Toyota’s announcement that it is the subject of a federal criminal probe in the relay rod recalls begs a question: Will it be the first automaker to be criminally prosecuted under the Transportation Recall Enhancement, Accountability and Documentation (TREAD) Act? Today, the automaker released – via a statement to the Tokyo Stock Exchange – the [...]
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 [...]
A Missouri federal court jury has found Sunbeam Products, Inc. partially responsible for serious burn injuries suffered by a bed-bound elderly woman who was sleeping under one of its electric blankets, when the blanket caught fire. Barbara Kay of Morgan County, Missouri was sleeping under a Sunbeam electric blanket on October 28, 2008 when it [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
