The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has ignored a congressional recommendation to pull General Motors cars with a potentially deadly defect from the road.
NHTSA officials say that removing the cars from the road is unnecessary because the automaker has told drivers to only operate their vehicles with their key removed from their key rings.
Heavy key fobs or rings can cause the switches to slip into an “accessory” position that can shut down car engines. Reuters News reports that the defect sparked a recent recall of 2.6 million vehicles and is linked to at least 13 fatalities.
“We remain extremely concerned that GM and NHTSA are not doing enough to convey the seriousness of this defect to owners of the affected cars, unnecessarily putting more lives at risk,” and Senators Edward Markey of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut.
The company is currently under investigation for issuing the recall of its vehicles more than a decade after it learned of the ignition switch problem.
