GM to pay more than 360.000 EUR to family

General Motors Corp. will pay more than 360.000 EUR to the parents of a 7-year-old girl who was killed along with her stepmother when their sport utility vehicle rolled over five years ago near the California-Arizona border in the US. The estate of MacKenzie Shaver claimed in its 2003 lawsuit that GM opted to install Electronic Stability Control into its luxury lines instead of putting the rollover prevention technology into its SUVs and trucks. MacKenzie and her stepmother were killed in June 2002 when their Chevrolet Suburban veered off the road and flipped over. Three other people in the vehicle were injured.

The lawsuit claimed GM knew the benefits of the stability control system nearly a decade before the accident but didn't put it into Rodriguez's SUV. If the company had, at least two lives would have been saved, plaintiff's attorney Michael Avila said. "They had the technology available and they knew the safety benefits," Avila said of GM. "Because there was no public awareness of ESC at the time, it was something the public wasn't demanding." All new passenger vehicles in the US will have ESC by 2012. Nearly 40 percent of all 2007 vehicles have ESC, including about 90 percent of SUVs, federal officials said. More than a third of all GM vehicles are equipped with the system.