Tag: toyota-unintended-acceleration

No Black Box Exoneration for Toyota, Part II

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After the Wall Street Journal plastered the front page a few weeks ago claiming NHTSA had “black box” (aka Event Data Recorder or EDR) data to support that driver error, not electronics, was the cause of the unintended acceleration issues in Toyotas, the headline is back yet again following a NHTSA Congressional briefing yesterday.

The WSJ in a subsequent story identified George Person, recently retired head of the recall division at NHTSA, as the source.  (see No Black Box Exoneration for Toyota and Lawsuits Fill in Outline of Toyota Sudden Acceleration Cover-Up) Continue reading →

Money for Nothing and Complaints for Free

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Interesting fact: A raft of academic and industry studies show that customers who complain and have their complaint successfully resolved bring in more money to the company than it costs to fix the problem.

In the topsy-turvy Toyota World, however, it’s the customers who are already happy that get the red carpet treatment and big bucks. Have you heard about Nick and Sharyn Davis, from Parker County, Texas? You will soon. According to The Weatherford Democrat, the Davises are among the lucky winners in a Toyota advertising campaign, touting “real people with real stories about their Toyotas. And, the Davises are part of those real people.” Continue reading →

Lawsuits Fill in Outline of Toyota Sudden Accleration Cover-Up

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The splash that retired NHTSA recall division chief George Person made when he told The Wall Street Journal that the agency was sitting on a report that would show driver error to be the cause of Toyota SUA events has been submerged by a new wave of reality, as attorneys heading the Multi-District Litigation (MDL) charged in a class-action complaint that Toyota knew since 2003 that it had an SUA problem it could not explain and its own dealers witnessed some events.

The MDL, filed this week on behalf of Toyota and Lexus owners alleging that the automaker’s SUA defect has caused their vehicles to lose value, shows that Toyota has known, at least since May 2003 that its Electronic Throttle Control had a “dangerous” unintended acceleration problem with an unknown cause. That civil action, and a second one claiming damages for Toyota and Lexus owners who were injured or killed in crashes alleged to have been caused by SUA, cite six incidents which occurred between 2003 and 2010, witnessed by Toyota technicians, dealers and others. The e-mails also show that Toyota spent considerable energy trying to divert NHTSA from looking too closely at the issue. Here are some highlights from the class-action complaint: Continue reading →

Toyota Sudden Unintended Acceleration: The New Numbers Are In!

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Safety Research & Strategies has completed our latest review of Toyota unintended acceleration complaint data.  Our database consists of incidents from the following sources:

  • Consumer complaints to NHTSA through June 7, 2010
  • Toyota-submitted claims from several NHTSA investigations into unintended acceleration
  • Incidents reported by media organizations
  • Consumer contacts made to our organization and other firms that are reporting incidents that they have received Continue reading →

No Black Box Exoneration for Toyota

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The Wall Street Journal made a splash yesterday when it reported that the US DOT had analyzed dozens of data recorders from Toyota vehicles in crashes blamed on unintended acceleration and found that the throttles were open and brakes were not applied.  These findings support Toyota’s position that SUA events are not caused by vehicle electronics, the Journal claimed.  The Journal apparently based its report on information leaked by Toyota, because NHTSA is denying any involvement.

Toyota’s efforts to place the story with the Journal seem to be paying dividends –  literally. The automaker’s stock rose 1 percent on the news and reporters scrambled to repeat the Journal piece with no independent sources. Continue reading →

Every Time We Learn Something Else, It Gets Worse (for Toyota)

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Some day, possibly very soon, the Harvard Business School is going to do a case study on Toyota and sudden unintended acceleration, and two of the underlying principles are going to be: Don’t lie so (bleeping) much; and Swat not the gadfly with a sledgehammer.

We know that Toyota has compounded its technical problem with a public relations disaster, but we’re always fascinated to learn that it’s worse than we thought – to wit Toyota v. David Gilbert. Continue reading →

Toyota Washington Watch

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We sat through the National Academies of Science first public meeting to tackle the Electronic Vehicle Controls and Unintended Acceleration Study, a NHTSA-sponsored effort to look broadly at the issue, and we are happy to see that the agency has brought in some outside expertise.

This is truly an opportunity for the regulators to advance their knowledge base beyond the era of the mechanical automobile and into the age of automotive electronics, rapidly migrating from a vehicle’s entertainment center to its most basic functions of acceleration, braking and steering. It is critical to future policy setting and defect analysis. Continue reading →

Be Careful what you Wish for Toyota

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Once upon a time, there was a Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard for accelerator controls. It was a very ancient standard, written in 1972, when vehicles were equipped with purely mechanical systems. FMVSS 124 Accelerator Control Systems specified the requirements for the return of a vehicle’s throttle to the idle position when the driver removed the actuating force from the accelerator control or in the event of a severance or disconnection in the accelerator control system. Its purpose was “to reduce deaths and injuries resulting from engine overspeed caused by malfunctions in the accelerator control system.”

Decades passed, and so did the mechanical systems, into automotive history. The car makers began to seek the wise counsel of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration: did FMVSS 124 apply to electronic systems? Yes it did, NHTSA said. Continue reading →

EDR: Toyota’s Electronic Doubt Receptacle

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Earlier this week, police in Auburn, New York concluded that a fatal crash involving a 2010 Camry that plowed through a red light was caused by the driver, who suffered a medical condition.

Law enforcement based this in part on the results of the Camry’s Event Data Recorder (EDR) – aka, “black box” – readout, which appeared to show that the driver Barbara Kraushaar never hit the brake in the five seconds before her Camry struck a Ford Taurus, and killed driver Colleen A. Trousdale.

A news report in Syracuse’s Post-Standard quoted Auburn Police Lt. Shawn Butler, thus: Continue reading →

Caught in the Motor Vehicle Safety Act

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The reviews on the Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 2010 are coming in and we’re not sure, but there may be enough opposition to start a 1,000,000 People Strong Against the Waxman/Rockefeller Bill group on Facebook.

The legislation, proffered by Rep. Henry Waxman’s Energy and Commerce Committee and Sen. John Rockefeller’s Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation would require NHTSA to establish four new standards to prevent unintended acceleration and mandate system redundancy and toughen the current Event Data Recorder standard. The legislation would also establish a new Center for Vehicle Electronics and Emerging Technologies and arm the agency with bigger civil penalties and the authority to order a recall in the case of imminent threat of injury and death. It proposes to give the public more information in the Early Warning Reports – changing the presumption of disclosure from major secrecy to maximum disclosure. Continue reading →