GM Accused of Hiding Safety Device From Investigators

A safety device that might have protected General Motors Co. pickup trucks from fiery crashes was hidden from government investigators, a consumer group charged Tuesday.

The Center for Auto Safety said GM deliberately withheld information on protective fuel tank cages from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

NHTSA investigators have been conducting an investigation into GM’s side-mounted fuel tanks for the last nine months.

Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the center, said the cages are used in school buses to protect fuel tanks in side impact collisions and could be easily modified to fit GM pickups.

Ditlow said at one time GM installed the tank cages on its flatbed trucks.

“With simple engineering modifications, this cage could be an inexpensive recall remedy for these trucks,” he said at a news conference.

GM denied the allegations and maintained that its pickup trucks are not defective.

Ditlow’s allegations are “simply wrong,” GM spokesman William O’Neill said in a statement.

GM said it complied with the NHTSA request for documents relating to the trucks. The company said it sent over 80,000 documents to the NHTSA for its investigation.

“We will continue to cooperate with NHTSA as it reviews this matter, and we expect that will be done with science, not rhetoric, as the benchmark for analysis,” O’Neill said.

The Center for Auto Safety is pushing for a recall of the GM trucks manufactured from 1973 to 1987, which it terms “rolling firebombs.”

Earlier this year, an Atlanta jury awarded $105 million to the parents of 17-year-old Shannon Moseley, who was killed in a fiery crash of his GM pickup in 1989.