Ah, to view the world through rose-colored Lentzes. Toyota’s ultra-sincere CEO of Toyota Motor Sales climbed back into the House Energy and Commerce Committee witness chair to utter those words, to which the company has accorded the power of a magical incantation: There’s nothing wrong with our electronics. Continue reading
When Toyota starts talking about honesty – as they did, while paying a $16.4 million fine for violating the recall regulations – we start patting down the data. An interesting snippet floated by yesterday. As our readers know, manufacturers are required to file Early Warning Reports every quarter – information about legal claims, warranty data, production numbers, deaths and injuries – to help NHTSA spot emerging defect trends.
This regulation, enacted as part of the Transportation Recall Enhancement Accountability and Documentation Act with great speed and good intentions, has had its share of problems. There was the four-year battle over what information would be public. (The agency and safety advocates envisioned a largely public data system; the manufacturers had an entirely different idea. Guess who won?). Then there has been the suggestion that EWR has not actually been useful as a statistical canary in a coalmine. Now we’re going to have to raise a few questions about coding. Continue reading
When NHTSA went after Toyota with a $16.4 million stick for failing to recall sticking accelerator pedals within the five-day regulatory time limit, Attorney John Kristensen couldn’t help notice the parallels between the automaker’s mañana attitude toward U.S. recalls in the 2010 pedal campaign and in a 2005 recall of defective relay rods.
Today, Kristensen, an attorney with The O’Reilly||Collins Law Firm asked NHTSA administration to launch a Timeliness Query into Recall 05V389 to replace defective steering relay rods in Toyota pickups and 4Runners.
(And the thud you just heard was that other shoe dropping we mentioned back in October. See Troubles Mount in Toyotaville.)
According to a chronology of the sticking CTS accelerator pedals campaigns, Toyota launched a silent recall for the in UK and Ireland in June 2009, followed by a full EU Technical Service Bulletin in September. Toyota didn’t announce a U.S. recall of the same component until January 21, 2010. Toyota said that the UK and Ireland got the fix first, due to the unique combination of the British weather and the right-hand drive configuration: Continue reading
A well-used weapon in the manufacturer’s arsenal is delay. When the guys and gals from the Office of Defects Investigation are pestering you with information requests and you have that sinking feeling that you are going to have to do something to get them off your back, the first order of business is to buy some time. A defect in a component – or worse yet – a design that is integral to just about every model you sell is going to be a major headache. No way are you going to have enough replacement parts to switch out in hundreds of thousands or millions of vehicles all at once. You never want your company name in a headline with the word “million” and “recall,” followed by a news story skewering your product. And then there’s the dollars attached to the labor and parts costs swirling the bowl. Oy.
If you can just whack that big dog down to puppy size, or drag your feet long enough to ramp up your recall response, maybe it won’t be so bad. Of course, denial that the problem even exists is the top-line defense. As the documents trickling from the hands of federal investigators to the press indicate, Toyota was once a master of the art. Continue reading
You wouldn’t troubleshoot the space shuttle by tinkering under the hood of the Spirit of St. Louis. But a surprising number of observers think that the answer to Toyota’s Sudden Unintended Acceleration problems can be found in the mechanical systems of a quarter century ago. Linking Toyota’s present troubles to those of Audi in the mid-1980s is a convenient shibboleth; it may even provide a lesson in corporate crisis management. But to figure out why so many Toyota makes and models across multiple model years are experiencing unintended acceleration in a variety of scenarios, we must resolve to understand modern automotive electronic systems. Continue reading
The 2008-2010 Toyota Highlander Hybrid becomes the latest vehicle to be added to Toyota’s growing roster of makes and models to receive a new, trimmer accelerator pedal to avoid floor mat interference. Yesterday, Toyota sent a communication to its dealers announcing Phase 4 of “Safety Recall 90L on 2008 through certain 2010 Highlander Hybrid vehicles for potential floor mat interference with the accelerator pedal. All Highlander Hybrid vehicles are equipped with a Denso pedal. The same templates and gauges provided to dealers for the Camry (Phase 1) will be utilized.” Continue reading
So far, Toyota has launched five recalls to address what it claims are the only causes of unintended acceleration: sticky accelerator pedals and floor mats. And yet, these “fixes” have failed to fix some vehicles.
Since the recalls were announced in September, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has received 97 complaints from owners who said they experienced one or more bouts of sudden unintended acceleration after the dealer performed the recall repair. Randy and Alice Whitfield of Quality control Systems Corporation have been downloading the complaints as they come in and are posting links to their complaints on their website:
http://www.quality-control.us/toyota_speed_control.html
Here’s a sampling of what’s out there (click on the ODI number to be taken to the original complaint record on NHTSA’s site): Continue reading
We have completed our latest review of the Toyota unintended acceleration complaint data. Following are the sources of these complaints:
•Consumer complaints to NHTSA through February 25, 2010;
•Toyota-submitted claims to NHTSA investigations into SUA;
•Incidents reported by media organizations;
•Consumer contacts made to our firm and other firms who are reporting incidents that they have received through March 2, 2010. (Note: Most of these complaints are also part of the NHTSA complaint data as we have encouraged owner’s to report their problem to the agency. Duplicates have been removed.)
The witness chairs in the House hearing chambers hadn’t even cooled, when Toyota owners who dutifully took their vehicles into the dealership for a pedal fix were reporting more sudden acceleration incidents to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
On February 24, the president of Toyota Motor Corporation, Akio Toyoda, raised his right hand before an investigative congressional oversight committee and swore: “I’m absolutely confident that there is no problem with the design of the ETC system.” Continue reading
Juanita Grossman was a petite 77-year-old woman who died from the injuries sustained from barreling into a building full-speed in her 2003 Camry in March 2004. When the emergency medical technicians arrived to transport Mrs. Grossman to the hospital they found her with both feet still jammed on the brake pedal.
Mrs. Grossman was still conscious, and in the days before she succumbed to her injuries, she kept telling her family: The car ran away on me. The car ran way on me. These statements and the placement of both feet on the brake – verified by two independent witnesses at the scene of the crash – did not rouse the curiosity of Toyota or the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which was in the midst of an investigation into Toyota’s electronic throttle control system when ODI investigators learned of her death. Continue reading
