Two weeks after becoming the CEO of General Motors, Mary Barra got blind sided with the news that a major safety problem, a faulty ignition switch in certain vehicles that could turn and cause the vehicle to stop with no warning had come to light. This switch was flagged years ago as being problematic but nothing aside from service bulletin was ever done. This problem was linked at the time to several crashes and 13 fatalities.

When Barra testified to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce about the ignition switch, she said that she only knew about the issue in late January. But many questioned for someone who worked at the company for 34 years, why was she kept in the dark? How did she not know about this at all?

"Mary has said it: The moment she became aware of the problem, as I would expect, she confronted it. She didn't know about it. I bet my life on it," said former GM CEO Dan Akerson in a interview with Forbes.

This is the first time that Akerson has made any comment regarding ignition switch recall. No mention was made if Akerson knew anything about the recall during his tenure.

Source: Forbes

William Maley is a staff writer for Cheers & Gears. He can be reached at [email protected] or you can follow him on twitter at @realmudmonster.

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Interesting, makes one wonder if they will call him to testify before congress on if he knew about it. I would think with all the paperwork requested that they should be able to say who knew about it and who did not. I can tell you that many middle executives are not aware of issues in a company that are outside their scope of control or responsibility. I truly do not think she knew about this issue just like most of America did not know till this came to light.

She strikes me as a very ethical person. That can only help GM at this point.

Why didn't they ask Akerson?