A front page story in the New York Times about General Motors' travails features Mykia Jordan, 23, who was injured in a car crash on a Detroit freeway that appears to be linked to a faulty ignition switch.
The story, entitled "G.M. Prepares to Count Cost of Suffering", and authored by four reporters, including Bill Vlasic, the Times' Detroit bureau chief, talks about Jordan who was in a coma for three weeks and now walks with a limp and cane.
The Times reports that she lost control of her Chevy Cobalt on a Sunday afternoon on a Detroit Freeway ramp in 2012. Her 3-month-old son was strapped in a car seat, and the car crashed into a cement barrier and overturned. The air bags did not deploy.
The Times writes:
She missed a year of work and school while she recovered from a head injury and many broken bones, breathing through a tracheostomy tube and relearning how to walk. The baby survived with hardly a scratch, remarkable fortune that she says helps blunt the pain she still feels in her leg every day.
Lawyers and investigators now believe Ms. Jordan’s accident, on Oct. 14, 2012, was the fault of a defective ignition switch in Cobalts and several other models of General Motors cars.
The Times writes that GM is going to have to make big payouts in this big mess.
The article states:
While it will not come cheap, getting the payment plan right is crucial. Too generous and it could slow the automaker’s comeback from bankruptcy; not generous enough and victims will seek justice through lengthy and costly court battles, further dragging out the company’s turmoil.
Claims records, lawsuits and accident reports suggest that the list of injured survivors is long and tragic.
