303 deaths seen in GM cars with failed air bags

As lawmakers press General Motors and regulators over their decadelong failure to correct a defective ignition switch, a new review of federal crash data shows that 303 people died after the air bags failed to deploy on two of the models that were recalled last month.

The review of the air bag failures from 2003 to 2012, by the Friedman Research Corp., adds to the mounting reports of problems that went unheeded before General Motors announced last month that it was recalling more than 1.6 million cars worldwide because of the defective switch. GM has linked 12 deaths to the faulty switch in the two models analyzed, the 2005-07 Chevrolet Cobalts and 2003-07 Saturn Ions, as well as four other models.

The review by Friedman Research, a company that analyzes vehicle safety data, looked at cases in which the air bags failed to deploy, but it did not try to evaluate what caused the crashes.

The Center for Auto Safety, a private watchdog group in Washington, commissioned the study, and, in a letter to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, criticized the agency for not detecting the air bag failures, as well as the defective ignition switch.

"NHTSA claims it did not do an investigation because it did not see a defect trend," Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the center, wrote in the letter. "In some instances, single complaints can trigger a recall."

Regulators said there was still not enough evidence to warrant an investigation.

"NHTSA uses a variety of tools to evaluate the more than 40,000 complaints it receives each year," the agency said. "In this case, the data available to NHTSA at the time did not contain sufficient evidence of a possible safety defect trend that would warrant the agency opening a formal investigation."

General Motors criticized the use of the database, called the Fatality Analysis Reporting System.

"As knowledgeable observers know, FARS tracks raw data," Greg Martin, a GM spokesman, said. "Without rigorous analysis, it is pure speculation to attempt to draw any meaningful conclusions."

Among the accidents in the government's database is a crash that killed Hasaya Chansuthus, 25, in the early hours of Dec. 31, 2009. Chansuthus was driving her 2006 Chevrolet Cobalt in the rain around 2 a.m. in Murfreesboro, Tenn., when she sideswiped a car and crashed head-on into a tree at 70 mph, according to her brother and the accident report. The air bags did not deploy.

In an interview Wednesday, Chansuthus' brother David said the family was troubled by the air bag's failure and the fact that his sister had hit her head on the steering wheel, which, he said, suggested that the seat belt had failed to lock.

He said the family had not heard about ignition problems with the Cobalt until recent reports but suspected something might have been wrong with the power system that night given the problems with the air bags and the seat belt lock.

The family filed a complaint with GM and shortly thereafter filed a lawsuit. The case was settled in February 2011, the family's lawyer, Rob Gritton, said. The terms, including the payment the company made to the family, are confidential, he and Chansuthus said.

Hasaya Chansuthus had been at a party at her boyfriend's house and had been drinking, both her brother and Gritton said. The accident report said that her blood alcohol level was 0.19 - more than twice the legal limit. Nonetheless, the company settled the case.

"Air bags are supposed to deploy whether people have been drinking or not," Gritton said.

He added: "I don't bring meritless lawsuits."

Both men declined to discuss the case in further detail because of the confidentiality requirement in the settlement.

"We knew that it doesn't matter what we did, nothing was going to bring" her back, Chansuthus said. "But we had to do something. At least it was a small sense of satisfaction that we forced them to acknowledge what had happened."

GM has recalled six car models because of defective ignition switches that, if bumped or weighed down by a heavy key chain, can shut off engines and power systems, disabling the air bags. On Feb. 13, it recalled 778,000 cars, including the 2005-07 Chevrolet Cobalts and 2007 Pontiac G5. Twelve days later, the company more than doubled the recall with four more models - the 2003-07 Saturn Ion; the 2006-07 Chevrolet HHR and Pontiac Solstice; and the 2007 Saturn Sky. All of those models used the same ignition switch; the models are not in production anymore.

The company told safety regulators that it had received reports of the ignition defect as far back as 2001, according to documents filed this week. GM said the problem had been linked to 31 accidents and 12 deaths, but the company has declined to release details of those episodes, including dates, locations and names of victims.

The automaker has started an internal investigation, led by a former U.S. attorney for Northern Illinois, Anton Valukas.

"Research is underway at GM and the investigation of the ignition switch recall and the impact of the defective switch is ongoing," Martin, the GM spokesman, said. "While this is happening, we are doing what we can now to ensure our customers' safety and peace of mind. We want our customers to know that today's GM is committed to fixing this problem in a manner that earns their trust."

The GM ignition problem is connected to air bags because, to deploy, they require electrical power provided by the engine. The power is needed for a complex system of sensors and a computer that consider factors ranging from how rapidly a vehicle is decelerating to how close the occupant is seated to the air bag, said David Zuby, the chief research officer for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which is financed by insurance companies and conducts about 80 crash tests a year.

Then, the computer determines whether to deploy the air bag with full force or at a lower level. The goal is a balancing act to protect the occupant from the impact of the crash, while keeping the air bag itself from causing an injury.

The Center for Auto Safety's letter said that the 303 victims were in the front seat, where air bags are situated, and had died in nonrear-impact crashes of Cobalts and Ions, in which the air bags did not deploy. That is about 26 percent of a total 1,148 fatalities - including those of back-seat occupants - that involved the same models.