Lawmakers on Capitol Hills strongly criticize the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for overlooking evidence and failing to identify the deadly defect in General Motors cars

David Friedman, the head of the NHTSA who testified Tuesday at a Senate hearing about the NHTSA’s handling of the ignition switch defect in General Motor’s cars faced heavy criticism from both parties. The agency was accused of being irresponsible, of failing to use its full authority over automakers and of failing to discover defects that consumers had alerted the agency to.

Just before his testimony the House Committee on Energy and Commerce also released a Staff Report on the GM Ignition Switch Recall that concluded that the “NHTSA had ample information to identify a potential safety defect as early as 2007.”

Read more in the New York Times and in Automotive-Fleet.com

See a video of the hearing