Families of Victims of GM’s Ignition Defect Speak Out

‘Our daughters, sons, sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, wives and husbands are gone because they were a cost of doing business GM’s style’

Families Demand Answers From GM ‘Murderers’ (TIME)

On Jun. 12, 2009, a 19 year-old, soon-to-be South Carolina University freshman named Sarah Trautwein lost control of her 2005 Chevy Cobalt, which veered right, then swerved back left head-on into a tree, killing her instantly. Almost five years later, Sarah’s mother Rene stood before the U.S. Capitol Tuesday alongside about 20 other friends and family members of those injured or killed in crashes associated with an ignition defect in several General Motors models that shut down power to the car and disabled the air bags.

“Now I have to relive this, and I have to think about her final seconds on this earth, and the panic that she felt,” says Trautwein, who found concrete evidence on Friday that the air bags did not employ properly in her daughter’s car. “That’s very painful.”

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