Family Believes Daughter Died Due to GM Safety Issues
PEREIRA: We're going to turn now to a story that has so many of us outraged. General Motors waiting years to fix a problem with the ignition switches on some of the models of their vehicles. At least 13 deaths have been blamed on the problem. Lawmakers accusing the company of saving anywhere from 57 cents to $2 per car by not fixing it. GM officials neither confirming nor denying that figure to CNN. Even when the company did redesign the switches a few years ago, it still didn't meet GM's own standards.</s>BERMAN: And this has all been coming as lawmakers ask tough questions to GM's new CEO Mary Barra. She has blamed the company's cost culture prior to its 2009 bankruptcy. Joining us now, Renee Trautwein and her son Phil. They're with us here in the studio. Renee's daughter Sarah died in an accident in 2009 after she lost control of her 2005 Chevy Cobalt. And Renee, you do now believe she would be alive if not for this ignition switch?</s>RENEE TRAUTWEIN, DAUGHTER DIED IN GM CAR CRASH: Absolutely. It was confirmed last Friday that her air bags did not deploy and it was a front impact.</s>BERMAN: This happened years ago but it took until last week for you to come to this conclusion?</s>TRAUTWEIN: I'm ashamed to say. I have been weak through this. I haven't sat in the car, haven't read a report, but this story has been haunting me for two weeks. So I just told my children, maybe I'm crazy, but this story won't stop. I made one phone call to my brother, who did see the car. I asked him if the air bags had deployed. And he said he does not remember seeing them.</s>PEREIRA: First of all, you are not weak. You are very strong.</s>TRAUTWEIN: Thank you.</s>PEREIRA: That's not the order of things, you and I both know that. So talk to me. Has GM reached out to you? Have either of you heard from GM at all through any of this?</s>TRAUTWEIN: No, just meeting the other night with Mary Barra.</s>BERMAN: So talk to me about that meeting. Mary Barra, she apologized in front of Congress. I know she had the meeting that you were a part of.</s>TRAUTWEIN: Correct.</s>BERMAN: Were you grateful to have that opportunity? Was she persuasive?</s>TRAUTWEIN: No. Scripted.</s>PEREIRA: There was no --</s>TRAUTWEIN: Of course, there was "I'm sorry," after every parent. "I'm sorry for your loss, I'm sorry for your loss, I'm sorry for your loss." Didn't feel any real warmth.</s>PEREIRA: What would you have wanted to hear from her?</s>TRAUTWEIN: I would have liked to see a mother's real tears. She's a mother, as we are. She didn't even use stuff to blot once. I didn't see any real emotion at all. I can't imagine that as a mother.</s>BERMAN: One of the things that GM has done that she did at that hearing in front of Congress, she is appointing Kenneth Feinburg now to deal presumably or at least look into the issue of possible compensation to families of people who may have been killed in similar situations to your daughter. What does that do for you?</s>TRAUTWEIN: Right now, that's not even a thought. Right now, we need to get these cars off the road. There is still 2.5 million. Mary Barra needs to cut with the cover-up, own up, get the cars off the road now before we lose some more lives, some more beautiful lives. And that's what I am here for. Anyone driving the car, take it right now, take the key, don't drive it. Do not drive it.</s>PEREIRA: Phil, you lost your sister, and I imagine that this whole process -- John, you mentioned, it was a few years ago but grief takes its own time, doesn't it? And we certainly process it differently. This has probably dragged it all up for you again, hasn't it, with the loss of your sister? I know it has for your mom. This -- you are having to relive it all over again.</s>PHIL TRAUTWEIN, ISSTER DIED IN GM CAR CRASH: Yes, she was my only sister, she was 3 1/2 years younger than me. We loved each other, like brother and sister does and they would. And for us, it's a new -- it's new now. Now we really don't know what was her last thoughts before she passed. Was she struggling. Like, for us, we thought she fell asleep. So we always had that comfort that she just went, that she just went peacefully.