The DOT Office of Inspector General has found that NHTSA’s Office of Defect Investigations followed its established procedures in conducting its inquiries into Toyota Sudden Acceleration for nearly a decade, but the OIG rapped the agency for its lack of transparency and documentation.

The new audit concluded NHTSA needs to make improvements in its handling of auto safety investigations, but offered no substantive evaluation of the agency’s use of science in examining Toyota unintended acceleration. The OIG did not seek any independent source of technical knowledge, relying instead on a layman’s understanding of easily observable phenomena: “Although we did not contract for any scientific or engineering expertise to assess independently any UA-related technical issues, we participated in and observed simulated pedal misapplication and pedal entrapment in Toyota vehicles with ODI officials. As the driver in the simulation depressed the gas pedal to accelerate, the floor mat trapped the pedal. The simulations clearly showed the potentially serious consequences that could result during pedal entrapment without the brake override system,” the report stated.

The audit instead focused on improved training and better documentation on how complaints are addressed and investigations opened and closed.

The OIG initiated the audit in February to assess the effectiveness of ODI’s processes for identifying and addressing safety defects. It was later expanded at the request of Congress and the Secretary of Transportation to include: an analysis of ODI’s industry-wide UA complaints and investigations; an evaluation of its resources to identify and address safety defects and of its compliance with government ethics rules; and a comparison of ODI’s processes with other countries’ defect investigation and recall programs.

While accelerator pedal entrapment is a cause of UA, OIG failed to address any of the issues dogging the NHTSA investigations. It made no comment on allegations that ODI ignored complaints that did not fit its theories, or mis-categorized complaints that could not be attributed to floor mat entrapment or driver errors. It did not investigate the numerous deficiencies in the NASA Engineering Safety Center evaluation of Toyota UA. The NASA study – led by NHTSA – for example, purported to draw conclusions about high-speed, long-duration events, but the researchers only examined vehicles that had experienced low-speed, short-duration events. The OIG was silent on NHTSA’s failure to further investigate NASA findings related to substandard electronics and its reliance on Toyota and its litigation defense expert Exponent to dismiss important findings identified with electronic failures.

The report did note the lack of ODI staff training, but did not discuss the implications of the agency’s technical ignorance in mounting an effective defect investigation. Nor did the OIG study show how ODI’s lack of training in modern electronic engine management and controls affected their ability to investigate and question the manufacturer’s representations of sophisticated and interconnected vehicle systems.

The OIG did find fault with ODI’s lack of documentation and transparency:

“Without comprehensive documentation of pre-investigation activities, ODI’s decisions are open to interpretation and questions after the fact, potentially undermining public confidence in its actions.” Because NHTSA routinely fails to document meetings manufacturers, OIG recommended “a complete and transparent record system with documented support for decisions that significantly affect its investigations.”

The audit was an opportunity to delve into the myriad inconsistencies and omissions outlined in e-mails and other documentation released as a result of Congressional investigations and FOIAs, and recounted in independent analyses of the agency’s process, but if OIG investigators took it, the answers are missing from the final report. SRS has reported many of ODI’s investigatory abuses, the effect on Toyota investigations, and implications for future defect probes (see SRS web page Toyota Unintended Acceleration):

- NHTSA relied on Toyota’s defense litigation expert Exponent for a warranty analysis used to dismiss the significance of physical evidence of an electronic cause of UA in some Toyotas. This conflict of interest was not disclosed.

- NHTSA and NASA based analyses on miscoded data and unsupported assumptions while failing to record and maintain the original data they on, preventing replication.

- NHTSA/NASA withheld from public view pieces of their latest report that are not related to Toyota’s confidential business.

- NHTSA has continually misrepresented or ignored owners’ complaints to buttress its belief that floor mat interference was to blame. (SRS online articles and reports on this issue include: Exclusion of Early Camry Deaths Hamper Later Investigations; Makin’ it Fit so We Can Acquit; Another Attack of the Killer Floor Mats: Sarasota Edition.)

NHTSA’s latest effort to prevent independent assessments of owners’ complaints that don’t match pedal interference or driver error is to keep the report and associated documents out of the public record. In some cases, the agency has claimed that photos and data are part of its “deliberative process” and exempt from public disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administrator David Strickland opened the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles Conference several weeks ago on a skeptical note about Google Inc.’s fleet of automated Toyota Priuses.

“More people feel that the task of driving belongs to the driver,” Strickland said. “And do you really want to sort of hand over your safety to a machine?”

Every other year, the world’s auto manufacturers, component suppliers, engineers and designers gather at the ESV to present the latest innovations in safety-related technology, automotive data and research. So, it is no small irony that Strickland poses this question in their midst, because whether the public wants to or not, its safety is already in the hands of the machines.

Electronic throttle control, known in the industry as drive-by-wire or E-Gas, actually debuted on passenger vehicles in BMW’s 7 series in 1988. Nearly a quarter of a century later, today’s vehicles have up-ended the traditional relationship between the driver and the auto. Direct inputs from the driver manipulating mechanical parts via cables and gears have been replaced by indirect commands. It doesn’t look all that different. The pedals and levers are still there, but under the hood, the landscape has changed. Driver commands are no longer direct. They are interpreted by sensors and software that open the throttle and assist steering and braking, among other tasks. The car “key” in your hand is no longer the key – the computer code inside it is.

And yet, the regulations governing all of this wizardry are still stuck in a bygone technological age. The two biggest auto safety crises in the last decade – Ford/Firestone tire tread separation rollovers and Toyota unintended acceleration – both grew to mammoth proportions as public safety issues in large part due to antiquated and non-existent safety standards.

In the 1990s, America’s most popular and best-selling SUV, the Ford Explorer, equipped with original equipment Firestone tires, was prone to fatal rollovers after tread separations at highway speeds. The Firestone Radial ATX and Wilderness radial tires met all of the federal regulations at the time. Those standards, however, were written when bias-plies were the norm. There were no federal standards for occupant protection in rollovers and there was no minimum stability requirement for SUVs, a new breed of station wagon based on high, narrow truck platforms. Industry fought off any regulations, even as the rollover death tolls in these trucks began to reach epidemic levels.

Then a series of gruesome high-profile crashes and news stories about the safety of Ford Explorers and Firestone tires triggered Congressional hearings. The Transportation Recall Enhancement, Accountability and Documentation (TREAD) Act in 2000 compelled NHTSA to update standards. In doing so, the agency had to educate itself about tire technology. The result was a tougher standard that produced more robust tires. That has been followed by a standard to strengthen roofs, and a stability metric used by the government in rating the rollover propensity of vehicles. While the latter wasn’t a federal motor vehicle safety standard, industry improved its product to harness the marketing power of five-star ratings.

A decade later, the lack of a regulatory framework laid the foundation for an eerily similar scenario. Complaints of unintended acceleration dogged Toyota for six years, but NHTSA’s defect investigators can find nothing wrong. Toyota vehicles meet the federal accelerator controls standard, FMVSS 124 – only it was penned in 1972 when throttles still had cables. The agency attempts to upgrade the standard, but again, industry fights off any changes. Then, a high-profile crash kills California Highway Patrolman and his family. The media questions the safety of Toyota’s electronics in some of the most popular vehicles produced by the number-one automaker in the world. The NASA Engineering Safety Center’s evaluation of Toyota’s electronic architecture finds numerous flaws and a possible cause of unintended acceleration in some vehicles, only to be dismissed by the Secretary of Transportation as unlikely. The debate about the role of electronics in unintended acceleration continues.

Unlike the Explorer rollover fiasco, Toyota UA has not yet resulted in legislation that would focus NHTSA on a much-neglected area of safety regulation. The Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 2010 would have, among other things, compelled the agency to write an electronic systems performance standard. But the bill died in 2011. Rulemaking is the process by which NHTSA develops its institutional understanding of vehicle technology and functional outcomes. Without that critical step, automakers are left to their own devices; the agency is left behind.

We handed safety over to the machines long ago – and that’s not always a bad thing. Electronics can improve safety. Features like Electronic Stability Control, for example, make vehicles less prone to rollovers and save lives. But there are still no minimal requirements for the safety of electronic architectures in vehicles. Allowing automakers to install electronic systems without those requirements ensures that the crashes will continue, as will crises – at great cost to planned safety priorities.

This commentary by Safety Research & Strategies President, Sean Kane, includes views he presented in June to the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Electronic Vehicle Controls and Unintended Acceleration.

WENDOVER, UTAH – Last November, as NASA’s Engineering and Safety Center was dotting the “i”s and crossing the “t”s of its “exacting” study of Toyota’s electronic throttle control, Paul VanAlfen was in a panic. The Utah man was frantically trying to disengage the cruise control as his 2008 Camry rocketed down an I-80 exit ramp.

The NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) report, Technical Support to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) on the Reported Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) Unintended Acceleration (UA) Investigation, was decidedly bullish on the robustness of Toyota’s cruise control system – despite finding that a short circuit could send the throttle racing and not set a Diagnostic Trouble Code. No problem, the NESC team concluded – there were multiple ways to disengage the cruise control.

It did not work out that way for Paul VanAlfen. On November 5, 2010, the VanAlfen family was on the way to a concert, when they crashed into a rock wall off Aria Boulevard. Paul VanAlfen and passenger Charlene Lloyd died of their injuries. Surviving witnesses told Utah State Police the 2008 Camry was travelling about 70 mph, when the driver entered the ramp and hit the brakes to disengage the cruise control. Paul’s wife Shirlene and his son, Cameron, told police that VanAlfen could not turn off the cruise control nor slow the vehicle.

“My dad was stating very clearly that he was hitting the brakes, but with no success. Had heard him tell us five or six times that nothing was working,” Cameron wrote in his witness statement to the police.

“Paul put on the brakes just as we exited the freeway. But Paul said ‘the cruise did not shut off’ as we started down the off-ramp. The brakes were not slowing us down. The off ramp was very short and Paul didn’t have much time to try other stopping measures. We told him to keep stomping on the brakes,” Shirlene VanAlfen attested.

But, the VanAlfen crash did not trigger more Congressional hearings on Toyota electronics, or public outrage or even generate much media coverage. Last month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and its contractor, NESC, released twin reports claiming that they could not find a circumstance in which an electronic glitch could cause Toyota’s Electronic Throttle Control- Intelligent to initiate an uncommanded acceleration powerful enough to overcome the brakes, without setting a DTC. Secretary Ray LaHood delivered the bottom line to the press with a great flourish that left no room for doubt: “We enlisted the best and brightest engineers to study Toyota’s electronics system, and the verdict is in. There is no electronic-based cause for unintended, high-speed acceleration in Toyotas.”

And yet, bold statements cannot make technical problems disappear. NHTSA may have walked away under the impression that it has performed its enforcement duties, but the incidents continue to occur and contradict the agency’s assurances. Two weeks after the reports were presented, Joan M. Herrity, a Massachusetts teacher, was at the wheel when her 2004 Sienna crashed through the plate-glass window of a coffee shop, and would have exited out the back, had the refrigerated drinks case not stopped the vehicle. Paul VanAlfen and Charlene Lloyd, Cameron VanAlfen’s fiancée, died in a manner that NESC team leader Michael T. Kirsch was quite certain could not happen at all. NHTSA has merely ignored the events it cannot explain or minimized the large and considerable holes in Toyota’s safety net by definitively declaring that drivers can easily mitigate any curveballs the system presents. The NESC report documented instances in which Toyota’s throttle system does not give drivers the throttle response they request. The pedal, the team noted, can behave in a “jumpy” manner – meaning that the driver may ask for low power, but get a large throttle opening instead. This can result in death injury and property damage, if the surge occurs in close proximity to another object or a person. All three have occurred in the real world. These recent incidents show that all causes of Toyota unintended acceleration have not been remedied and that drivers cannot always save themselves, their occupants, their vehicles or immovable objects – like buildings – when the system goes awry.

For example, VanAlfen’s vehicle was subject to CTS pedal recall to insert a shim to prevent a sticky pedal, as well as the mat/shortened pedal and brake override recalls. Only the CTS pedal modification had been performed at the time of the crash. The Toyota dealer had not replaced the mat, shortened pedal or added the brake override. The police ruled that the floor mats were not a factor, but that the unperformed recall repairs were contributing factors. But if Mr. VanAlfen was using the cruise control at the time, what bearing do mats and pedals have on the cause of the crash?

Herrity’s Feb. 27 crash occurred as she was pulling into a parking space at a local coffee shop on King Street in Weymouth, Massachusetts. Local news media interviewed Mrs. Herrity post-crash where she stated that she was certain that her foot was on the brake, yet the vehicle continued to lurch forward uncontrollably into the building. Surveillance video obtained by news media shows the brake lights illuminated as the vehicle crashes through the shop. The 2004 Sienna was not subject to any of the recalls, including the carpet interference recall that affected some 2004 Sienna vans. What caused Herrity’s crash? The brake lights attest to her attempts to stop the vehicle. Was Herrity depressing both pedals — a difficult and contorting task? Or was an electronic fault to blame?

Contrary to the way in which the results of the NASA report have been presented, the NESC team found numerous instances in which a resistive short could cause an undetected and uncommanded acceleration in Toyota vehicles. One such scenario involved the cruise control: “functional failures of the cruise control can result in 0.06 g’s acceleration or 2.12 kph/s, and may not generate a DTC,” the authors wrote.

Among the functional failures:

“With the cruise control engaged, a 240 Ohm resistive short of the cruise control signal wire to ground caused the cruise control to remain engaged and the vehicle accelerated to the maximum speed threshold of the system. This test simulated the ACCEL button in a failed closed position. If the brake pedal was applied with the short present, the system canceled. After releasing the brake pedal, if the short is recycled, the system would resume to the previously set speed, and be canceled again by pressing the brake.”

“The brake switch consists of one normally-open switch and one normally-closed switch. Both are mechanically connected with a switch plunger. With the cruise control enabled and the brake switch plunger disabled, the cruise control remained activated and functioning even when brake pedal applications were induced. The system maintained the set speed until enough brake force was applied to decrease vehicle speed by approximately 9 mph or below the 25 mph threshold of operation causing the system to fully disengage. No DTC was generated.”

Meanwhile, the spouse of one Toyota SUA victim has started posting the audio of a conversation he had with ODI inspector Scott Yon on YouTube. Elizabeth James, of Eagle, Colorado flipped her 2005 Prius after it raced out of control on Interstate 70 at 90 miles per hour. James applied the brake and the emergency brake, while looking for a safe place to crash her vehicle, but this did not stop the vehicle. She eventually steered her runaway Prius through the woods, hit a shed, and landed in a river. She still suffers long-term injuries to her legs and back and stomach as a result of the crash.

James’s husband, Ted, recently released three installments of his July 2008 conversation with NHTSA officials. NHTSA never examined the vehicle – just the floor mats. Investigators acknowledged that James was braking, but attempted to pass the crash off as a floor mat incident on the basis of a scratch on the mat. They conceded, however, that Ted James may have made that mark as he attempted to recreate a jammed pedal floor mat after the fact. ODI investigator Scott Yon also noted that brakes will not always overcome the throttle – if the driver can not supply sufficient pedal force:

“In fact, in most cases, female consumers were not able to stop the car simply through the application of the brake. They had to take some other countermeasure like shifting the vehicle into neutral or turning the vehicle off to be able to get the car to stop,” Yon says.

That’s a little less definitive than NHTSA’s public statements about drivers’ ability to fix Toyota’s electronic throttle problems as they happen in the field.

WASHINGTON, DC – The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened an investigation into pedal entrapment involving the 2010 Ford Fusion, after receiving three complaints of accelerators pedals being trapped by accessory all-weather floor mats.

The probe into 249,301 Ford Fusion hybrid vehicles was opened in late May based, in part, on a complaint of floor mat entrapment by Edmund’s Testing Director Dan Edmunds (no relation). There have been no reported crashes or injuries, the agency said.

Edmunds, who blogged his April 16 experience on the automotive website, said in his complaint to NHTSA: “I pressed the accelerator to the floor as I moved into a much faster traffic lane. Upon completion of this maneuver I eased up on the gas, but the pedal stayed down and the car kept accelerating, unintentionally at this point. At first I wasn’t sure what was going on, but after about 3 or 4 seconds I heard a “click”, the pedal returned to normal and the car slowed. It was then that I thought of the all-weather floor mat, and when traffic cleared I tried another experimental full-throttle dab to see if I was correct. It happened again (but I was ready for it), with the pedal releasing on its own after a few seconds, just like before.”

Edmunds then went on to do his own testing, videotaping the results to accompany his blog. Edmunds said that he was able to replicate the floor mat-throttle interference several times on-camera, with the pedal sticking for about three seconds after it was pressed to the floor. On one trial, the stuck throttle persisted for more than 30 seconds, with the pedal staying stuck “despite vigorous stamping in an effort to free it.” Edmunds offered the agency a YouTube video link of the test.

(The other two complaints involved a 2010 Mercury Milan in which the accelerator stuck in the floor mat (The driver freed it by hand.) and a 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid in which the driver also was able to correct the problem.)

Edmunds.com has been skeptical that unintended acceleration could have an electronic cause. It has posted editorials expressing its incredulity, such as a March rant about liability lawyers, Toyota and unintended acceleration by Senior Analyst and Editor-at-Large Karl Brauer:

“No person or entity has proven a ‘programming glitch’ or ‘electronic fault’ or even a ‘ghost in the machine’ of any Toyota products’ throttle control, brake control or transmission control. And no, college professors crossing wires or news agencies using creative editing techniques don’t count as proof of an electronic failure.”

In March, the automotive website offered a $1 million prize to anyone who could demonstrate unintended acceleration, via non-mechanical means, in a “well-defined testing protocol which allows us to replicate that acceleration under controlled conditions.” (Edmund’s did acknowledge in a February analysis of NHTSA complaint data that SUA complaints by Toyota brands owners far exceeded other automakers.’)

NHTSA has been aggressive in stamping out mat stacking – an easily identifiable and fixable cause of unwanted acceleration. But the Office of Defects Investigation currently has no open defect investigation into sudden unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles. Administrator David Strickland has said that the issue is being studied in a different context – a joint effort by the agency and NASA.

What is difficult to discern is NHTSA’s rationale in opening a defect investigation. In December, then-Acting NHTSA Administrator Ronald Medford went to Japan to meet with government officials and executives from Japanese and Korean auto manufacturers and to present them NHTSA’s expectations and regulations regarding defects and recalls. In a schematic, as part of a Powerpoint presentation, NHTSA represented the many sources of defect information, ranging from complaints to the agency to EWR data, and outlined some of the screening steps, such as interviewing consumers and conducting field investigations. This information is relayed to Defects Assessment Panel, composed of Investigation Division Chiefs, the Defects Assessment Division Chief, the Early Warning Division Chief, and, if appropriate, screeners and investigators, meeting once every two months to determine if the agency should devote any of its limited resources to further investigation.

According to the presentation, one of the purposes of the bi-monthly Defects Assessment Panel is to “ensure consistency” in opening defect investigations. What is not outlined is the criteria that determines if a Preliminary Evaluation should be opened, usually the first level of investigation.

So far, NHTSA has released no further information on the Ford Fusion floor mat investigation.

The last two months have seen another Congressional hearing; details on Toyota’s fiscal and legal relationship with Exponent, the birth of a new government panel to look at Sudden Unintended Acceleration, the launch of a new Timeliness Query in a Toyota recall of defective steering relay rods and a proliferation of new EDR readers. One thing that hasn’t changed: customers who have experienced SUA are still being treated poorly by Toyota. We’ve gathered the latest developments below:

More Information and Toyota’s EDR Comes to Light

Last month, Toyota announced that it would make 150 Event Data Recorder readout devices available, with some going to NHTSA and Transport Canada, and that it was training field techs on how to use them. Toyota also announced that it was “developing new policies and procedures for responding to direct customer requests for EDR readouts and data hand-off to help ensure a smoother, more informed process for all parties involved” and was “actively developing plans to transition to a commercially available EDR readout device and software package.”

What Toyota failed to mention in any of its press announcements, is that Toyota’s EDR has never been validated, and, therefore, its data is unreliable. Toyota has staked out this claim in public statements and in litigation. For example, Toyota’s SRS Event Data Recorder Operation Manual specifically states:

“The accuracy of the memory of Toyota’s Event Data Recorder (“EDR”) is still being validated, and the readout tool for the EDR is still in the prototype stage. Toyota cannot verify the complete reliability of such information, unless such data can be independently corroborated, e.g., through physical evidence, etc.”

Toyota has been installing airbag Event Data Recorders in its vehicles since the 2001 model year, and vehicle stability control EDRs since the 2000 model year, both focusing on frontal crashes. In 2002, Toyota expanded capabilities to include rollover events. In 2004, it developed technology to incorporate side impact collisions. In addition, Toyota’s Hybrid vehicles can report Operation History Data which records special operations performed by the driver and the number of times abnormal conditions that have been input into the Hybrid Vehicle (HV) control ECU. The history recorded includes accelerator and brake application information. This data is retrieved using a Toyota tool called a Techstream. Unlike the EDR readout tool, this is available to the public for purchase.

According to an October 2007 deposition of Toyota engineer Motoki Shibata, Toyota has actually been able to record and download vehicle data as far back as 1997. Shibata refers to the data recorder as a G-wave memory readout tool and said that Version 2.01 of the SRS Airbag G Data Readout Tool Operation Manual, referenced in the deposition, was most likely used for certain 1997 model year vehicles like the Lexus ES300 and Toyota Camry. In response to an LA Times query, Toyota referred to this early model as a G-Force Data Recorder and described it as “a primitive deceleration-force measuring device that only assists with airbag deployment. The GDR was never designed nor intended to be used for accident reconstruction purposes.”

According to Toyota, the type of data recorded varies depending on which generation of EDR is in the vehicle. Examples of the data that can be recorded include engine speed, whether the brake pedal was applied or not, vehicle speed, to what extent the accelerator pedal was depressed, position of the transmission shift lever, whether the driver and front passenger wore seat belts or not, driver’s seat position, SRS air bag deployment data and SRS air bag system diagnostic data. What Toyota doesn’t disclose prior to the download, is which generation of EDR is installed on specific vehicle makes, models and years and what data is available on each version. The owner of the vehicle does not know what is being recorded and when the data is downloaded, nor do they have any way to determine if the data downloaded is complete and accurately translated.

The details of the quantity and quality of the Toyota EDR data remain secret. No one, other than Toyota, knows exactly what data is recorded, retrieved and how it is processed and analyzed to produce a report.

Latest Congressional Hearing

The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Oversight and Investigations Sub-committee held a second hearing on May 21, to receive an update on Toyota’s progress in discovering the causes of SUA in its vehicles. The committee excoriated Toyota and its hired scientists at Exponent for withholding information and misleading Congress. After conducting interviews with key personnel from Toyota and Exponent and reviewing some 100,000 Toyota- and NHTSA-produced documents, the committee determined that Toyota’s efforts to discern a connection between Sudden Unintended Acceleration and Toyota’s electronic throttle control system have been cursory, at best.

Committee Chairman Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) characterized Toyota’s assurances to the committee that it had conducted extensive testing and research into the electronic throttle control as “baffling.”

“What we have learned is deeply troubling. There is no evidence that Toyota has conducted extensive or rigorous testing of its vehicles or potential electronic defects that could cause sudden unintended acceleration. Our colleague, Mr. Burgess said there’s a top to bottom review; we shouldn’t jump to conclusions. Well NHTSA had — but Toyota has already jumped to the conclusion and made it over and over again that they’ve ruled out any problem with the electronics.”

Toyota’s document dump did reveal that Toyota hired major inside-the-Beltway public relations firm The Benenson Strategy Group, to test the automaker’s most effective attacks on SRS and Dr. David Gilbert, the automotive electronics professor from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. After testing negative messages with consumers, BSG concluded:

- Despite very low levels of awareness of Sean Kane and David Gilbert, all 3 audiences view the individuals as credible, with more than 8 in 10 saying they would be credible figures to discuss Toyota safety.

- Notably, the statements tested do work to significantly damage Kane and Gilbert’s credibility

- However, while the statements are effective at increasing the proportion of audiences that say “ETC is not a cause of sudden acceleration”, the majority of respondents still believe ETC is at least somewhat to blame for Toyota’s issues.

The Congressional inquiry into Toyota’s relationship with Exponent found that between 2004 and 2009, Toyota paid Exponent $11 million. For the SUA project, Exponent had billed Toyota $3.3 million for 11,000 hours of work.

The committee complained that Exponent was not responsive to its requests for documentation and that all it produced was the same interim report and the Gilbert study which Toyota had released publicly. There was no written project plan, no written timeline, no written specifications for the experiments Exponent had run or planned to run, no written list of potential causes of sudden unintended acceleration that it planned to study; no written notes on Exponent’s work.

Toyota on Timeliness Hook

On April 19, Toyota accepted the $16.4 million penalty imposed by NHTSA to resolve Timeliness Query 10-002, regarding its sticky accelerator recall. Still pending are Timeliness Query 10-001, involving Toyota’s floor mat recalls related to SUA, and Recall Query 10-003, to determine if Toyota had too narrowly defined the scope of its recalls, and Timeliness Queries 10-001 and 10-002.

The agency has never publicly posted any documents on these TQs. They were referenced in the Opening Resume of RQ 10-003. They examine whether Toyota met its statutory obligation to report a defect to the agency within five days of determining a defect or non-compliance.

In mid-May, Toyota became the target of another TQ – this one regarding a recall into steering relay rod failures. John Kristensen, an attorney with The O’Reilly||Collins Law Firm petitioned NHTSA to launch an investigation into Recall 05V389 to replace defective steering relay rods in Toyota pickups and 4Runners. Kristensen represents the family of 18-year-old Levi Stewart of Idaho, who was killed in a crash caused by a relay rod failure in September 2007. Stewart had bought the used vehicle months earlier.

In October 2004, the automaker disclosed to NHTSA that it had recalled Hilux and Hilux Surf vehicles sold in Japan for defective relay rods – but not its U.S. counterparts, the Toyota 4Runner, the Toyota Truck and Toyota T100. The rods had a tendency to snap, leaving the driver with no steering controls. But Toyota blamed it on driving conditions unique to the Japanese market, and claimed it had no reports of relay rod failures in the U.S.

On September 6, 2005, Toyota finally recalled the defective steering relay rods on 977, 839 1989-1995 Toyota pick ups and 4Runners in the U.S.

In the course of litigation, Kristensen found that Toyota had actually received at least 44 reports in the U.S. since as early as 2000, including crashes involving rollovers and injuries, and a significant number of warranty repairs for broken relay rods. After Toyota finally announced a U.S. recall, it garnered an unusually low 30 percent return rate, prompting Toyota in 2007 to issue an even more unusual recall re-notification. Stewart’s family received the recall re-notification weeks after Levi’s death.

NAS SUA Study Gets Underway

The National Research Council’s National Academy of Sciences announced earlier this month that it will convene a panel of 12 engineers, scientists and others to probe the phenomenon of Sudden Unintended Acceleration. The group’s directive is to study all possible causes of SUA, including software glitches, electromagnetic interference, driver error and mechanical causes. (NHTSA has already extensively studied the latter two. Yet, one member of the group, John D. Lee, University of Wisconsin-Madison, is a human factors expert.) Louis Lanzerotti of the New Jersey Institute of Technology, will head the group. Dr. Lanzerotti is an expert in “space plasmas, geophysics, and engineering problems related to the impacts of atmospheric and space processes and the space environment on space and terrestrial technologies.”

The announcement originally stated that former NHTSA administrator Nicole Nason would be a part of the group, riling some safety advocates, who wondered what credentials Ms. Nason, a lawyer and Republican operative, offered in a scientific body of inquiry. NAS spokeswoman Maureen O’Leary said that her inclusion was a mistake, and that she is not on the panel.

As the sponsor, NHTSA provided the objectives of the study. The panelists, who are unpaid volunteers, were gathered from suggestions provided by the National Research Council staff and

members of its sub-groups, the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineers. The NRC also chooses panelists under a conflict-of-interest policy that takes current potential conflicts into account.

According to its website, National Research Council studies are prized because they offer “independent, objective, and non-partisan advice with high standards of scientific and technical quality. Checks and balances are applied at every step in the study process to protect the integrity of the reports and to maintain public confidence in them.”

The first meeting is scheduled for June 30- July 1. Among the presenters are DOT, industry representatives, Michael Pecht, a mechanical engineering professor who heads the University of Maryland’s Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering and who advised Henry Waxman’s committee on Toyota SUA, and Todd Hubing, a professor of vehicle electronics at Clemson University. The study is expected to last 15 months. The report will undergo an extensive peer review that does not include the sponsor. NHTSA will see the report when it is finished, O’Leary said.

Toyota is Profitable, but Rating Down-Graded

In March, Toyota reported an annual profit of about $1 billion, despite its woes. Buoyed by aggressive sales incentives to buy a Toyota, sales rose by 26 percent and global production was up 80 percent over the previous year. Nonetheless, Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s downgraded Toyota’s ratings one step to Aa2, the third-highest investment grade and AA respectively.

Customers Still Kept in the Dark

One thing that remains the same since our last update: Customers who report an SUA event to Toyota are still being denied basic information about what tests were performed on their vehicle, and the actual data from those tests.

For example, Diana Buckley of Canton, GA hit a pole in a Lowe’s parking lot on April 10, after her 2004 Sienna lunged forward while her foot was on the brake.

The Buckleys had already experienced at least seven prior experiences, like the one that resulted in the parking mishap, starting in 2005 and 2006. Sporadically, in low speed situations, the driver would give the Sienna a little gas and it would hesitate and then lurch forward powerfully. The Buckleys had taken the vehicle in to the dealership each time, the vehicle was returned with a clean bill of health. After her April incident, Buckley pursued a claim against Toyota. The company sent an independent inspector to look at her Sienna, who also cleared the vehicle. Buckley asked to see the TechStream data along with any other documentation of the tests and he politely told her that he wasn’t allowed to share the data generated by the vehicle with the vehicle owner. She would have to go to Toyota for that information.

David and Debrah Auger of Chatham, Ontario encouraged Toyota of Canada to examine their SUA-plagued 2010 Camry after the local media publicized the Augers’ vehicle decorations: large pictures of bright yellow lemons. The Augers experienced three incidents of SUA within six weeks of leasing the vehicle. The dealership first examined the vehicle and told the Augers that nothing was wrong with the Camry. After they displayed the Camry with the lemons, Toyota Canada and Transport Canada returned to inspect the vehicle again. The Augers asked Toyota to provide them with copies of the tests. They have refused.

Tim Kenkel of Denver CO drove his 2008 Rav4 Limited straight to the dealership after multiple SUA incidences in a half-an-hour time span. The dealership blamed the floor mats and tried to return it with a clean bill of health after claiming to have done a thorough inspection. But, after asking to see documentation of the tests, Kenkel discovered that the inspection consisted of looking at the driver’s side foot well. His vehicle went back in the shop for real tests, and the techs found multiple diagnostic trouble codes. The paperwork Kenkel received from the inspection revealed that Toyota has at least two inspection scenarios. A document entitled “Toyota Dealer UA Process Flow” and sub-titled “Scenario II Owner claims to have experienced unintended acceleration, but has not been involved in an accident,” contains a flow chart involving corporate claims case managers, owner interviews, and a more involved set of diagnostics that may involve an EDR download or a system scan. Scenario I consists of a visual inspection and a short drive in the vehicle.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – After nearly seven years of complaints and quietly failed Toyota SUA investigations, the floodgates have opened. The last two months have brought more recalls, unprecedented press coverage, political and corporate theater, lawsuits, three new NHTSA investigations and a dribbling of old documents that better fill-in the outlines of the history.

Safety Research & Strategies, which has been chronicling the history of this issue, testifying before Congress and advocating for consumers – including the families of five individuals who died in a crash in which SUA was alleged – has been following every development. We’ve gathered them here:

The Recalls

Toyota now has launched six recalls involving sticking accelerator pedals or floor mat entrapment since 2005. Three are currently active and expanding: 09V388, 10V017 and 10V023. These recalls cover 16 different Lexus, Toyota and Pontiac models (made at the joint GM / Toyota plant), from 2004-2010. The first recall, 09V388, announced in October, and the third recall, 10V023, announced on January 27, cover the 2007 – 2010 Camry; 2005 – 2010 Avalon; 2004 – 2009 Prius; 2005 – 2010 Tacoma; 2007 – 2010 Tundra; 2007 – 2010 ES350; 2006 – 2010 IS250 and IS350; 2008-2010 Highlander; 2009-2010 Corolla; 2009-2010 Venza; 2009-2010 Matrix; 2009-2010 Pontiac Vibe. Recently, Toyota added the Highlander Hybrid to this recall.

These models are slated to get a trimmed accelerator pedal or a new shortened accelerator pedal assembly and new accessory floor mats. In addition, the Camry, Avalon and Lexus were also scheduled to get a brake to idle override. In February, Toyota announced that it was adding the 2005-2010 Tacoma; the 2009-2010 Venza and the 2008-2010 Sequoia to those models getting a brake-to-idle-override feature.

Recall 10V017, announced on January 21, addresses a “sticky” accelerator pedal issue, for components manufactured by CTS of Elkhart, IN. This campaign covers certain 2009-2010 RAV4; certain 2009-2010 Corolla; 2009-2010 Matrix; 2005-2010 Avalon; certain 2007-2010 Camry; certain 2010 Highlander; 2007-2010 Tundra; and 2008-2010 Sequoia.

In late February, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo forced Toyota to step up its recall game by offering at-home pickup and return of recalled vehicles, free rental cars, and reimbursement for transportation expenses. Toyota extended these services to all its customers, when attorneys general all over the U.S. began clamoring for the same deal. Toyota apparently did one better for Chinese RAV4 owners in the Zhejiang Province. In late January, Toyota’s sticky accelerator pedal recall was extended to 75,000 RAV4s in China. The Zhejiang Administration of Industry and Commerce is reported to have negotiated an agreement with Toyota in which the automaker would offer the same basic package to RAV4 owners in that province, along with any lost wages incurred because of the repairs.

Where’s NHTSA?

During two weeks of Congressional hearings, U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood declared that he would be “getting into the weeds” on the electronic causes of sudden unintended acceleration. And, in late March, the agency announced that it was launching two new investigations. The National Academy of Sciences would be heading a 15-month inquiry into sudden unintended acceleration and automotive electronic vehicle controls. The study will focus on mechanical, human and electronic causes. The agency also launched a separate probe to specifically study sudden unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles with help from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, to look at software, hardware, electronics and hazard analysis. A third investigation, conducted by the DOT’s Inspector General, will examine NHTSA’s past eight investigations to determine if they were properly conducted. The agency also has been consulting with outside electromagnetic interference experts from Great Britain, Keith Armstrong, whose specialty is EMI, and Antony Anderson, an electrical forensic engineer, on the possibility of EMI to Toyota’s electronic throttle system.

On April 5, NHTSA levied the maximum fine — $16.4 million — against Toyota for failing to report the sticky accelerator problem to the agency with in the 5-day statutory reporting period. This resolves Timeliness Query (TQ) 10-002, which the agency opened on February 16. Toyota has two weeks to contest the fine. That leaves two other open investigations into Toyota’s recall responses: TQ10-001, which addresses the timeliness of the floor mat recalls, and Recall Query 10-003, which covers 7.7 million 2004-2010 Lexus, Toyota and Pontiac vehicles. RQ10-003 requests additional information from Toyota to evaluate whether the scope of the recalls “is sufficiently broad.”

“The agency is seeking to determine whether Toyota viewed the underlying defects too narrowly as interference between the accelerator pedal and the driver’s side floor mat, or as a lever design (including materials) or performance problem giving rise to a sticking accelerator pedal, without fully considering the broader issue of unintended acceleration and any associated safety-related defects that warrant recalls,” the RQ states.

One notable feature of this investigation is NHTSA’s new broadened definition of sudden unintended acceleration: “unintended, unrequested, uncontrollable, and/or unexplained acceleration of a subject vehicle, and to the failure of a vehicle’s engine to return to idle when the driver takes his or her foot off of the accelerator pedal or raises his or her foot to a position where the engine ordinarily would return to idle, regardless of the alleged or determined cause of the acceleration or failure to decelerate or return to idle and regardless of the speed at which the event allegedly took place. Unintended acceleration thus is broader than interference between the accelerator pedal and driver’s side floor mat and sticking accelerator pedals with levers made of a particular plastic(s).”

NHTSA says that its is also seeking information about how Toyota viewed complaints, how it assessed potential electromagnetic interference and why some models of vehicles with electronic throttle control were not included in the recalls.

More Theories Emerge

Into a root-cause vacuum of knowledge the last two months, outside scientists and engineers have floated a variety of theories on the non-mechanical sources of Sudden Unintended Acceleration. They included: electromagnetic interference; the use of tin as the main ingredient in solder material (tin whiskers); single event upsets, electronic “latch up,” and other software problems.

At the February 23 House Sub-Committee on Oversight and Investigations, Energy and Commerce Committee, Dr. David Gilbert, an automotive technology professor from Southern Illinois University Carbondale presented a preliminary research report performed for Safety Research & Strategies, which examined the failsafe detection capabilities of electrical circuitry, particularly, at the Accelerator Pedal Position Sensor (APPS) and the voltages and associated wiring circuits. Gilbert’s electronic diagnostic tests showed that there are conditions in the Toyota and Lexus models tested in which the failsafe redundancy from the APPS, the primary signal input that controls acceleration, in the Electronic Throttle Control System (ETCS) can be lost without detecting an error code or employing a failsafe mode.  This important finding is the first analysis to demonstrate that problems can exist in which Toyota’s Electronic Control Unit (ECU) doesn’t detect a critical system failure. Loss of a signal redundancy, the safety net for electronic control systems, should always be detected in order to trigger a failsafe mode. Once the redundant signal is lost and undetected as an error, the vehicle is in an unsafe condition.  The purpose for setting an error code and putting the vehicle into a failsafe mode is to protect the driver from any further potential scenarios in which the ETCS behaves in a manner inconsistent with driver input. Further Gilbert demonstrated that when the Toyota ETCS loses signal redundancy, a small voltage spike can cause wide open throttle. The single most significant finding is that Toyota’s assertion that its electronics will always detect a failure is incorrect. This forms the basis for further study of potential electronic failures that might lead to sudden unintended acceleration.

An anonymous individual submitted the single-event upset (SEU) at sea level theory via a letter with accompanying technical papers to RQ10-003. The self-described “Concerned Scientist” raised the possibility of cosmic rays disrupting electronics at sea: “this phenomenon is a ‘soft’ error that is not detectable except through redundant electronic and communication systems.” The e-mail to NHTSA recall investigator Jennifer Timian explained that SEUs had traditionally occurred at high altitudes in aircraft and spacecraft and that the avionics industry has successfully countered these events through highly redundant electronics and software. The automotive industry has yet to truly anticipate SEUs. The reason SEUs are now relevant to the automotive industry is because electronics have gotten smaller and the required voltage levels have dropped significantly, therefore making electronics more susceptible to cosmic radiation even at sea level. SEU is one possible explanation for sudden unintended acceleration (SUA) in Toyotas.

EMI expert Keith Armstrong has staked a position that EMI and/or a series of other factors could cause undetectable short-circuits and faults capable of triggering an SUA event. Armstrong also enumerated the possibilities of malfunctions caused by lead-free soldering that leads to a well-known phenomenon called “tin whiskers.” The elimination of lead for environmental purposes means that solder is now mostly tin:

“All sorts of new possibilities arise for short-circuits and open-circuits, and intermittent shorts and opens, mainly on printed circuit boards (PCBs) and mainly associated with small-footprint integrated circuits (ICs), especially ball-grid arrays (BGAs). These will grow out of soldered joints and can contact other conductors, causing short-circuits between PCB copper traces and the pins of connectors.”

The tin can also exude microscopically thin “whiskers” which can carry enough current to short-out electronics, Armstrong says.

Another possible cause is a malfunction in an integrated circuit called “latch-up.” Latch-up occurs when a path is inadvertently created between two power supply rails, forming a parasitic structure that acts as a short circuit.

SUA: The Spectacle

There have been four Congressional hearings on NHTSA and Toyota on February 23 and 24 and on March 2 and 11. These lengthy interrogatories were conducted by three House committees: the Energy and Commerce Committee’s Sub-Committee on Oversight and Investigations and Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection, the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and the Committee on Energy and Commerce and one Senate committee, Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.

The hearings featured consumers, advocates, DOT managers and Toyota executives. The witnesses from Toyota included TMC President Akio Toyoda, Shinichi Sasaki, Toyota Executive Vice President; Takeshi Uchiyamada, Toyota Executive Vice President; Yoshimi Inaba, President/CEO Toyota North America and Jim Lentz, president of Toyota Motor Sales. U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and NHTSA Administrator David Strickland represented the government regulators. Safety advocate witnesses included SRS President Sean Kane along with Professor David Gilbert of Southern Illinois University Carbondale, retired NHTSA Administrator Joan Claybrook, and Clarence Ditlow of the Center for Auto Safety.

The hearings themselves produced little new information and a lot of blustery promises from DOT and Toyota to get to the bottom of the SUA problem. The committee investigations have brought into the public arena information contained in Toyota internal documents showing that Toyota had fielded some 37,900 speed control complaints and that 70 percent of those lie outside the recalled populations. Other documents showed that executives and union officials alike had been expressing concern about slipping quality since 2006. Other emails and presentations showed that Toyota considered its relationship to NHTSA investigators to be critical in controlling the outcome of defect investigations. The Congressional investigating committees also posted an Issue Evaluation memo by Steve Chan of the Office of Defects Investigation confirming that in 2003, NHTSA had considered investigating electronic throttle problems in Camry vehicles. This investigation did not materialize.

Legal Maneuvers

On March 25, class-action attorneys gathered in a federal courtroom in San Diego, where a panel of judges will decide whether to consolidate the myriad of Toyota SUA cases and which judge will be assigned to preside over them. At the hearing, the automaker said that it was embroiled in 235 lawsuits. The vast majority – 138 – are class actions; a few are related to the timeliness of the recalls, filed on behalf of individuals, and about 97 are products liability actions.

In addition, Toyota is the subject of a federal grand jury probe in the Southern District of New York. The company has said that it had received a subpoena in early February requesting documents relating to sudden unintended acceleration and the Prius braking system. The Los Angeles office of the Securities and Exchange Commission also subpoenaed SUA documents to the Japan-based Toyota Motor Corp. and the Torrance, CA-based Toyota Motor Sales USA.

The documents of former corporate counsel Dimitrios Biller were among the topics discussed during the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing. Biller has accused the automaker of withholding and destroying evidence in rollover lawsuits. He departed Toyota in September 2007 with a severance package totaling nearly $4 million in wages, legal expenses, and a $2.3 million lump severance payment for emotional distress. In addition, Toyota forgave a loan in an unspecified amount that it made to Biller in 2005.

Edolphus Towns sent a letter to NHTSA asking questions about the automaker’s Books of Knowledge, compendiums purportedly containing, among other things, damning information about the automakers acknowledgement of design issues and countermeasures, by component and vehicle. References to these so-called Books of Knowledge appeared in documents produced under a committee subpoena to Biller. In a letter to Yoshimi Inaba, CEO of Toyota Motor North America, Towns asked him to respond to e-mails such as this June 2005 correspondence to Toyota executive Webster Burns, regarding the Greenburg SUA lawsuit:

“When this lawsuit was threatened, no one was surprised. This issue [sudden unintended acceleration] had been the subject of a number of meetings and the exchange of a number of documents between TMS and TMC, (did anyone ever gather and organize all those documents and memorialize the “meetings”? If so, were [sic] are the documents and information about the meetings?) [emphasis indicates Biller's comments] and the possibility of a class action lawsuit was used as one way to try to get TMC to work on a series of proposed countermeasures.”

Towns posted some of the Biller documents online. But they were yanked from public circulation shortly thereafter.

Toyota’s Tactics: Attack and Deny

As the pressure from Congress, the media and consumers has ratcheted upwards, Toyota has employed a variety of strategies to contain the issue. Underneath the high-profile media campaign of Toyota and its customers professing their love and commitment for one another, Toyota is executing a number of other simultaneous plays: stay the-floor-mats-and-accelerator-root cause course; vociferously attack its critics; and plead ignorance with customers who have experienced a sudden unintended acceleration incident.

The first tack has driven the other two. Toyota executives have continued to maintain in a number of settings that they are absolutely confident that vehicle electronics play no part in any of the reported sudden unintended acceleration incidents. At the Congressional hearings in late February and early March, Jim Lentz wavered ever so slightly. But for the most part, Toyota has not retreated from that stance.

For customers who continue to experience sudden unintended acceleration in their Toyotas, the result as been supreme frustration. As it has from the inception of the problem, Toyota insists that it can find nothing wrong with the vehicle and has blamed customers complaining of an SUA event or, in other words, called them liars.

An example of the former is Michael Teston, a 2006 4-Runner owner from Maaumelle, AR, who experienced an SUA event in a parking lot that resulted in a property-damage crash. In view of witnesses, the vehicle surged forward, hit a pole, and began hopping as the rear tires continued to spin. The engine maintained wide-open-throttle until the ignition was turned off. In a February 3 letter to Teston, Gulf States Toyota, Inc., noted that during the inspection, the driver’s floor mat was in place and properly secured and there were “no codes stored in the computer to indicate any product concern or failure.” Instead, it blamed its own brand accessory pedals that had been installed by a Toyota dealership: “Our Technical Specialist noted that aftermarket pedal covers were installed on the brake and accelerator pedals that increased the length of the pedals, which could have contributed to the accident described.” How they could have contributed was left undisclosed — Teston’s vehicle was not equipped with a suspect all-weather floor mat.

An example of the latter is Elizabeth James of Eagleton, CO, who crashed in her 2005 Prius after it raced out of control on Interstate 70 at 90 miles per hour. James attempted to apply the brake and the emergency brake, while looking for a safe place to crash her vehicle, but was unable to stop the vehicle. She eventually steered her runaway Prius through the woods, hit a shed, and landed in a river. She still suffers long-term injuries to her legs and back and stomach as a result of the crash. After James attempted to recoup $15,000 in medical costs from Toyota, she received a letter from the company blaming the incident on excessive brake wear: “We are sure she believes that her vehicle accelerated on its own; but our inspection of her vehicle did not reveal any evidence to support her allegations.”

Nearly 100 consumers have so far reported to NHTSA that they have experienced a sudden unintended acceleration event after receiving the recall fix. Consumers who have contacted SRS say that technical service personnel from either the dealership or Toyota have inspected their vehicles out of their presence and returned them saying that there is nothing wrong with the vehicle. Many of these consumers, now steeped in information about the problem, have asked to see copies of the test reports outlining what diagnostics were performed and the results. They have been consistently denied this information by Toyota personnel, owners have reported to SRS.

With its back in the corner beside a pile of accessory floor mats and bum accelerator pedals, the automaker has gone hard after the dissenting voices of Dr. David Gilbert, Safety Research & Strategies, ABC News and other news media that have questioned the company line.

Toyota appears to have honed its attack message using the results of an online survey conducted by Opinion Outpost in early March or late February just before they did a webinar attacking Gilbert’s research. The survey featured Dr. Gilber, ABC and SRS featured very prominently. The poll, offered to screened, paid respondents, asked them to judge the credibility of Gilbert, Sean Kane of Safety Research & Strategies and Brian Ross of ABC News. It started with: “Prior to taking this survey, had you heard anything about Sean Kane’s report or Professor Gilbert’s test?”

And it proceeded to lengthy and specific questions assessing the respondents’ reactions to a variety of statements, for example:

“Toyota Motor Corp. is rebutting the findings of a study presented in a Congressional hearing and on ABC News that claimed to present evidence of a “design flaw” in Toyota’s electronics that could cause sudden unintended acceleration. The company says that this was a “parlor trick” that relied on manipulation of the wires and electronic system in a way that is “extremely unlikely” to ever occur in reality, and it could be done just as easily with vehicles from several competitors.”

“The American people deserve the truth about the safety of their cars, not biased studies by trial lawyer consultants who stand to make millions suing Toyota. The facts are: Toyota and its dealers are working around the clock to make things right for its customers. More than one million cars have already been repaired. And, a world-class engineering firm has conducted a comprehensive review of Toyota’s electronics. Their interim report confirms that our fail-safe systems work.”

“Sean Kane, a paid consultant for plaintiffs’ lawyers suing Toyota, and David Gilbert, an academic working for him, deliberately deceived Congress and the American people.”

“While Sean Kane claims to be an independent safety expert, he is the owner of a for-profit company that serves as a paid consultant for the plaintiff lawyers that are currently suing Toyota. Despite what he says, he is not working for the best interest and safety of the American people.”

“Sean Kane, the owner of Safety Research & Strategies Inc. who testified during the Congressional hearings, is a paid consultant for trial lawyers who are suing Toyota, not a “safety expert” advocating for consumers.”

The language of this survey has echoed throughout Toyota’s offensive plays. On March 11, Toyota sent a letter to ABC President David Westin, demanding an apology for a story reported by Brian Ross on Dr. Gilbert’s study that the network aired on the eve of the first Congressional hearing. The letter hits all of the themes captured in the online opinion poll – Kane, Gilbert and their reports are tainted by litigation, ABC fabricated its test and together they are misleading Congress and the public. For example, Toyota General Counsel Christopher Reynolds writes that “the American public and the U.S. Congress were seriously misled” by ABC, Kane and Gilbert. And he takes the network to task for concealing “the fact that Professor Gilbert’s work was financed by Sean Kane, a paid advocate for trial lawyers involved in litigation against Toyota.”

Toyota dealers have also pressured local news affiliates who have aired stories about Toyota SUA.

But Dr. Gilbert has come under the harshest attack. Gilbert, a professor of automotive technology with 30 years of experience in electronic diagnostics, began his own inquiry into possible weaknesses in Toyota’s electronic throttle system out of a personal concern – he owns a Tacoma. His preliminary report concluded simply that Toyota’s repeated claim that the redundancy in the system made it impervious to an undetectable error was not true. Gilbert actually first approached Toyota technical staff to discuss his findings.

At the February 23 House Energy and Commerce Sub-Committee on Oversight and Investigations, Lentz said that Toyota would work with Gilbert to investigate Toyota SUA. Instead, Toyota used that promise to engage in some close-quarter combat with the automotive technology professor. Rather than dispatch its technical team to Carbondale for scientific inquiry, Toyota’s litigation counsel Vince Galvin, with well-known defense firm Bowman & Brooke and engineering consultants Exponent showed up at SIU. Galvin treated Gilbert to hours of deposition-style questioning, and attempting to show him why floor mats were the root cause. Galvin asked him questions such as: Do you feel guilty for impugning Toyota after testing only four cars?

Toyota has used Exponent, a firm that has been paid hundreds of millions of dollars to defend automakers, and has allocated “unlimited funds” to the company according to Lentz’s congressional testimony.

First, Exponent was hired to produce a report concluding the automaker’s contention that its electronics are inviolable, which Toyota executives offered to Congress. Then, Toyota paid for a second Exponent report to try to blunt the conclusions of Gilbert’s preliminary report. While the company was able to duplicate Gilbert’s results in tests, Exponent claimed that the scenario Dr. Gilbert describes in his report “would be highly unlikely to occur naturally.” And in classic Exponent style, the company redefined what Gilbert’s report said and proceeded to say why their construct wasn’t likely to lead to SUA.

Toyota, which had donated $100,000 to construct a Transportation Education Center at SIU, also put pressure on Gilbert through its connections to the university. Two Toyota managers—Terry Martin, manager of customer quality for Toyota Motor Manufacturing Indiana Inc., and Neil R. Swartz, corporate manager for North American Parts Operations, Toyota Motor Sales USA—resigned from the school’s automotive technology department advisory committee as the cash-strapped university struggles to maintain corporate donations to its applied technology division.

What’s the Story?

In order to solve the Toyota SUA problem, there has to be a consensus, one there is a problem, and two, what the problem is. To that end, shaping the narrative around the Toyota Sudden Unintended Acceleration becomes critically important for all of the stakeholders, from consumers to Toyota, which is fighting hard to salvage its reputation and sales and to build a defense against an increasing number of class action and personal injury lawsuits. A recent Bloomberg National Poll released in late March showed that Toyota may be losing control of its story. The survey results show that more than four in ten American consumers would definitely not buy a Toyota. The automaker received an unfavorable rating of 36 percent, the highest of all automakers in the poll.

Up until the Santee crash that killed a California Highway Patrol officer and his family, Toyota controlled the plot line: sudden unintended acceleration in its vehicles was a driver problem or a floor mat issue; its electronic throttle system was robust and infallible. Once more players, including SRS, began to look closely at the incidence data, this story was challenged. Floor mats simply could not explain all of the experiences consumers were reporting, and the media began to publish and broadcast stories raising the possibility that electronics might be to blame. While Toyota, with its near-daily defensive press releases and news conferences has led the pushback to nudge the narrative back in line, they have found takers in the media.

Many in the mainstream press who have jumped on the story have a rather shallow understanding of automotive defects, history, statistics or the role of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and their ignorance produces some interesting results.

For example, on March 23, CNN ran a story about obtaining a Toyota “internal memo” that proved that Toyota knew that the Camry had electronic throttle problems in 2002. Investigative reporter Drew Griffin told viewers: “The document is called a ‘Technical Service Bulletin’ and was given to CNN by a group of attorneys now seeking a nationwide class action lawsuit against Toyota.” TSBs are public documents, filed with NHTSA by regulation and Griffin didn’t need attorneys to hand over the “internal document;” he could have Googled it. This particular 2002 TSB for electronic throttle surging had long-ago been noted as part of the public record.

One of the dominant counter themes is: There is No Electronic Problem, Only Human Error and Mass Hysteria, and its corollaries, Toyota Equals Audi and Audi Was Exonerated. These editorials and news stories posit that reports of Toyota SUA are nothing more than a driver error and a modern-day re-enactment of the Audi sudden acceleration controversy.

One can make that case, as long as one sticks to the surface of some facts. Like Audi, lots of consumers complained about SUA incidents and like Audi, these complaints were the subject of a network news story that itself became a story about how not to replicate an auto defect for television cameras. Like Audi, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has not found an electronic cause for SUA in Toyotas– yet.

None of these similarities should lead anyone to conclude that either Audis or Toyotas were without safety defects. Both automakers filed multiple Part 573 defect and non-compliance reports related to these sudden acceleration complaints.

Between 1982 and 1987, Audi launched six recalls to address the problem. The first two attempted to fix what Audi had characterized as the driver-error problem by moving the accelerator and brake pedal positions. Recall 82V037, for example, added an accelerator shield to prevent floor mat entrapment.

In 1987, Audi launched three more recalls for Audi 5000 and 4000 vehicles from the 1984-1986 model years, for worn idle stabilizer units. As Audi explained to its customers: “The idle stabilizer has the purpose of maintaining uniform engine idle speed by regulating air flow under different operating conditions, such as variations in engine temperature, and on/off cycling of the air conditioner or power assist pump. Excessive idle stabilizer wear causes engine idle fluctuations which increase with the usage of the car. If a worn unit is not replaced in a timely fashion, the engine idle could ultimately see-saw so severely that it may surprise a driver who is not acquainted with the vehicle’s condition and fails to apply the brake. Under these circumstances, there is a risk of a collision in a confined space with the possibility of injury.”

A sixth recall for 251,000 1978 to 1987 Audi 5000S vehicles added a brake-shift interlock – which requires drivers to depress the brake pedal before shifting out of the Park position.

A key difference between the two is their throttle controls. The Audi 5000 of the 1980s employed a cable. Toyota’s electronic throttle consists of a complex system of sensors and microprocessors. This has led to a broad spectrum of Toyota and Lexus speed control complaints across multiple models and model years. It has also led to SUA incidents under varied and much different circumstances than the Audi incidents – SUA at high speed and at times when the driver already has the brake depressed.

Nonetheless, that narrative offers Toyota a useful – though false – equivalence.

More on Toyota SUA

Toyota: Real Stories

NEW YORK, NY— Toyota ended the old year trying to decisively shut the door on sudden unintended acceleration (SUA) problems in its Toyota and Lexus vehicles, but it’s unlikely that the automaker’s troubles are gone with 2009.

A one-car crash in Dallas, Texas that left four dead the day after Christmas may be yet another incident to punch a hole in Toyota’s floor mat interference theory. The four occupants of a 2008 Toyota Avalon died after the sedan inexplicably went off the road, crashed through a fence and landed upside down in a pond. Investigators have already ruled out the floor mats – which were found in the trunk – as the cause.

Safety Research & Strategies, which has been tracking Toyota SUA, continues to review incidents that can’t be explained by floor mat interference, including one which a Toyota dealer witnessed.

One New Jersey owner of a 2007 Avalon described multiple instances of the vehicle accelerating of its own accord. In the first incident, the driver was able to slow the Avalon with brakes, and stop it by shifting into neutral as the engine raced to maximum RPMs. An initial check by the dealer didn’t reveal any problems. The most recent incident ended with the dealer witnessing the out-of-control vehicle engine and overheated brakes – with no floor mat interference. The owner was driving on the highway when the vehicle began to accelerate on its own. Despite brake pressure and a shift into neutral, the Avalon kept revving uncontrollably. He immediately headed to the nearby Toyota dealership by shifting between Drive and Neutral with the engine at full throttle.  He pulled into the lot with the Avalon revving and the brakes smoking. The dealer service technician tried to physically move the pedal, but was unable to stop the vehicle engine from revving. The dealer contacted a Toyota corporate representative, who authorized replacement of the throttle body, accelerator pedal and the associated sensors and paid for the labor and a car rental for the owner.

The replacement part repair – and an event witnessed by Toyota – is another new wrinkle in the ongoing investigation into sudden unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles and the automaker’s response to the issue, going back seven years. Toyota has religiously stuck to pedal interference as the root cause. The only “parts” it has ever offered to replace was a floor mat or carpet and a shortened accelerator pedal.. The emergence of a more substantive repair raises new questions about what Toyota knows about this problem and how candid it has been with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the past.

The Avalon was one of 3.8 million vehicles Toyota recalled in October for sudden acceleration problems that the automaker has insisted was caused by floor mats inadvertently jamming the accelerator pedals of its vehicles. In November, Toyota announced that it would reconfigure the shape of the accelerator pedal to remove the risk of floor mat entrapment by first offering to cut down the current design. In the Spring Toyota would replace the accelerator pedal assembly with a shortened version. For the ES350, Camry, and Avalon, the automaker said that it will change the shape of the floor surface to increase the space between the accelerator pedal and the floor. Vehicles with Toyota or Lexus brand floor mats will receive newly-designed replacement driver- and front passenger-side all-weather floor mats. And Toyota would install a brake override feature on the Camry, Avalon, and Lexus ES 350, IS350 and IS 250 models only. Toyota did not explain why other affected models was not getting this safety feature.

The recall was big enough to push Toyota to the top of a list it didn’t want to be on: automakers with the most recalled vehicles in 2009.

On the upside for Toyota, disgruntled ex-corporate counsel Dimitrios Biller’s explosive allegations of withholding evidence in about 300 rollover cases has ended with a whimper – for at least some litigants. E. Todd Tracey of the Tracey Law Firm in Dallas was hoping to use some of Biller’s documents like a crowbar to re-open 17 rollover cases. But just before Christmas, he asked a federal judge in Marshall, Texas to dismiss the case, based on the contents of four boxes of internal materials Biller claimed would prove his allegations. Last summer, Biller, who handled Toyota’s rollover cases for more than four years, sued his former employer in a Los Angeles federal court, alleging that the automaker routinely hid or destroyed evidence. Several thousand documents were delivered to the Texas court, where they remained under seal. Tracey pulled the plug after Biller showed him a duplicate set of the documents. But, other attorneys with similar intentions are still proceeding with their inquiries.

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.

SANTEE, CALIFORNIA—A horrific sudden unintended acceleration crash that killed four – including a California Highway Patrol officer who was at the wheel of the 2009 Lexus when it plunged over an embankment and burst into flames – may raise the profile of SUA incidents as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration weighs granting a defect petition to re-investigate the problem in Lexus vehicles.

On August 28, Mark Saylor and his wife Cleofe, both 45, their 13-year-old daughter, Mahala, and 38-year-old brother-in-law, Chris Lastrella, were killed after reporting to a 911 operator that they could not stop their Lexus ES 350, as it careened down Route 125. The tape of the brief call, released to the public last week, features the voice of Lastrella, telling the operator that the vehicle had no brakes. The call ended with occupants calling on each other to pray.

Despite reports that little was left of the burnt wreckage, among the components allegedly recovered from the crash were the brakes, the accelerator and the floors mats. CHP investigators have already speculated that a misplaced all-weather floor mat could have caused the crash, and Toyota is instructing dealers to inspect vehicles for proper floor mat installation.  Floor mat entrapment has been a convenient root cause for NHTSA and automakers in sudden unintended acceleration incidents, because ferreting out intermittent electronic problems is much more difficult and presumably more expensive to fix. Unsecured floor mats have often been suspected of or have taken the blame for sudden unintended acceleration. In the last 40 years, the agency has launched nine separate floor mat investigations; manufacturers have initiated 19 floor mat recalls.

In a press release issued on September 14, Toyota attempted to deflect rising concerns about electronic defects:

“We are instructing all of our Lexus and Toyota dealers to immediately inspect their new, used, and loaner fleet vehicles and we urge all other automakers, dealers, vehicle owners, and the independent service and car wash industries to assure that any floor mat, whether factory or aftermarket, is correct for the vehicle and properly installed and secured.”

Since 1999, NHTSA has received seven defect petitions to investigate sudden unintended acceleration, and launched eight SUA investigations into GM, Ford, Toyota and Volkswagen models. In the last decade, manufacturers have launched 31 recalls.

Many others who have studied the problem say that floor mat interference may account for only some of the reported incidents – the complaint data show that some vehicles and some manufacturers are outliers. NHTSA and manufacturers, however, tend to reduce that number by narrowly defining the problem and then throwing out complaints that don’t exactly fit.

The Lexus ES350 is a case in point. In October 2007, NHTSA closed an Engineering Analysis into unintended acceleration, affecting 55,000 2002- 2008 Lexus ES350 and Toyota Camry vehicles. Drivers had reported that vehicles continued travelling full throttle despite attempts to stop the vehicle. Some reacted by applying the brake pedal multiple times, depleting the braking system’s vacuum-based power assist and overheating the brakes, which further diminished the brakes’ effectiveness. Others attempted to turn the vehicle off by depressing the engine control button, unaware that the button had to be depressed for three seconds to stop the engine when the vehicle is in motion.

At the conclusion of an 11-month probe, Toyota and NHTSA’s Office of Defect Investigations concluded that the problem was floor mat interference. In September 2008, Toyota launched a recall to replace the all weather mats with a new design that, Toyota claimed, would reduce the potential for mat interference with the throttle pedal.

On April 8, the agency published the Opening Resume for another Defect Petition involving SUA and the Toyota Lexus. The petition was filed by a Lexus owner who had experienced an unwanted and uncontrolled acceleration event, but felt that the Preliminary Evaluation (PE7-016) was too narrow in scope and did not adequately address all complaints made to NHTSA about vehicle speed control concerns, according to the Opening Resume.

In the initial complaint to NHTSA, the driver described a “sudden uncontrollable surge in acceleration” causing the vehicle to accelerate from 60 mph to over 80 mph. The driver attempted to brake with both feet, but only reduced the vehicle speed to about 45 mph:

“With my speed reduced, I alternated between pumping the accelerator pedal and pulling up on it from the underside with my right foot as it became clear that the throttle was stuck in an open position. The vehicle continued to speed back up to over 65 mph with less pressure on the brake pedal.”

The driver finally slowed the vehicle to about 25 mph, amid clouds of smoke and the smell of overheated brakes. He shifted into neutral, and depressed the start/stop button, but nothing happened. Instead, the rpms began to increase on the tachometer. The petitioner described shifting back into drive.

“The vehicle jolted and rapidly accelerated to 60-plus mph. As the brakes were fading quickly, I was certain that I would need to shift back into neutral and let the engine blow up to stop the vehicle. Suddenly the acceleration surge stopped and I was able to bring the vehicle to a stop about 1 and a half to 2 miles from where it had started. I quickly shifted into ‘park’ and depressed the start/stop push button to turn off the engine. The vehicle seemed to shudder as I did so.”

The unidentified petitioner, from Plymouth, Minnesota, also requested an “investigation of MY 2002-2003 Lexus ES300 for those longer duration incidents involving uncontrollable acceleration where brake pedal application allegedly had no effect,” that were not within the scope of preliminary investigation. The agency has not yet decided whether to grant the request.

SAN LUIS OBISPO, CA – On February 5, 2007, Bulent and Anne Ezal were headed to lunch at the Pelican Point Restaurant in Pismo Beach, California. The restaurant is nestled on the edge of a cliff, affording dramatic views of the Pacific Ocean below. The parking lot was downhill of the restaurant, so Ezal rode the brakes of his 2005 Camry as he approached a parking space. He was at a complete stop, when the Camry suddenly accelerated, jumping a small curb, crashing through a fence and over the bluff. The vehicle fell 70 feet to the rocks below, and turned over once, coming to rest in the surf. Anne Ezal died of her injuries in the crash. Bulent Ezal later recovered.

Seven months later, Jean Bookout and her friend Barbara Schwarz were exiting Interstate Highway 69 in Oklahoma – also in a 2005 Camry. As she sped down the ramp, Bookout, the driver, realized that she could not stop her car. She pulled the parking brake, leaving a 100-foot skid mark from right rear tire, and a 50-foot skid mark from the left. The Camry, however, continued speeding down the ramp, across the road at the bottom, and finally came to rest with its nose in an embankment. Schwarz died of her injuries; Bookout spent two months recovering from head and back injuries.

Same make; same model; same problem. Two severe crashes; two deaths; two cases of serious injury. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, however, the Toyota Camry doesn’t have a problem with sudden unintended acceleration (SUA). In between these horrific crashes, the agency denied a petition requesting a defect investigation from the owner of a 2006 Camry, who complained that the engine of his current car and the 2005 Camry that he previously owned repeatedly surged. NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation briefly looked into the complaint, but came up empty.

“ODI has not identified a vehicle-based defect that would have produced the alleged engine surge in the petitioner’s vehicle, nor was it able to witness such an event when road testing the petitioner’s vehicle. Evaluation of a suspect throttle actuator removed from the petitioner’s vehicle did not reveal a component problem, warranty and parts sales of the actuator are unremarkable. These data do not support the existence of a wide-spread defect or ongoing concern,” the agency said in its April 2007 decision.

Another SUA inquiry closed with a whimper, and without a satisfactory explanation for a phenomenon that has plagued various makes and models for nearly 30 years. Since 1999, the agency has received seven defect petitions to investigate sudden unintended acceleration and launched eight SUA investigations into GMs, Fords, Toyotas and Volkswagen models. In the last decade, manufacturers have launched 31 recalls. More typically, manufacturers deny a mechanical problem and blame the problem on driver error. If the complaint numbers are high, they blame that on a media-induced frenzy. NHTSA, for the most part, has thrown up its hands, opening – and then closing – multiple investigations without finding a defect. This has led some to conclude that SUA is solely the province of pedal misapplication and stuck floor mats.

Attorney Graham Esdale of the Beasley Allen law firm in Montgomery, Alabama, represents the victims of the Oklahoma crash. He says it’s frustrating that the agency cannot or will not tease out the causes of SUA.

“We know this is happening out there,” he says. “Unfortunately, if the person is elderly they are going to certainly going to blame them for causing the accident, when we know that’s not the case. Instead of trying to fix the problem, they blame the driver.”

Indeed, the history of sudden unintended acceleration is studded with poor research, regulatory omissions and industry success in holding off any serious outside examination of malfunctions within a vehicle’s electronic systems.

Sudden unintended acceleration is a complex problem. There are multiple causes when a vehicle shoots forward or back in apparent contradiction to the driver’s commands: design defects which induce driver error – such as poor pedal placement, the lack of a shift interlock, floor mat interference, mechanical or electromechanical defects and electronic defects. The latter –which is the most difficult to pinpoint – is nonetheless a more likely possibility as vehicle systems rely more heavily on sophisticated computer-driven electronics. And yet, automakers and NHTSA behave as though it is perfectly rational to assume that electronics housed in the hostile automotive environment – including the fault detection system – will always function as intended, and that malfunctions will be easily reproduced in a laboratory setting.

Elsewhere, however, the case has been persuasively made that NHTSA and automakers have ignored the real possibility of intermittent and other faults in the electronic systems of today’s automobiles. The 2003 reference book, Sudden Acceleration, by Carl E. Nash, of the National Crash Analysis Center at George Washington University, Clarence Ditlow, of the Center for Auto Safety, James Castelli and Michael Pecht, Professor and Director CALCE Electronic Products and Systems Center at the University of Maryland, argue that the auto manufacturers lag behind those in other industries whose products rely on electronic systems in understanding the myriad ways their microprocessors and electronics components can fail. NHTSA, the authors conclude, has also failed miserably in its attempts to find a cause other than a floor mat or driver error, because the agency employs an arbitrarily narrow definition of SUA – that it must occur from a standstill –and has conducted its investigations on incorrect assumptions and illogical reasoning.

Drivers have been complaining about sudden unintended acceleration events for a quarter of a century and continue to lodge these complaints with manufacturers and NHTSA. Yet, NHTSA has made virtually no substantive progress toward understanding how electronic systems housed in an environment subject to heat, vibration, sudden shocks, various levels of electromagnetic interference, moisture, and other corrosive conditions could fail; or how they could be detected; or what appropriate countermeasures must be instituted other than expecting drivers to somehow overcome an open throttle on a runaway vehicle. They slumber, while vehicles grow ever more stuffed with electronics that control the vehicle’s braking, stability and speed.

Attorney (and engineer) Don Slavik, who represents Ezal, is hoping that NHTSA will take a second look at the problems of the 2005 Camry – although he isn’t sanguine about the outcome.

“It’s clear the NHTSA lacks the resources to fully investigate this. NHTSA does not have special staff with experience in electronic control systems – and their small staff is tasked with a wide range of responsibilities,” says Slavik of the Milwaukee firm, Habush, Habush & Rottier. “That’s where the tort system comes in to assist more fully in investigating this problem, which affects millions of vehicles.” Sean Kane, president of SRS agrees. “SUA presents unique and resource intensive investigation that can quickly overwhelm the NHTSA defects office. Further, the agency has a history of dismissing SUA unless there are mechanical or driver error issues, which only complicates matters.”

Short People Can’t Drive Audis

In the 1980s, Audi became the poster child for Sudden Unintended Acceleration. And in many ways, this vehicle’s SUA problem became the model of how these problems would be investigated by NHTSA, defended by the industry and used as the sine qua non of SUA myth-busting.

More than 1,000 consumers alleged that their Audi 5000 vehicles had accelerated without driver input; 175 had been injured,and four died in SUA crashes. The company denied that there was anything wrong with the vehicle and blamed the problem on shorter than average drivers who did not have much experience driving an Audi. These small, confused drivers had mistakenly depressed the gas pedal when they meant to step on the brake, Audi said. The response was a public relations and marketing nightmare. Audi sales plunged, and the complaints continued.

The Audi 5000 was the subject of an infamous 60 Minutes story, in which the news program attempted to simulate SUA. The broadcast drove Audi sales down further, and the network was heavily criticized for its one-sided story. As the history is often recounted today, NHTSA vindicated Audi and CBS never apologized for maligning the automaker.

However, between 1982 and 1987, Audi launched five recalls to address the problem. The first three attempted to fix what Audi had characterized as the driver-error problem by tweaking the pedal positions. The fifth and final recall for 250,000 1978 to 1987 vehicles added a brake-shift interlock – which requires drivers to depress the brake pedal before shifting out of the Park position.

The fourth recall was probably the most telling about the Audi 5000’s SUA problem. In 1987, Audi recalled 81,000 Audi 5000s from the 1986 and 1987 model years, for worn idle stabilizer units. As Audi explained to its customers: “The idle stabilizer has the purpose of maintaining uniform engine idle speed by regulating air flow under different operating conditions, such as variations in engine temperature, and on/off cycling of the air conditioner or power assist pump. Excessive idle stabilizer wear causes engine idle fluctuations which increase with the usage of the car. If a worn unit is not replaced in a timely fashion, the engine idle could ultimately see-saw so severely that it may surprise a driver who is not acquainted with the vehicle’s condition and fails to apply the brake. Under these circumstances, there is a risk of a collision in a confined space with the possibility of injury.” (In others words, dear driver, it’s still your fault.)

Audi received much of the attention, due in part to victims, who organized and advocated very effectively for themselves. NHTSA also received a significant number of complaints in the 1980s alleging SUA in Nissan 280/300ZX and Maxima, Acura Legend, Honda Accord, and various Ford, GM and Mercedes models. NHTSA opened a number of defect investigations into SUA, and closed many of them without finding a defect trend.

But some NHTSA investigations did prod manufacturers into initiating recalls. For example, Nissan recalled 1979-1987 280/300ZXs to retrofit brake-shift interlocks. Other recalls have involved the replacement or modification of mechanical and electronic components that cause the throttle to stick or open unintentionally. Some of these components are related to the vehicles’ cruise control.

In 1989 NHTSA published “An Examination of Sudden Acceleration.” This report was intended to end all debates on SUA. Its primary conclusion was that only the driver’s foot or the cruise control could move the throttle to the wide-open position. The study also noted that SUA could be caused by simple mechanical failures of the throttle cable or floor mat interference. Under these conditions, a significant increase in the driver’s ability to stop the vehicle was also noted. However, the general spin was that NHTSA could not find any vehicle defects causing SUA. The condition, the agency concluded was the result of driver error, although the agency noted that it could be induced by poor vehicle design (i.e., brake, accelerator pedal placement and offset). The study recommended the installation of automatic shift-locks (ASL), which require the driver to depress the brake pedal before the vehicle can be shifted out of Park to prevent the driver from depressing the accelerator instead of the brake.

Dr. Antony Anderson, an electrical engineering consultant in the UK who has examined numerous SUA crashes, says that NHTSA’s definitive research report is neither definitive nor research. The agency based its report on nine underlying assumptions, but did not provide the basis for those assumptions. The agency defined sudden unintended acceleration as only instances where the vehicle lurches suddenly forward or in reverse from a standstill. This automatically discounted many other situations in which a vehicle’s throttle is wide open in direct contradiction to the driver’s demands, be it at full speed, a slow speed or in a cruise control mode. Further, he says, the systems that NHTSA examined in the late 1980s bear no resemblance to fully electronic throttle systems of today.

“It’s a travesty,” Anderson said. “That report has no relevance whatsoever, but manufacturers have sheltered themselves behind it for years.”

Nonetheless, the 1989 report and the significant numbers of reported SUA incidents did prompt manufacturers to adopt shift-interlocks in their vehicles in the late 1980s.

The 1990: Cruise Control and Throttles

In the 1990s, SUA problems related to cruise control and other throttle malfunctions began to surface. Ford Motor Company has been a standout among its peers in SUA problems related to cruise control. Two juries have held Ford responsible for a deadly design flaw in the cruise control systems of millions of Ford vehicles, but the automaker has only recalled a fraction of the affected vehicles, leaving motorists vulnerable to episodes of sudden acceleration.

In March 1999, Ford announced that it had found a manufacturing defect with the cruise control cable and recalled 898,739 Explorers, Rangers, Mustangs, Mountaineers and some F-series trucks in model years ranging from 1997 to 1999, with certain build dates. But internal documents indicated that as far back as the design process, speed control engineers knew cable contamination could result in the throttle being held open by the stuck actuator cable, and characterized that possibility as a severe failure. Engineers also predicted that the condition was unlikely to occur. But thousands of complaints from consumers about stuck throttles and sudden accelerations, and even the experiences of one of its own executives have proven otherwise.

The defect was the actuator cable design of Ford’s Next Generation Speed Control, which first appeared in 1991 models and, by 1995, was installed in all of the automaker’s passenger vehicles, SUVs and light trucks with cruise control. As Ford engineers noted in their Failure Mode and Effects Analysis, over time, the speed control actuator cable can become contaminated with dirt, grease or water where it enters the sheath, or “adjuster body” and bind in the open position, prohibiting the driver from closing the throttle and decreasing speed.

Since 1999, Ford has recalled numerous makes and models as far back as the 1991 model year for sticky throttle problems attributed to a variety of causes, including: 2000 Focus; 1998 Contour; 1999-2000 F-Series Super Duty; 1998 Mercury Mystique; 2002 Focus SVT Hatchbacks; 1991—1995 Taurus and Sables; 1997 Aerostars; 2001 Ford Escapes, 2000 and 2001 Explorers; 2001 Explorer Sports, 2001 Mazda Tributes, 2001 and 2002 Mazda MVPs.

In July 2005, NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigations opened a preliminary probe into stuck throttle complaints on 2002 Explorers and Mountaineers. Ford said that it had identified a faulty wire in the accelerator cable, but had remedied the problem by changing the wire design. ODI closed the investigation without further action in November 2005.

The Jeep Cherokee was another SUA stand-out in the 1990s. In 1990, Chrysler recalled 1989 and 1990 model 6-cylinder Cherokees to replace a throttle position sensor that was causing “intermittent high idle” after the engine was started. In 1992, it issued several technical service bulletins to repair various parts in Cherokees and Grand Cherokees. The primary symptom was termed vehicle “bucking” or “surging.” Nonetheless, sudden acceleration complaints involving the Jeep Cherokee and Grand Cherokee were far above their closest peer vehicle. The problem was so widespread that the International Carwash Association issued an alert to its employees about the vehicle’s tendency to lurch forward while exiting the car wash (electromagnetic interference was thought by some experts to play a role). In 1996, brake-to-shift interlocks became standard on the Jeep Cherokee. In 1997, as Primetime Live was preparing to air a story about SUA, and as the Center for Auto Safety was petitioning NHTSA to investigate, Chrysler announced that it would retrofit pre-1996 vehicles with a brake-to-shift interlock.

Floor Mats of Death

Unsecured floor mats have often been suspected of, or have taken the blame for, sudden unintended acceleration. Since 1968, the agency has launched nine separate probes of various levels of seriousness. Manufacturers have initiated 19 floor mat recalls, a handful of which presaged the closing of an investigation.

One of the most recent emanated from an Engineering Analysis of Toyota Lexus vehicles. Drivers reported that vehicles continued travelling full throttle despite attempts to stop the vehicle. Some reacted by applying the brake pedal multiple times, depleting the braking system’s vacuum-based power assist and overheating the brakes, which further diminished the brakes’ effectiveness. Others attempted to turn the vehicle off by depressing the engine control button, unaware that the button had to be depressed for three seconds to stop the engine when the vehicle is in motion. Toyota and the agency concluded that unsecured all-weather floor mats could entrap the gas pedal.

In a September 26, 2007 letter to NHTSA, Toyota indicated that they would conduct a safety recall to replace the all weather mat with a redesigned mat. According to Toyota, the new mat design would reduce the potential for mat interference with the throttle pedal.

In 2008, the agency opened and closed within four months a Preliminary Evaluation into Weather Tech floor mats after four complaints of pedal interference in four different vehicles: Hyundai Azera and the Toyota Avalon, Camry and 4Runner. In closing the investigation, without a defect finding, The agency generally conceded the obvious: “various vehicle, mat and use factors can contribute to the potential for floor mat interference with accelerator pedal travel. Vehicle factors can include pedal and floor pan design. Mat factors can include thickness and geometry, particularly affecting the orientation of the leading edge in the vicinity of the accelerator pedal. Use factors that have been observed in interference incidents include failure to remove original floor mats when installing new mats (i.e., “stacked” floor mats), installing passenger side mats on the driver’s side, installing mats in an improper orientation (e.g., backwards, upside down), and failure to use retention devices.”

Today’s Unintended Acceleration: Can This Many Drivers be Confused?

In January 2008, the agency weighed a formal investigation into SUA in Toyota Tacomas, and it demonstrates how little has changed since 1985 and the Audi 5000. This time, the petitioner was William Kronholm, a journalist from Helena, Montana who alleged that his 2006 Toyota Tacoma suddenly accelerated twice in as many hours. According to his defect investigation request, in attempting to learn more, Kronholm went rifling through NHTSA’s complaints database and found that consumers had made 32 such complaints against Tacoma pick-up trucks, while other similar vehicles had only one or no complaints in a comparable two-year period.

Toyota responded by maintaining that there was nothing wrong with the Tacoma and that the spate of complaints had been ginned up by press attention and Internet virulence—a claim right out of the Audi playbook:

“The Tacoma has been the subject of extensive media coverage related to the possibility of sudden acceleration. In addition, there has been a high level of Internet activity going as far back as early 2007, including reports by members of Tacoma user groups detailing conversations with ODI staff and providing ODI contact information. Such exposure tends to generate consumer interest and complaints. Thus, the petitioner’s assertion that the Tacoma stands out from its peers based on a relatively high number of complaints in the NHTSA database is not a valid argument, since the other vehicles listed by the petitioner have simply not had the same media and Internet exposure.”

Two months later, NHTSA denied the defect petition, saying – in effect- that they wouldn’t be able to devote the resources to finding out why Toyota Tacomas were plagued by sudden unintended acceleration – despite 271 reported instances, resulting in 24 crashes and four injuries.

Manufacturers may deny SUA exists, NHTSA may declare that it isn’t worth its time to thoroughly investigate these incidents, but consumers continue to lodge complaints about sudden unintended acceleration – and they can’t all be little old ladies in the first stages of dementia. The complaints data show clearly that some manufacturers and some vehicles are outliers, with significantly more complaints than their peers. In the last 10 years, the agency has collected some 24,000 consumer complaints (source: www.VSIRC.com). When these complaints are sorted by manufacturer and vehicle and charted, the vast majority of automakers flat-line at the bottom. The trendline of complaints for four manufacturers—Ford, GM, Chrysler, and Toyota, however, float above their peers with occasional spikes, leading one to conclude that either these manufacturers have a problem, or the most confused consumers gravitate to their vehicles.

In the 2003 book Sudden Acceleration, the authors offer many scenarios in which an automotive electronic system or the electrical contacts may fail intermittently and defy easy detection: Physical traces on a microscopic scale due to “a poor connector contact, a dry joint, or a cracked PCB track that behaves as a good connection for 99.999 percent of the time” could be overlooked.

Anderson notes: “A control system adopting a different, anomalous and perhaps dangerous state once in a blue moon when there is an intermittent fault. The moment the fault disappears, the control system goes back to its normal state. It is hardly surprising that subsequent testing fails to reveal any fault. There are plenty of examples of physical systems having normal and faulty states and a small change may move the system from one state to the other. The manufacturers know this perfectly well. Their prescription of “wiggle tests” on connecting cables to identify poor connections and make them better is indicative of the vulnerability of car electrics to intermittent contacts.”

And in denying that this problem even occurs, manufacturers have foregone countermeasures altogether, Anderson said.

“The problem really is: these systems are designed so if they do fail there is nothing the driver can do about it.”

More on SUA:

“Vehicle Speed Control” Complaints: 1999 to Present, by Make

NHTSA Investigations into Sudden Unintended Acceleration, 1999-Present

Recalls Involving Sudden Unintended Acceleration, 1999-Present

Source: VSIRC