General Motor crisis: Recalls eight million cars

Detroit: General Motors Co’s ongoing safety crisis over deadly ignition switches deepened on Monday with the recall of 8.23 million mostly older cars linked by the US automaker to three deaths.

The latest recalls boosted the number of deaths acknowledged by GM to at least 16. The automaker said it now knows of 61 crashes tied to faulty ignition switches, although US lawmakers and safety regulators have said they expect the death toll to climb.

A Reuters investigation in early June found that at least 74 people had died in GM cars in accidents with similarities to those that GM earlier had linked to 13 deaths involving defective ignition switches.

The report on Tuesday of additional fatalities and recalls “confirms our fears that GM’s safety failures were much more widespread than initially reported,” said US house energy and commerce chairman Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican, whose committee twice has interviewed GM CEO Mary Barra.

GM said the latest victims will not be included in a compensation fund set up to provide at least $1 million to victims of crashes tied to defective switches in older compact cars, including the Chevrolet Cobalt and Saturn Ion. Details of that fund, which is being administered by attorney Kenneth Feinberg, were announced earlier on Tuesday.

The latest victims were killed in two separate high-speed crashes, one involving a 2003 Chevrolet Impala, the other a 2004 Impala, according to GM spokesman Jim Cain. The air bags failed to deploy in both crashes, Mr Cain said, but GM cannot conclusively link the nondeployment to the ignition switches.