A review of crash data analysis in a defect and recall investigation of the General Motors C/K pickup trucks

In the process of assessing the safety of the fuel-containment system of the 1973-1987 General Motors C/K truck, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and General Motors Corporation have written and submitted numerous documents to a public file between October 1992 and April 1993. Five substantial reports have been issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and General Motors Corporation describing data analysis of crashes recorded on state and federal databases. Both the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and General Motors Corporation have used crash data, in some cases the same data, to examine the claim that a defect in the fuel system design of General Motors Corporation C/K trucks poses an unreasonable risk of death or injury. The comparative analysis presented in this paper demonstrates how crash databases and their summary statistics can be used to support opposed positions in a safety dispute. Understanding differences in the analysis is fundamental to obtaining an insight into the role of field crash data, including its relevance and shortcomings, in defect and recall investigations.