mr. scovel. >> chairman mccaskill, ranking member heller, members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to testify to the important vehicle on vehicle safety. since 2002 our office has identified opportunities for nhtsa to improve its efforts to address safety defects. today i will focus on nhtsa's action to address major weaknesses we reported in 2011. i will also discuss how our work will help lead to strong action against automakers that choose to withhold critical safety data from nhtsa. in 2011 we reported that nhtsa's office of defects investigation at improvement in four key areas. first area concerns one of odi's most critical functions, to determine when to investigate allegations of safety defects. oei did not adequately track its position of consumer complaints or document decisions about whether to investigate, leaving its decisions open to interpretation and subject to questions after the fact. nhtsa completed actions to address the three recommendrecommend ations we made to