Toyota’s Mounting Troubles
Reprinted from The Safety Record, Volume 6, Issue 5, October 2009
TORRANCE, CA— The world’s largest automaker Toyota, known for its rock-solid reputation for quality among consumers, is finding the pedestal a bit shaky these days. Last month, Toyota launched its largest recall in the company’s history for all-weather floor mats that may entrap the accelerator pedals after four died in an Sudden Unintended Acceleration (SUA) crash in California; the company is currently under investigation for a severe rust problem with Tundras; and litigants are clamoring for what’s in those four boxes of documents that former corporate attorney Dimitrios P. Biller – who has accused Toyota of destroying and concealing evidence in rollover cases – dropped off at a federal courthouse in Texas.
Toyota recalled the floor mats in 3.8 million Camry, Lexus, Avalon, Prius, Tacoma, and Tundra vehicles in an apparent response to the horrific August crash in Santee, California, that resulted in the deaths of a California Highway Patrolman Mark Saylor, his wife, daughter and brother-in-law. Toyota did not directly tie the recall to the crash, saying only: “recent events have prompted Toyota to take a closer look at the potential for an accelerator pedal to get stuck in the full open position due to an unsecured or incompatible driver’s floor mat,” in its recall announcement.
But the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has tied the fatal crash to the one outstanding Toyota SUA investigation still open at the Office of Defects Investigation. NHTSA has been investigating SUA complaints in Camry, Tacoma, Sienna and Lexus vehicles since 2003. Ten of those investigations were closed after a finding of accelerator pedal interference – from an unsecured accessory floor mat or an interior trim panel – or closed with no conclusion. In April, Jeffrey Pepski, a Lexus owner from Plymouth, MN asked the agency to re-open its investigation into SUA in Lexus ES350s. Earlier this month, the agency filed its report of the incident in Pepski’s petition file.
Pepski experienced an SUA event while driving at high speed, in which the vehicle accelerated to 80 mph. Pepski tried pumping and pulling up the accelerator with his foot – to no avail. He slowed the vehicle to about 25 mph, to the smoke and smell of overheated brakes, shifted into neutral, and depressed the start/stop button, but the rpms began to increase on the tachometer. Pepski shifted back into drive and his Lexus vaulted to 60 mph. Suddenly, the acceleration stopped. He stopped the vehicle, shifted it into park and depressed the start-stop button to turn off the engine. The vehicle shuddered to a halt.
He immediately returned the Lexus to the dealership, where it remains. Pepski refused to drive it. In May, two NHTSA investigators and one Toyota representative visited Pepski to examine the vehicle. They took it for a test drive, but were unable to duplicate Pepski’s out-of-control ride. Then, Pepski said, they tried to persuade him that the floor mat was to blame. (Pepski’s vehicle did not have the all-weather floor mats subject to the current recall. His vehicle was only equipped with the original equipment carpet mats.) Pepski remained convinced that the root of his vehicle’s problems are in the electronics.
“I was trapped in a runaway vehicle,” Pepski recalled. “I was able to push down on the accelerator as well as push up the accelerator with my foot. If the floor mat had been the cause, I would have dislodged it and the acceleration I was experiencing would have gone away and that didn’t happen.” He asked the Toyota representative to demonstrate how the floor mat could encroach upon the gas pedal – and remain there while a driver pushed and pulled the pedal.
“They couldn’t demonstrate that,” Pepski says. “If they can’t duplicate it, they say it didn’t happen, but computer glitches in cars can happen, just like they happen on your home computer. Glitches happen all of the time. Most have no serious consequences, but some do.”
Pepski’s petition was very unusual in its sophistication and detail. He raised seven issues with the agency related to wording in previous investigations that may have unnecessarily narrowed their scope. He asserted that ODI closed the last Lexus investigation too swiftly, concluding that the all weather floor mats were to blame, without investigating other causes. He argued that, based on his own difficulty in bringing his Lexus to a stop, the vehicle did not adhere to the FMVSSs governing accelerator control and service brake systems. He also criticized NHTSA for stating in a previous investigation that drivers could bring runaway vehicles to a halt by depressing the start-stop button for three seconds, when the Lexus owner’s manual specifically informs drivers that the engine can not be turned off unless the vehicle shift is in the park position.
Toyota did not wait for the agency to send an information request. Instead, it took the aggressive step of responding directly to the petition. It described Pepski as a disgruntled customer who would not accept Toyota’s conclusion that it was the result of floor mat interference and attempted to refute each point. It grudgingly allowed that perhaps the wording in its owner’s manual regarding turning the engine off might be misleading and would be corrected in future editions.
NHTSA has not yet ruled on the petition. But its inclusion of the Santee crash report, in which the agency made much of the evidence of an unsecured all-weather floor mat and taxed-to-limit brakes, leads some observers to speculate that this investigation is going the way of other Lexus SUA probes – even though Pepski did not have an all-weather floor mat.
Regardless of the causes, the frantic efforts of drivers to bring runaway vehicles to a halt also underscore the need to closely examine Toyota vehicles’ control issues. In order to turn off the push-button ignition system when the vehicle is in operation, drivers must depress the button for three seconds. Many Toyota and Lexus owners are unaware of the added time needed to hold the button in order to stop the car. The gated shifter, which has a series of detents defining the separate gears, can make finding “Neutral” challenging under emergency situations. And Toyota and Lexus models lack an algorithm used by a number of other automakers, including BMW and Audi, which automatically return the engine to idle when the engine controls detect brake and throttle input together. Lacking the return-to-idle feature, braking a Toyota or Lexus requires much more force and can result in significant brake fade or loss, particularly during long duration SUA events. In April 2008, a report by the Vehicle Research and Test Center on a Lexus ES350 as part of a 2007 Lexus SUA Engineering Analysis found: “with the engine throttle plate open, the vacuum power assist of the braking system cannot be replenished and the effectiveness of the brakes is reduced significantly.” It also noted that “brake pedal force in excess of 150 pounds was required to stop the vehicle, compared to 30 pounds required when the vehicle is operating normally.”
“Toyota has already hinted that it is looking into more substantive fixes beyond the floor mats,” says Safety Research & Strategies President Sean E. Kane. “I suspect that when Toyota does implement a fix it will likely include software updates to address the on/off ignition delay and the brake-to-idle issue.”
On October 6, NHTSA also opened a Preliminary Evaluation into a severe corrosion problem plaguing the frame rails and rear cross-members of 2000 and 2001 Tundras. The agency has received a total of 20 complaints from owners alleging brake failures, or falling spare tires. Three quarters of the complaints allege that part of the vehicle’s undercarriage were so corroded that the spare tire mounted underneath separated from the rear cross member, sending the spare bouncing into the roadway. Five reports alleged broken brake lines at the proportioning valve located on the driver’s side of the rear cross-member at the upper shock mount. The probe covers 218,000 Tundras. In 2008, Toyota announced that it would buy back more than 800,000 MY 1995-2000 Tacomas that had rusted beyond repair for 150 percent of the highest Kelley Blue Book value. It also extended the rust warranty for the older trucks to 15 years.
Meanwhile, down in Dallas, attorney Todd Tracy will be the first to gain insight into the inner workings of Toyota’s legal department. On October 1, Biller hand-delivered four boxes of documents to the clerk of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, along with a letter describing its contents. The letter was sealed, but provided to Tracy and Toyota attorneys. A week later, the judge held a telephone hearing to decide how the documents would be handled. Tracy and Toyota had already reached an agreement, subject to the court’s approval, to create a privilege log and to have the court handle any production objections.
Under a strict protocol managed by a third party, IKON Document Solutions, only Toyota’s in-house counsel and counsel of record can review the documents, which
will reside in a secure database. IKON must keep a log of the individuals, with unique log-ins and passwords, who have access to documents. Toyota lawyers also have permission to physically inspect copies of the documents in the constant presence of an IKON employee. Toyota lawyers may not copy the documents in any form.
Toyota has until Dec.11 to submit its privilege log.
Finally, an Idaho fatal crash case is raising new questions about what Toyota really knew about the rate of relay rod failures in their trucks, when the automaker knew it and why its recall rate is so low. Attorney John Kristensen is representing the family of Michael “Levi” Stewart, who died in September 2007, after the relay rod in his 1991 truck failed, causing a loss-of-control crash.
Toyota recalled the vehicle in Japan in 2004, claiming it only knew of 11 complaints. Two years later, according to the Japanese media, the automaker admitted that it knew of more than 80 complaints. Toyota told NHTSA that there were no complaints in the U.S. before 2004, but Kristensen’s investigation into that claim revealed that Toyota knew it had a problem with the component as early as 1988, and had been contacted by consumers at least 40 times about relay rod fractures.
The September 2005 recall for relay rods in MY 1989-1996 Toyota trucks only succeeded in repairing 32 percent of the vehicles – well below the 70 percent standard.