The scandal of Volkswagen falsifying emission tests has exposed the cosy connections between the German government and the company. A recent article in the New York Times notes, “There exists a revolving-door climate in which leaders glide between top posts in government and auto firms”.

A recent settlement between the US government and General Motors reveals similar corruption. In the GM case, the issue was faulty ignition switches. Company officials knew about the dangers of the faulty ignition system as far back as 2001, but chose to install them in 1 million cars anyway.

At least 124 deaths occurred because of the defect, GM admits, but the real death toll is likely far higher. Of the tens of thousands of auto fatalities in the US each year, most aren’t scrutinised to uncover mechanical faults, and the drivers are blamed whether they are at fault or not.

The defect in the switches allows them suddenly to turn off, cutting engine power, power steering and brakes, and preventing air bags from deploying in the event of a crash. Driving a car that experiences such a failure is harrowing.

One driver, Samantha Denti, told a news conference last year: “Driving this car was like playing a game of Russian roulette with my safety and that of my friends. I can’t even begin to explain the fear and confusion that runs through you that moment when you have no control over your car”.

Last month, the government settled with GM, fining the company US$900 million under a “deferred prosecution agreement”.

Just as in the case of the financial firms responsible for the crash of 2008, who had to pay some fines while no executives were charged with crimes, GM has been deemed not only “too big to fail” but “too big to jail”.

The fines are shrugged off by these huge companies as business expenses – a slap on the wrist. GM promises that it will never, ever do such a dastardly thing again.

Consumer and worker safety advocate Ralph Nader points out that the $900 million is “really tax money recycled”, since GM received an $80 billion government bailout in 2008, much of which it hasn’t paid back.

Amber Rose, 16 years old, was one of the victims of the defect. She died in 2005 when her Chevrolet Cobalt crashed and the airbags failed to deploy. Her mother, Laura Christian, said that at Amber’s funeral, emergency personnel who were at the crash scene told her that the airbags should have deployed, but didn’t. “An investigator was hired shortly after”, she said, who discovered that the ignition switch was off. GM recently confirmed this was the case.

“It’s absolutely ludicrous that GM is able to write a check to get away with what is tantamount to murder, in my opinion”, Christian told Democracy Now! in September. “You know, the fact that there are going to be absolutely no individual prosecutions, I mean that all of our loved ones that died, they will have died in vain. I can’t comprehend this.”

Since her daughter’s death, Laura Christian has become an auto-safety advocate, and runs the Facebook page GM Recall Survivors. She added, “None of the families I’ve spoken to … care about the money. What we care about is seeing real justice”.

Clarence Ditlow, head of the Center for Auto Safety, said, “GM killed over 100 people by knowingly putting a defective ignition switch into over 1 million vehicles. Today, thanks to its lobbyists, GM officials walk off scot-free while its customers are six feet under.”

In many cases – how many we cannot know because we don’t know the actual number of accidents caused by the faulty switches – victims of GM are prosecuted. Rena Steinzor, a law professor and author of Why not jail?: Industrial catastrophes, corporate malfeasance, and government inaction, tells of one such case: “Candice Andersen, who was driving a Saturn, ... ran the car into a tree after she lost control of it”.

The car stalled because of the switch, she lost the steering and brakes, and after the crash, the airbags wouldn’t deploy. “Unfortunately, her fiancé was killed in the crash, and she was indicted for reckless homicide.” She got probation after a plea bargain, but only after “her parents had emptied their retirement account to pay for her defence. And only years later did a judge vacate her plea, when GM admitted that the switch was faulty. So the double standard for white-collar criminals and the average person is revealed in sharp relief by this very sad case.”

Fifty years ago Ralph Nader published a book, Unsafe at any speed, which led to more auto safety regulations. One thing he fought for was a law to hold executives criminally responsible for such acts as the deliberate installation of the faulty ignition switch. The big business-dominated Congress failed to enact any such law.

Corporations were initially formed to limit the liability of shareholders. Nader told Democracy Now!: “What we have now is corporations who got chartered many, many decades ago to limit the liability of shareholders, now have limited liability of the corporation itself.

“And the mockery is that General Motors and GM CEO Mary Barra are using shareholder money and taxpayer money to pay this flimsy $900 million settlement fine, and they’re off scot-free.”

He also noted, “Hardly a month goes by when the New York Times or Wall Street Journal doesn’t report that a top federal prosecutor leaves the job and triples or quadruples his or her salary by going to the very corporate law firms that were defending these corporations, so there’s this merry-go-round that goes on”.

Discussing the 2008 financial crash, Nader said: “Nobody was held responsible for it, in JP Morgan, Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, AIG, they weren’t prosecuted … then they have the gall, after they jump ship and tank their companies and Wall Street, to go to Washington … and demand and get a bailout”. Helping them out was treasury secretary Henry Paulson, former head of Goldman Sachs.

“This country is being corporatised into the ground. Its democracy is being driven into the ground. That’s why we’re very heartened by Laura Christian and the victims and families of the victims, because they are not going away. Victims and families of victims of product defects all over the country should organise, network”, Nader concluded.