A General Motors compensation fund for ignition switch incident victims has already received more claims than GM expected.

General Motors has said that its vehicles’ defective ignition switches have caused 16 deaths and close to 60 other serious incidents. However, since the General Motors’ fund was started in August, over 300 claims have been submitted, and of those, it has been reported that more than 100 are death-related.

This doesn’t surprise consumer groups and federal safety regulators, who long believed that GM’s estimated numbers were low.

GM is fighting claims filed by victims alleging injury prior to the the company filing for bankruptcy protection in 2009, saying that the “new GM should not be liable for problems caused by the old company.” Nevertheless, plaintiffs whose vehicles are not part of the compensation fund are still stepping forward.

Failure to Protect

It’s alleged that General Motors knew about the problems with its ignition switch for at least 10 years, but did nothing to protect the public. The ignition switch, in a number of GM cars, can unintentionally turn off the vehicle, in turn disabling the power steering and the airbags. This has caused multiple injuries and, over the years, deaths. As this failure to act came to light, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) fined GM $35 million for its inaction.

GM did not start recalling vehicles until February. From February to June, over 2.6 million cars were recalled for ignition switch issues. Independent investigators were brought in to find the failure points and to ensure safety measures were taken. Amid a re-examination of safety issues by the company, more cars were recalled. Today, ignition switch problems have caused GM to recall close to 20 million vehicles.

These are not the only recalls, however. Overall, there have been more than 50 recalls of General Motors vehicles for various problems, including air bag defects, unsafe seat belts, electrical complications and a host of other issues.

For the first half of this year alone, the number of GM cars recalled for issues is almost equal to the number of vehicles GM has sold in the last eight years.