Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) failed to report a number of deaths and injuries that led to some of its past recalls, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced in a press release on Tuesday.
This comes two months after the automaker was hit with a record fine of $105 million USD for its failure to warn owners and recall and repair defective vehicles in a timely manner.
Apparently, U.S. regulators uncovered an apparent discrepancy at FCA in Early Warning Report data that automakers must provide to the NHTSA under federal law. A subsequent in-house investigation by the company found that information including auto-related death and injury claims had gone under-reported, according to Reuters.
"This represents a significant failure to meet a manufacturer’s safety responsibilities," NHTSA Administrator Mark Rosekind said in a statement.
FCA has published a statement saying it "takes this issue extremely seriously, and will continue to cooperate with the NHTSA to resolve this matter and ensure these issues do not re-occur."
The NHTSA originally discovered the safety reporting discrepancy in late July, around the same time that regulators and FCA announced an agreement intended to end years of contention over lapses in the automaker's performance on safety recalls covering millions of vehicles.
Under the terms of the agreement, FCA had to pay $70 million cash and spend another $20 million to improve its recall procedures. Further violations would lead to a fine of $15 million.
"Preliminary information suggests that this under-reporting is the result of a number of problems" with FCA’s early warning report systems, Rosekind said.
The NHTSA will now gather additional information on the scope and causes of this failure.