GM let a woman go to jail to cover up mistake

[Bilge_Rat]

Woman Cleared in Death Linked to G.M.’s Faulty Ignition Switch

Candice Anderson was held responsible for the death of Gene Mikale Erickson, 25, when he was killed on Nov. 15, 2004, riding as a front-seat passenger in her beige Ion. Ms. Anderson crashed the car into a tree on a bright afternoon while driving along a country road in Ben Wheeler, Tex.

The district attorney who prosecuted Ms. Anderson submitted a statement in support of her vindication. That district attorney, Leslie Poynter Dixon, and the police trooper who investigated Ms. Anderson’s accident, whose report strongly suggested that Ms. Anderson’s driving had been influenced by intoxication, had both said that if the ignition-switch defect had been publicly known at the time of the crash, certain details of the accident — like the seemingly inexplicable lack of skid marks or evasive action — would have been seen differently.

She pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide in October 2007, five months after G.M. had conducted an internal review of the case and quietly ruled its car was to blame. She served five years probation and paid more than $10,000 in fines and restitution.

G.M. did not disclose its culpability when federal safety regulators asked about the cause of the crash in a so-called death inquiry. Instead, in June 2007, the automaker wrote to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that it had not assessed the cause of the crash when, in fact, it had: A G.M. engineer had ruled just a month earlier that power to the vehicle had most likely shut off.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/25/bu...=top-news&_r=0

unbelievable, yet why does it not surprise me.