CarSeekBlog

Industry authority Automotive News is reporting this morning from Toyota. It seems that information from onboard data recorders shows that in at least 35 of the 58 crashes blamed on unintended acceleration, the drivers never hit the brakes. At all. In addition, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said there was no evidence of any electronics-related causes for the accidents, according to the black box data they reviewed.

These findings, while still preliminary, support Toyota’s insistence that there is no evidence of any flaws in the electronic controls on its vehicles, and that in some cases the drivers of its cars must have confused the accelerator and brake pedals. The automaker, the largest in the world, has recalled more than 8 million cars for stuck or snagged pedals in the last year, worldwide.

In a report released to lawmakers in Washington, the NHTSA said, “At this early point in its investigation, NHTSA officials have drawn no conclusions about additional causes of unintended acceleration in Toyotas beyond the two defects already known — pedal entrapment and sticking gas pedals.”

In addition to the 60 percent of cases where the brakes were never applied, the NHTSA referred to accidents in which the brakes were applied partially, or the onboard data recorders were never triggered. However, it should be made clear that these findings do not exonerate Toyota, because, as Sean Kane, president of Safety Research & Strategies, Inc., pointed out, not every case of unintended acceleration resulted in a crash.

Kane, whose company is based in Rehoboth, MA, explained, “Most of the incidents we’re looking at don’t involve crashes where it activates [the data recorder]. Toyota would like us to extrapolate that this is all driver error.”

Beginning with two Lexus models, says Brian Lyons, a Torrance, CA-based spokesperson for Toyota’s U.S. sales unit, the automaker began installing black boxes in its cars for the 2001 model year. The devices are designed to be triggered by crashes severe enough to deploy air bags and are meant to capture data including engine speed of the vehicle, G-forces from two directions, and whether the accelerator or brake pedals are depressed.

Until Toyota gave NHTSA the tools to read the data as part of this investigation, only the car maker had any access to the information recorded.

“Toyota’s own vehicle evaluations have confirmed that the remedies it developed for sticking accelerator pedal and potential accelerator pedal entrapment by an unsecured or incompatible floor mat are effective,” Lyons said. He added that Toyota has examined more than 4,000 vehicles, without finding a single case of unintended acceleration caused by defective electronic throttle controls.

NHTSA is working with NASA and the National Academy of Sciences in its continuing review of Toyota defects. Specifically, NASA is studying the possibility of electromagnetic interference causing the unintended aceleration, which may be linked to 71 crashes and 89 deaths since 2000.

Olivia Alair, a spokesperson for the Transportati9on Department (of which the NHTSA is a part) said that, “Reviewing event data recorders is one small part of the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration’s effort to get to the bottom of unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles.”

Toyota is facing a consolidated shareholder lawsuit accusing the company of “failing to disclose defects related to unintended acceleration.” A Maryland public pension fund is the lead plaintiff.

Filed under: Toyota by Mel