Almost two years ago, Mary Barra vowed to make safety a top priority. It was a lie.
On March 14, 2016, Bloomberg News reported GM’s insidious response to the hundreds if not thousands of deaths caused by their faulty ignition switch that led to 2.6 million recalls:
“‘Sometimes, accidents just happen,’ a lawyer for General Motors Co. told a U.S. jury in defense of the carmaker at a test trial over a deadly flaw in millions of ignition switches.”
The arrogant comment that “sometimes accidents just happen” is indicative of a hypocritical corporate culture that speaks out of both sides of their mouth: making safety a priority in one breathe, denial of unsafe practices in the other.
Mary Barra appears to have deceived us all. Her reluctance to address or change the unsafe practices in Mexico promptly or swiftly demonstrate that she herself will not speak up for safety.
Instead of grabbing the bull by the horns when Latin NCAP approached her in November, Barra’s spokespeople have provided canned answers of little substance.
In January, she defended GM’s unsafe practices and showed her true colors. The International Business Times headline says it all.
Mary Barra must apologize to the Mexican people for her egregious, callous behavior that has put lives at risk and for lying to the general public in 2014 about a bogus “cultural change” that was “to make [GM] vehicles safer, to make our whole company a safer organization and focused on the customer’s safety.”
We all know that GM is a global company that should be incorporating the highest U.S. safety standards domestically and abroad, and acknowledging that Hispanic lives matter.
Read our full investigative report here.