking and protective air bag systems. This reduced the driver’s control and increased the risk of injury in the event of an accident. In addition to facing individual and class action lawsuits,the company was under investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the U.S. Congress, and the page 462 Justie Department. By May 2014, 47 accidents and more than a dozen fatalities had been linked to the ignition switch defect. But many questiosnregarding the decade-long delay in repairing the defective part remained unanswered.
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