Archive for February, 2010

Toyota Identifies Yet Another Potential Cause of Sudden Acceleration

Friday, February 26th, 2010

Safety Research & Strategies letter to Administrator Strickland asks why Toyota it wasn’t recalling its accessory sport pedals. The automaker has identified these aftermarket accessories, which it sells and installs through Toyota dealers, as contributors to unintended acceleration.
Toyota made this startling admission in denying a claim by Michael Teston, an unfortunate Toyota customer from Maaumelle, [...]

Our Advocacy

Friday, February 26th, 2010

One of the fiery moments in Tuesday’s hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee was Rep. Steven Buyer’s (R-Ind.) prosecutorial turn on SRS founder and President Sean Kane. Buyer attempted to undermine Kane’s testimony, and that of Dr. David Gilbert, whose early research into Toyota’s accelerator pedal position sensor showed that Toyota’s fail-safe strategy [...]

Death and Drive-By-Wire: New Evidence Shows Early Deaths were Ignored

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

We have been watching with great interest as NHTSA has suddenly proclaimed 34 deaths in Toyota sudden unintended acceleration incidents, (when nary but one has been officially counted in eight investigations) and Toyota has doubled down on nothing-is-wrong-but-floor-mats-and-sticky-accelerator-pedals. We are pleased to see that NHTSA, under the current administration, is now taking the fatality reports [...]

Toyota Sudden Acceleration: The Full Report from Safety Research & Strategies

Friday, February 5th, 2010

SRS has just released its comprehensive examination of Toyota SUA. Toyota Sudden Unintended Acceleration covers this continuing safety defect from its roots to the current crisis:
- The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s unsuccessful efforts to identify all the causes;
- Toyota’s ineffective and conflicting responses;
- Who knew what and when.
Click on the image below [...]

New Report Points to Toyota’s Electronic Throttle Control

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

A new scientific report from Quality Control Systems Corp. finds that the proportion of consumer complaints related to vehicle speed control in some Toyota Camry, Tacoma, and Lexus ES vehicles is substantially higher in those models with electronic throttle control systems (Toyota’s “ETCS-i”) than it is for the same models without electronic throttle control. [...]

Thoroughly Investigated? We Don’t Think So

Monday, February 1st, 2010

This morning, Jim Lentz, President and CEO of Toyota Motor Sales, joined the brigade of executives dispatched to put out the unintended acceleration wildfire currently consuming the company’s sales, stock rating and reputation. As the Today Show’s Matt Lauer tried to corner him, Lentz emphatically insisted that the only two issues affected Toyota vehicles are [...]