Thursday, April 10, 2014
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
GM, the shuttle and ubiquitous truck named the FMTV
I find it interesting the government has not had a huge amount to say about the fact that GM knew about the ignition problem with 1.6 Million vehicles for over decade and decided to keep it quiet. Probably because the government knew about it, too! NHTSA said they had some first-hand knowledge of what was happening, but they decided it was "investigatable" or some term that only the USG would use without getting called on it.
The investigator probably never told anybody else, or if they did, they probably had some 'cozy' relationship with the same department at GM that was saying that they were sure this wasn't a big deal.
It probably never made it past anybody at the DoJ, because NHTSA gets to be the judge and jury on those types of things, and they don't need anybody else telling them what to do...
So much for that transparent government that we all thought we were going to see. Oh, sorry, not anytime soon. As the good people at POGO will tell you, there is a very tight rein by the agencies to make sure they control what gets out, what does not, and of course, what can be discovered by the use of FOIA.
I know of a fleet of USG vehicles that had a braking flaw, that nobody in NHTSA even knew about...Simply because the issue was buried between the Agency (DoD) and the DoJ. This case never made it to NHTSA because the DoJ was unwilling (read lackadaisical) about doing anything if the Agency wasn't interested in pursuing it. So, Billions of Dollars later, the USG has a vehicle system with brake that sort of work. More importantly, it is putting people lives's and the public in general at risk.
...That would be concerning, except that the Agency wants to keep it sort of quiet, and, well, we all want to retire on this project, just like the people at GM that sat on the information that may have been able to save a dozen to hundreds of lives. The sad part, really though, is that the blame lies with the US Government, who are charged with oversight, but sat idly by and did next to nothing. I suspect the same thing happened in the case of the faulty Army truck I mentioned earlier, and probably goes on in many, many programs because someone finds the easy wrong path more readily instead of the hard right. Reminds me of the Challenger Shuttle explosion in January of 1986, which, we later found out, was not simply an "accident". Again, don't blame the contractor, blame our own government for its' shoddy oversight and downright lazy attitude towards safety.
The investigator probably never told anybody else, or if they did, they probably had some 'cozy' relationship with the same department at GM that was saying that they were sure this wasn't a big deal.
It probably never made it past anybody at the DoJ, because NHTSA gets to be the judge and jury on those types of things, and they don't need anybody else telling them what to do...
So much for that transparent government that we all thought we were going to see. Oh, sorry, not anytime soon. As the good people at POGO will tell you, there is a very tight rein by the agencies to make sure they control what gets out, what does not, and of course, what can be discovered by the use of FOIA.
I know of a fleet of USG vehicles that had a braking flaw, that nobody in NHTSA even knew about...Simply because the issue was buried between the Agency (DoD) and the DoJ. This case never made it to NHTSA because the DoJ was unwilling (read lackadaisical) about doing anything if the Agency wasn't interested in pursuing it. So, Billions of Dollars later, the USG has a vehicle system with brake that sort of work. More importantly, it is putting people lives's and the public in general at risk.
...That would be concerning, except that the Agency wants to keep it sort of quiet, and, well, we all want to retire on this project, just like the people at GM that sat on the information that may have been able to save a dozen to hundreds of lives. The sad part, really though, is that the blame lies with the US Government, who are charged with oversight, but sat idly by and did next to nothing. I suspect the same thing happened in the case of the faulty Army truck I mentioned earlier, and probably goes on in many, many programs because someone finds the easy wrong path more readily instead of the hard right. Reminds me of the Challenger Shuttle explosion in January of 1986, which, we later found out, was not simply an "accident". Again, don't blame the contractor, blame our own government for its' shoddy oversight and downright lazy attitude towards safety.
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