Mike Michels, Vice President for External Communications of Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., wrote an editorial, in response to a well-reported and written story by the Huffington Post’s Sharon Silke Carty about one of the most significant physical findings of the NASA Engineering Safety Center’s (NESC) study of the electronic causes of unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles: tin whiskers. Tin whiskers are crystalline structures that emanate from tin and other alloys used as solder on printed circuit boards. These nearly microscopic metal hairs can bridge circuits, leading to electrical shorts and significant malfunctions. They have caused failures at nuclear power plants and medical devices and downed satellites. While we don’t believe that they are the cause of UA in all Toyota vehicles. Clearly, tin whiskers have been strongly implicated as a cause of UA in some Toyota vehicles.

This story touched off an interesting and intelligent discussion among readers, generating more than a thousand responses. While there were a few of the “loose nut behind the wheel” and “evil trial lawyers” variety, the majority of comments appeared to come from readers with technical backgrounds who were well-versed in the headaches caused by tin whiskers, a longstanding issue in the electronics industry.

Mr. Michels effort to beat back a challenge to Toyota’s preferred narrative, however, is rife with mischaracterizations and falsehoods.

Mr. Michels says that the engineers at the National Aeronautics and Safety Administration (NASA) have been “clear and unequivocal” in their conclusions. They have not. The February report, Technical Assessment of Toyota Electronic Throttle Control (ETC) Systems and Technical Support to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on the Reported Toyota Motor Corporation Unintended Acceleration Investigation, written by the NASA Engineering Safety Center (NESC) actually said:

“Due to system complexity which will be described and the many possible electronic software and hardware systems interactions it is not realistic to prove that the ETCSi cannot cause UAs. Today’s vehicles are sufficiently complex that no reasonable amount of analysis or testing can prove electronics and software have no errors. Therefore, absence of proof that the ETCSi caused a UA does not vindicate the system.”

Mr. Michels said that there are no real-world scenarios in which Toyota electronics can cause unintended acceleration. That is not true. The NESC team, which found tin whiskers in every potentiometer pedal it examined in a very small sample, studied one from a Camry that had experienced unintended accelerations. The owner described the pedal as “jumpy” and the car as “completely undriveable.”

Further, in May two NHTSA engineers witnessed, videotaped and captured data from a 2003 Prius that had multiple UA events in their presence. Yesterday, the agency conceded that there was no evidence that these UA events were linked to the” known causes” of floor mats, sticking accelerator pedals or driver error. This suggests that the culprit is to be found in the software or electronics.

Mr. Michels says that the National Academies of Sciences laid to rest “this discredited theory,” concluding that all the data available indicated that there was no electronic or software problem in Toyota vehicles and that NHTSA was justified in closing its investigation.

The NAS panel did not actually examine the tin whiskers phenomenon. It devoted one paragraph in a 158-page report to the subject. As for clearing Toyota, the NAS report actually said:

“The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

Mr. Michels also cited the affirming pronouncements of “respected independent experts,” such as Edmunds.com and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood. Edmund’s.com sells cars. Ray LaHood is a politician who taught high school social studies before winning public office. Neither are automotive electronics experts.

Mr. Michels says that Toyota’s systems are designed to reduce the risk that tin whiskers will form in the first place and that “multiple robust failsafe systems” detect faults, illuminate the malfunction indicator light and put the vehicle into ‘limp home’ mode.

Neither is true.

In August, some actual electronics experts from the University of Maryland’s Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering (CALCE) published an analysis of the potential for tin whisker growth in Toyota vehicles. The scientists performed a physical analysis of an engine control system from a 2005 Camry XLE, V-6 and an accelerator pedal assembly from a defunct 2002 Camry. The 2005 engine control system included the ECM, an accelerator pedal unit, throttle body, electrical connectors and electrical connecting cables. The tear-down of the accelerator pedal position sensors (APPS) in both Camrys revealed tin whisker formations. In addition, the CALCE researchers found the potential for tin whisker formation in the ECM, which contained surface mount electronic devices connected with tin-lead solder to a multilayer PCB; interconnect terminals of the perimeter leaded devices plated with tin. And tin plating on terminal pins of the edge connections. The CALCE scientists concluded:

“In our analysis, a significant number of tin whiskers were found. Using the calceWhiskerRiskCalculator (CALCE Tin Whisker Risk Calculator, 2005) to assess the failure risk posed by observed tin whisker formation on the conductor pairs, it was determined that the potential for a tin whisker shorting failure was 140/1 million. Considering the number of vehicles on the road, it is expected that this would present a significant safety hazard.”

Other automotive electronics experts, such as David Gilbert at Southern Illinois University have demonstrated that Toyota’s fail-safe strategy is not robust and under certain circumstances fails to detect faults that can lead to open throttle.  In an August 2010 recall intended to correct stalling in 2005-2008 Corolla and Corolla Matrix vehicles, Toyota submitted field technical reports on the problem, many of which noted that diagnostic trouble codes were not set, even when the technician could duplicate the problem. Toyota’s fault-detection system does not always function properly and does fail to detect abnormalities and set trouble codes.

Mr. Michels asks: “Why, then, is Toyota continuing to be subjected to unwarranted speculation in the news media about an issue that has long since been put to bed?”

Well, it’s not due to the fanciful conjecture of plaintiff’s lawyers and its paid consultants or a frenzy of non-news news. It’s because Toyota’s customers continue to report unintended acceleration incidents that cannot be credibly blamed on floor mats, driver error or sticky pedals. NHTSA alone fielded 330 complaints from Toyota owners who experienced a UA event in 2011. Some 247 customers have complained to the agency about events that occurred after they had their floor mats and accelerator pedals remedied through the recalls.

Toyota’s problem is that it has treated unintended acceleration in its vehicles as a public relations dilemma, rather than a technical issue.

If Toyota wants the public to stop discussing Unintended Acceleration in its cars, why don’t they just fix them?

The panel’s most significant critique was an acknowledgement that NHTSA is ill-equipped to deal with the new age of vehicle electronics:

“For NHTSA to engage in comprehensive regulatory oversight of manufacturer assurance plans and processes, as occurs in the aviation sector, would represent a fundamental change in the agency’s regulatory approach that would require substantial justification and resources (see Finding 4.6). The introduction of increasingly autonomous vehicles, as envisioned in some concepts of the electronics-intensive automobile, might one day cause the agency to consider taking a more hands-on regulatory approach with elements similar to those found in the aviation sector. At the moment, such a profound change in the way NHTSA regulates automotive safety does not appear to be a near-term prospect.”

Conclusions like these pepper the NAS report. Throughout The Safety Promise and Challenge of Automotive Electronics; Insights from Unintended Acceleration, the panel tries to have it both ways: to lay claim to a scientific process, without employing any actual science, to maintain that it was not second-guessing NHTSA’s investigations, but concluding that the agency was justified in closing them; to say that the Audi Sudden Unintended Acceleration controversy isn’t comparable to the Toyota debate because automotive technology has changed so drastically, and yet lean heavily on the 1989 NHTSA-commissioned report, An Examination of Sudden  Acceleration.

Unfortunately, these equivocations do nothing to enhance our understanding of or to resolve the problem of Toyota unintended acceleration. In fact, these events continue to occur. Toyota drivers, who have not been put off by the NHTSA and Toyota’s steady drumbeat of floor mats and driver error, are still reporting their incidents to the agency’s consumer complaint database. (We will be releasing the 2011 numbers shortly, along with interviews from drivers.)

Consider the deaths of Perlita and Eugene Macala on January 12, in Las Vegas, after their 2002 Toyota Camry “sped through a red light” on an I-215 off-ramp and “slammed into a concrete wall,” according to news accounts. A witness, Jodee Talley, who was behind the Macalas on the freeway said: “They were traveling at just a little bit of a higher rate of speed than me in the beginning – until they started braking. The reverse lights were flashing and then it just darted as if they had floored the vehicle…It was hard to understand how the car went from slowing down to just in a flash slamming against the wall head on at such a high rate of speed,” Talley said. “My first thought [was] that it was somebody just driving erratically, but it just didn’t make sense once they actually collided with the wall.”

Floor mats? A confused driver? The 2002 Camry has been among the most troubled vehicles and is outside of any recall.  Was Mrs. Macala braking, as the witness and the brake lights suggest? The NAS panel appeared unable to understand the concept of unintended acceleration occurring while the driver is braking:

“The NASA investigators further confirmed NHTSA’s conclusion that the ETC could not disable the brakes so as to cause loss of braking capacity, as often reported by drivers experiencing unintended acceleration commencing in a vehicle that had been stopped or moving slowly,” the report states.

There are several reasons why braking could be ineffective in a UA event, ranging from the depletion of the vehicle’s vacuum power-assist braking system during a long-duration high-speed event to insufficient space to bring the vehicle under control before it crashes in a low-speed parking incident. While mechanical and electro-mechanical systems are separate, they are connected by the vehicle’s electronic architecture and they are constantly interacting. The Electronic Control Module, the vehicle’s central computer, is orchestrating many vehicle tasks and the ECM can and does, at times, misinterpret driver commands and sensor signals – including the command to brake. For example, in May 2010, GM recalled 2005-2006 Corvettes with tilt and telescoping steering wheels because the steering wheel angle sensor could become corrupted, causing one side of the vehicle’s brakes to actuate which can put the car into a spin.

The NAS similarly misunderstands the real world of Event Data Recorders (EDRs or “black boxes).  The automotive version of a device well-known in avionics is far from the hardened devices found in today’s aircraft.  Any seasoned crash investigator can recount inconsistent readouts from EDRs, which can only supplement other evidence.  NAS suggests that advanced and mandated EDRs could stand in as the impartial witness to the behavior of the driver and the vehicle in a crash.

The panel gives short shrift to the most significant physical evidence of a root cause of Toyota Unintended Acceleration discovered to date: tin whiskers in the accelerator pedal position sensor. Tin whiskers are a well-known cause of electronic malfunction and surely worth further study in the age of increasing automotive electronics.

There are many other indications throughout the report that NAS got it exactly backwards. For example, the NAS panel did not recommend that NHTSA upgrade Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 124 Accelerator Controls, written in 1972. Rather, it accepted NHTSA’s explanation that the current regulation was sufficiently technology-neutral and its example of a similar regulatory scenario, FMVSS 114:

“Because the FMVSSs are intended to be technology neutral, the changeover from mechanical to electronics systems in recent years has not necessitated substantial regulatory revisions. For example, NHTSA officials informed the committee that the introduction of keyless ignition systems occurred within the context of the existing FMVSS 114. The agency has interpreted the standard’s requirements governing the use of a “key’’ as encompassing both a traditional physical key and codes that are electronically transmitted by a fob or entered by the driver using a keypad inside the vehicle.”

As it happens, for years automakers were forced to seek interpretations from agency counsel on how FMVSS 114 applied to the new systems, because it wasn’t clear. Further, the agency decided to address this confusion in 2006 by upgrading the 114 to encompass electronic keys. Just last month, the agency published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking proposing to significantly re-write the standard, because keyless ignition systems had introduced new safety hazard – carbon monoxide poisoning – unanticipated by the old regulation based on old technology. (See Stupid Tricks with Smart Keys)

FMVSS 114 provides an excellent illustration of why the agency should upgrade FMVSS 124.

The NAS panel points out “the importance of considering the totality of the evidence in investigations of reports of unsafe vehicle behaviors.” And there’s the problem right there. The cherry-picking of the data began with very first Camry investigation in 2004 and continues today. This phenomenon was captured best by Toyota’s Chris Santucci.

In May 2009, Santucci sent an e-mail to colleague about his progress in the negotiations with the agency to close DP09-001. A Lexus owner who had experienced a high-speed UA event in his Lexus ES350 had requested that the agency specifically investigate events that implicated the vehicle’s electronic throttle control, instead of floor mats, as a root cause.  As characterized by Santucci, NHTSA was looking for the way out:

“I have discussed our rebuttal with them, and they are welcoming of such a letter, They are struggling with sending an IR letter, because they shouldn’t ask us about floormat issues because the petitioner contends that NHTSA did not investigate throttle issues other than floor mat-related. So they should ask us for non-floor mat related reports, right? But they are concerned that if they ask for these other reports, they will have many reports that just cannot be explained, and since they do not think that they can explain them, they don’t really want them. Does that make sense? I think it is good news for Toyota.

No one would say that the controversy has been “good” for Toyota. Yet, the automaker’s ability to use an alphabet soup of government agencies to quash the truth about the problems with its vehicle electronics, to effectively hide from public view what it knows about the causes of those problems, to avoid fixing them or compensating customers who are saddled with them is an impressive achievement.

But as time has passed, more models and model years have been added. In total since 2005, when Toyota announced a small campaign to recall some Lexus IS250 vehicles from model year 2006 for “accelerator pedals which could become stuck in the partially depressed position due to inadequate clearance between the accelerator pedal linkage and a plastic pad embedded in the vehicle’s carpet,” Toyota has recalled more than 100 different makes, model and model year vehicles for an unintended acceleration-related safety defect. There have been a total of seven different recalls. Monster recall 90L is in now in Phase 11.

Behold! Our latest Toyota Recall Matrix:

The remedies are a complex welter of fixes:

• New floor mats

• Shorter accelerator pedals – or not

• Yes/electronic brake-override/No electronic brake-override

• Definitely getting a new accelerator pedal, or getting a new accelerator pedal if you ask the dealer for one.

• New Retention clips—not once but twice

• Shaved plastic pads

Employing everything from software to razor blades hasn’t really stopped the SUAs from occurring. We got some interesting real-life recent incidents we’ll be sharing in coming days. Stay tuned.

This tough stance on recall timeliness is welcome – but does not resolve the larger issues raised by Toyota unintended acceleration – namely how defects are defined in the era of automotive electronics and how such defects are investigated when they are rare, multi-root-cause, and potentially deadly?

The dribble of documents released by the Multi-District Litigation and Congress so far show that UA has been duplicated by Toyota technicians and, contrary to attempts by Toyota advocates and agency investigators to pass off all incidents as driver error, sticky pedals, big shoes and floor mats, there are instances when reliable technical personnel take the vehicle for a test spin and experience UA with no pedal involvement. In fact, we have discovered that Toyota techs were able to duplicate UA in one of very public and widely debated case – but lied to the consumer about it. (We’ll feature that story in a future post.)

The root cause – or causes – of such instances remain obscured, for the moment. There are multiple possibilities. (We suspect that Toyota execs and technical staff in Japan have a much better idea of why these instances occur.) We know that Toyota has bought back vehicles that have experienced a UA event in front of dealership personnel for further testing. Independent testing and vehicle inspections continue to show Toyota’s fault detection software has some serious flaws – flaws that allow unwanted events to occur undetected and without activation of the failsafe features.  There are no regulations that govern the layers of safety need in today’s sophisticated vehicle electronics.  While some manufacturers follow strict multi-tiered safety strategies that catch inevitable (and sometimes rare) occurrences, Toyota appears to be missing some core layers.  How and whether this gets addressed will set the foundation for the future of motor vehicle defect investigations and recalls.

Eventually, this knot will be untangled – but by whom? The National Academy of Sciences is still working on its report. But the panelists aren’t experts in vehicle electronics and have an incredibly broad mandate to review everything from electronic controls design and reliability to environmental factors to cyber-security of automotive electronic control systems.  We don’t expect any revelations there. The Inspector General is looking at NHTSA’s investigatory process, and this work may yield some insight and suggested improvements. The joint NASA-NHTSA effort is scheduled to conclude in 2011.  NHTSA still has an open Recall Query, RQ10-003, to determine if Toyota too narrowly defined the defect in its two UA-related recalls.

And that takes us back to our first question. ODI investigators have traditionally been broken parts guys and gals. What happens if the defect is a line of code or a faulty detection strategy made of digital Swiss cheese? The agency itself may have to broaden the concept of defect to address the evolution of vehicle computer systems and electronics and whether rare events with serious consequences are safety-related defects under their mandate.

To our second question about investigations into a rare, random, and yet potentially deadly defects – the agency isn’t going to get anywhere until it catches up to today’s engine systems. Some of the agency’s public efforts to date, such as the “study” of SUA events using Event Data Recorders, showed how far NHTSA has to go. The agency mischaracterized the data and failed to address the many discrepancies in the readouts. Further, it omitted any context about the questionable reliability of Toyota’s EDRs and about the incidents it included.  The “results” didn’t add much of anything to the discussion other than blaring headlines that alleged NHTSA exonerated Toyota of electronic defects.

Toyota SUA has also exposed more regulatory fissures. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 124 Accelerator Controls has pretty much lost its relevance. Its purpose is: “to reduce deaths and injuries resulting from engine overspeed caused by malfunctions in the accelerator control system.” In 2005, NHTSA proposed amending it. But, the industry sought to rescind the standard, arguing that market forces and litigation pressure were sufficient to assure fail-safe performance without a safety standard. The agency terminated the rulemaking.

And, while these broad questions beg for answers, automakers are experimenting with even more sophisticated and integrated electronics.

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:

“On May 5, 2003, in a ‘Field Technical Report’ Toyota acknowledged the fact that “[s]udden acceleration against our intention,’ was an ‘extremely serious problem for customers.’ The technician reported a UA incident and stated: ‘We found miss-synchronism between engine speeds and throttle position movement.” The probable cause was unknown, but ‘(e)ven after replacement of those parts, this problem remains.’ The author requested immediate action due to the ‘extremely dangerous problem’ and continued: ‘[W]e are also much afraid of frequency of this problem in near future.’

“In May 2004, a 26 Forensic Technologist and MSME examined a vehicle in New Jersey that had experienced a UA event. The report was forwarded to Toyota on January 13, 2005. It concluded that the vehicle’s ETCS was not operating correctly. This report was not provided to NHTSA.

“In a February 27, 2007 email sent by Michiteru Kato to Christopher Santucci, Mr. Kato decided against sending his most knowledgeable ECU (Engine Control Unit) engineer to an ECU demonstration being conducted for NHTSA, in order to avoid questions regarding ECU failures: ‘…I thought that 3 guys from TMS is too many (two at most), and if the engineer who knows the failures well attends the meeting, NHTSA will ask a bunch of questions about the ECD. (I want to avoid such situation).’

In a Field Technical Report dated December 12, 2008, a technician stated: ‘After traveling 20-30 feet the vehicle exhibited a slight hesitation then began to accelerate on its own. Engine speed was estimated to have gone from 1500 rpm to 5500 rpm at the time of the occurrence…Probable Cause =Unknown.’

The examples cited in the MDL complaint are similar to many of those reported to Safety Research & Strategies by Toyota owners. (see Toyota Real Stories)

George Person, erstwhile chief of the Recall Management Division, who just retired after 27 years at the agency, has no reservations about the causes of Toyota SUA. He opined that DOT officials had withheld a report, showing that EDR data in 23 crashes showed a wide-open throttle and no evidence of braking before the crash, out of embarrassment.

“It has become very political. There is a lot of anger towards Toyota,” Person said in a subsequent WSJ story published on July 30. Transportation officials “are hoping against hope that they find something that points back to a flaw in Toyota vehicles.”

“The agency has for too long ignored what I believe is the root cause of these unintended acceleration cases,” he told the WSJ, as his head disappeared into the hole George was digging. “It’s driver error. It’s pedal misapplication and that’s what this data shows.”

Person lobbed what looked like a boulder three weeks ago, when the WSJ reported that NHTSA had Event Data Recorder (EDR – aka, “Black Box”) from “several dozen” crashes and that all of them showed accelerator application with no braking at the time of impact:

“The Toyota findings appear to support Toyota’s position that sudden-acceleration reports involving its vehicles weren’t caused by electronic glitches in computer-controlled throttle systems, as some safety advocates and plaintiffs’ attorneys have alleged.”

The front-page story was picked up, with some outlets blaring headlines of the “Toyota-is-Exonerated” variety. The pushback was swift: NHTSA said that it was in no way close to drawing any conclusions about what has caused tens of thousands of Toyota Sudden Unintended Acceleration complaints. (The agency is currently examining Toyotas with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and is awaiting a report it commissioned a National Academies of Science panel to write about SUA.)  And, after a spate of such stories, USA Today captured the entire charming episode under the headline: “Feds, Toyota, deny they said what nobody said they said in acceleration fracas.”

First – while we are deeply disappointed that this bears repeating, we repeat – Toyota EDR data alone is unreliable, by the automaker’s own admission. Second, there are so many details of these 23 crashes still not public. How were these crashes selected? Are these single-vehicle, run-off-the-road fatal crashes with no witnesses that someone has surmised could have been SUA related?  If they are how relevant are these crashes to the SUA problem? (See No Black Box Exoneration for Toyota) Most of the Toyota SUA events have not triggered the EDRs. They are low-speed events that may have little or nothing to do with the higher-speed crashes.  Further, those much more frequent, lower-speed events have had many witnesses.

The e-mails submitted as exhibits in the MDL make Person’s boulder look like a pebble.

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.

So, does this bring the curtain down on Toyota’s SUA woes and concerns about their electronics?  Hardly.

Recall that Toyota reported to Congress in January that the company identified 37,900 customer contact reports “potentially related to sudden unintended acceleration” analyzing “dozens” of data recorders from the thousands of complaints doesn’t extrapolate to a driver error problem.  Nor does it explain the large jump in complaint rates when Toyota moved to Electronic Throttle Control (ETC).  Most complaints and crashes do not actually activate the EDR, which only records data in crashes severe enough to deploy an airbag or, in some instances, in near-deployment events.  The actual pool of unintended acceleration claims in which an EDR was activated is very small.

Safety Research & Strategies has already addressed the murkiness and accuracy of Toyota’s EDR’s (see EDR:  Toyota’s Electronic Doubt Receptacle).  And since the Journal failed to mention it, we would like to remind you of an important bit of context: Toyota has always stated that the accuracy of the black boxes has never been scientifically validated. In fact, the company fights to keep the data from being used in litigation because it says the EDR data isn’t reliable.

In order to extract and read the data stored on a Toyota EDR, proprietary equipment that downloads, analyzes and generates a report based on the data is required. This equipment is not available to the public.  The EDR must be downloaded and any reports must be generated by Toyota or NHTSA, which has recently been provided with readout tools.  Until March 3, 2010, when Toyota delivered one readout tool to the NHTSA, Toyota claimed that it had a single prototype tool in the U.S. that could extract the data and that it would only download data if requested by law enforcement, NHTSA or the courts.  The details of the quantity and quality of the Toyota EDR data have been shrouded in secrecy.  No one, other than Toyota, knows exactly what data is recorded, retrieved and how it is processed and analyzed to produce a report.

According to Toyota, the type of data recorded varies depending on which generation of EDR is in the vehicle. Toyota doesn’t disclose prior to the download which generation of EDR is installed on specific vehicle makes, models and years and what data is available on each version. The owner of the vehicle does not know what is being recorded, and when data are downloaded they have no way to determine whether the data downloaded is complete, how the data are being processed or the accuracy of the translation.

Toyota now wants the public to believe that an analysis of “dozens” of black boxes out of the thousands of unintended acceleration complaints somehow translates to an exoneration of electronics.

Toyota Fault Detection Capabilities in Question

Dr. David Gilbert the Southern Illinois University Carbondale professor of automotive electronics was the first to point to the Toyota fault detection capability as an area of interest.  Gilbert’s testing found that Toyota’s could lose the signal redundancy at the accelerator pedal sensors – an important failsafe that is in place to prevent unintended acceleration – without any detection.  Once the failsafe was lost, introducing voltage to the sensor would cause the throttle to open.  While Gilbert’s study didn’t pinpoint the root cause of SUA, his findings pointed squarely to problems with the electronic fault detection that could help explain why an engine could race without driver input and leave no error codes – a common complaint.

Since Gilbert disclosed his findings in testimony to Congress – and several independent experts have validated Gilbert’s findings, more evidence that the fault detection system shortcomings in Toyotas continues to mount.  The SUA issues affecting Toyotas don’t appear to be due to a single root cause, rather, they appear to be facilitated by the lack of a robust diagnostic and fault detection strategy. So, when something does go wrong – whether mechanical or electronic – problems can go undetected and the engine can race without driver input or setting an error code.

An examination of a 2004 Toyota Camry by in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida revealed yet another hole in Toyota’s fault detection strategy. The vehicle had experienced an unintended acceleration event, and exhibited an intermittent mechanical throttle sticking condition. Independent experts and Toyota technicians witnessed the engine race to nearly 3,000 RPMs when the throttle plate stuck.  But the electronic controls failed to detect the stuck throttle and limit engine speed to ensure a safe condition.

Dr. Todd Hubing, a Clemson University professor of vehicle electronics, presented similar findings to the National Academy of Sciences panel charged by NHTSA with examining unintended acceleration. Hubing was able to replicate Dr. David Gilbert’s work and obtain wide-open throttle without the fault detection system setting an error code – but with only a single fault.  Gilbert’s analyses found that first a loss of signal redundancy at the accelerator pedal sensor was needed followed by a voltage spike to create an unintended wide-open throttle.  Hubing found that many of the faults created invalid signals that sometimes would be detected, other times not.

The Real World

Simple explanations are nice, but they just don’t square with all the facts. Toyota owners have complained about sudden unintended acceleration in a variety of scenarios – some have been long duration, highway speed events, where the driver was already using the accelerator. Some have experienced multiple events. Some have experienced multiple events in the same vehicle with different drivers at the helm.

Within six weeks of leasing a 2010 Camry from Campbell Toyota, both Debrah and Dave Auger of Chatham, Ontario experienced three bouts of sudden acceleration.

Two incidents occurred when Debrah was at the wheel. The first took place in the parking lot of a small strip plaza. Debrah was parking, and had shifted into reverse, when the vehicle “jolted back quite hard,” Debrah recalled. She threw the transmission shift into park. The incident was puzzling, but the Augers passed it off as a one-time glitch.

Dave Auger, an experienced law enforcement officer, was driving at about 30 miles per hour on a four-lane highway in Port Huron. He had just taken his foot off the gas, when the Camry suddenly surged forward. “It felt like a hand suddenly shoved the car forward,” Auger said. He quickly applied the brakes and pulled the vehicle to the side of the road.

The third and final experience occurred as Debrah Auger was pulling up to a one-way stop in the Augers’ subdivision. She had made a complete stop, and had taken her foot off the brake, when the Camry took off. Debrah jammed on the brake, but she couldn’t stop it before the vehicle had surged into the intersection.

And don’t forget the Haggerty case, the first significant incident that pointed squarely to electronic issues:

Kevin Haggerty, owner of a 2007 Avalon, experienced five different SUA events.

They could not be blamed upon floor mats: Haggerty did not have accessory floor mats, and his OE mats were secured in place.

They could not be blamed on a sticky pedal: Several times, the vehicle accelerated without his foot on the gas pedal. The engine would sometimes return to idle after driving a few miles or after the Avalon shut down and restarted or was stopped and put into park.  On December 28, 2009 Haggerty, a volunteer firefighter and salesman, was driving to work on a highway when the car began to accelerate without his foot on the gas pedal. He was unable to stop the car with brakes and shifted into neutral to slow the car down. Only a couple of miles from his local Toyota dealer, Haggerty decided to call the service manager to let him know he coming in. He managed to drive the vehicle by alternating from neutral to drive and pressing very firmly on the brakes.

Heck, Haggerty’s incident couldn’t even be blamed on pedal misapplication: When Haggerty arrived at the dealer he shifted into neutral and exited the car with brakes smoking and the engine’s rpms racing.  The service techs examined the car and found no pedal interference or sticking and could provide no explanation or any computer error codes.

Toyota’s regional representative in Caldwell, NJ later inspected the vehicle, but did not provide details of this inspection to Haggerty. Instead, Toyota Motor Sales authorized replacement of the throttle body and accelerator pedal assemblies and sensors and paid for the $1700 repairs and rental car costs. The Toyota dealer told Haggerty that they were unsure whether the repairs would fix the vehicle.  (Toyota later tried to blame the event sticky pedal, despite service technicians who stated they pulled back on the pedal to no avail.)

While there may be dancing in the streets of Torrance, we think it’s a little early to cue the music.

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.

In 1995, after seven years of issuing interpretations relating electronic systems to the mechanically-based standard, NHTSA began the process of upgrading the standard to address the needs of the modern automobile. The agency asked many questions about electronic systems failsafes and redundancies, such as “Are there other predictable points of failure of an electronic control system?”

But the Great and Powerful Car Companies did not want a new regulation. They said:  We do not need any new rules – we don’t even need the current rule. Nay, market forces and litigation pressure are sufficient to assure fail-safe performance without a federal motor vehicle safety standard.

Despite the resistance, NHTSA published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in July 2002, explicitly stating its applicability to new types of engines and throttle controls; and adding new test procedures to address different types of powertrain technology, including one to the measurement of engine speed under realistic powertrain load conditions on a chassis dynamometer. The agency considered this test ‘‘technology neutral.”  The new standard would not expand in scope, nor become more stringent.

But the Great and Powerful Car Companies did not like this. They fought against the agency’s attempt to establish fail-safe criteria.  Leading the charge were the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and . . .  Toyota Motor Corporation. The proposed rule had too many problems they said, and the agency lost heart. In November 2004, NHTSA withdrew the rulemaking, saying it would do further research on issues relating to chassis dynamometer-based test procedures for accelerator controls.

More years went by, and people began to complain in great numbers that the accelerator controls in Toyota vehicles did not work right. And, lo! There were deaths and injuries “resulting from engine overspeed caused by malfunctions in the accelerator control system.” The lawsuits against Toyota began to pour into all the courts in the land. There were so many of them, that a judge had to combine them into one gigantic case, in which many lawyers would do battle. Many car buyers read the news about these problems with accelerator controls and decided that they really would rather have a Buick, or a Ford, or a Honda. Anything but a Toyota. And, the U.S. Congress took a sudden interest in the ancient accelerator regulation, and began to clamor for a law that would force NHTSA to update the standard.

And so, the wish uttered 15 years earlier by the Great and Powerful Car Companies came true. Toyota became the target of multi-district litigation, its customers fled and a new regulation was on the horizon.

The End.

Now, wasn’t that a nice story, boys and girls?

The committee and its Senate counterpart have introduced the Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 2010, which, if sees passage, will compel NHTSA to establish four new standards and beef up the current Event data Recorder standard – all with the aim of preventing unintended acceleration and requiring redundancies which will allow a driver to control of a runaway vehicle. The standards are:

Pedal Placement Standard

Requires NHTSA to promulgate a new standard that prevents pedal entrapment as a source of unintended acceleration by establishing minimum clearances for foot pedals with respect to other pedals, the vehicle floor, and any other potential obstructions.

Electronic Systems Performance Standard

Requires NHTSA to establish minimum performance standards for electronic systems in passenger vehicles.

Keyless Ignition Systems Standard

Requires NHTSA to promulgate a new standard that requires that passenger vehicles with keyless ignitions systems have consistent means to allow for a driver to stop or slow a vehicle during an emergency.

Transmission Configuration

Requires NHTSA to promulgate a new standard that requires an intuitive configuration and labeling of gear shift controls that ensures the neutral position is conspicuous to drivers who may need to use it in an emergency.

Vehicle Event Data Recorders

Requires NHTSA to promulgate a rule that requires that all vehicles be equipped with an event data recorder that meets the requirements of the existing voluntary standard issued by NHTSA. Requires a second new rule to establish that all event data recorders must be temperature, water, crash, and tamper resistant, to increase the amount and type of data that must be recorded, to make the data more accessible to investigators, and to establish ownership, privacy, and disclosure requirements regarding data collected by the recorders.

This bill is proposed in the grand tradition of political will overcoming regulatory inertia. On many an important safety issue, manufacturers have vigorously opposed any and all attempts to update outmoded safety standards citing the usual litany: This will ruin us! We like your concept, but everything is wrong with your execution; We see no problem here; Don’t worry, we’re on it! Then, NHTSA twiddles its thumbs for decades so that manufacturers don’t get their knickers in a twist and the preventable carnage continues.

The legislation also attempts to strengthen NHTSA’s competence by establishing a new Center for Vehicle Electronics and Emerging Technologies at the agency. It gives NHTSA a bigger stick against automakers who would flout the regulations by increasing the amount of civil penalty NHTSA can seek per violation and eliminate the maximum civil penalty allowed and by giving NHTSA the authority to order a recall if it finds an imminent threat of injury and death. It gives the public more information — changing the presumption of disclosure under TREAD’s early Warning Report to maximum disclosure and an improved public website database that allows users to better search and aggregate data.

From the great moments in auto safety:

Manufacturers could surreptitiously recall a vehicle – or its substantial U.S. equivalent – for a safety defect in a foreign market and never tell NHTSA. This proved to be Ford’s undoing in the Explorer-Wilderness ATX debacle a decade ago. Ford recalled the tires, which had an unfortunate propensity for catastrophic failure, causing the unstable SUV to rollover. When SRS broke the story that Ford was replacing the tires in Venezuela, but not here, all hell broke loose and the Transportation Recall Enhancement, Accountability and Documentation (TREAD) Act was born. The TREAD Act also created the Early Warning Reporting system.

In hindsight, it seems crazy that manufacturers were required to fully protect front seat occupants with shoulder-lap belts but permitted to let rear-seat occupants roll the dice with lap-only belts. But that’s how they rolled back in the day. Automakers had to provide three-point belts in front seats since 1968. But, despite mounting evidence of the need for shoulder-lap belts in rear seating positions and petitions from safety advocates and a recommendation the National Transportation Safety Board, NHTSA didn’t take a real interest in requiring rear outboard shoulder lap-belts until the 1980s, when Congress held a series of oversight hearings excoriating the agency for dragging its feet. Amendments to the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966 and the Motor Vehicle Cost Savings Act in 1987 required that NHTSA complete a rulemaking requiring rear seat outboard position shoulder belts in the next 14 months. The agency didn’t get around to posting an NPRM until 1988 and the Final Rule was sorted out in 1990. Rear seats didn’t three-point belts in outboard positions until 1991.

Automotive safety for children? Don’t get us started.

In 1974, Australia’s Department of Motor Transport kindly pointed out to NHTSA that the nascent child safety seat standards totally ignored the safety needs of older and heavier children who were too big for child safety seats.  NHTSA totally ignored this rather commonplace observation – for 28 years. It did give rise to a spate of articles in the pediatric journals about Seat Belt Syndrome – the catastrophic injuries to children caused by lap belts. It wasn’t until the grieving mother of 4-year-old Anton Skeen, who died after his seatbelt failed to restrain him in a rollover, began pushing that Congress compelled the agency to regulate occupant safety for older children. Under Anton’s Law, passed in 2002, NHTSA required boosted the requirements from 50 to 65 pounds. And finally, finally in 2004, the agency required shoulder lap belts in all rear seating positions.

For many years, NHTSA operated under a Vegas-type philosophy: What happens in the driveway stays in the driveway. That attitude resulted in child injuries and deaths from non-traffic, but automotive design related problems such as power window strangulations and backovers involving honking SUVs with sizeable blind zones. The agency refused to even gather data on these incidents, because no data, no problem. But activists, such as Janette Fennell of Kids and Cars, entreated Congress to take up the cause, and after five years of lobbying the Cameron-Gilbransen Kids and Cars Safety Act became law compelling the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to – for the first time –  develop a rearward visibility standard, mandate a brake-to-shift-interlock and require power windows to have an automatic reverse feature.

While Congressional investigation has yet to shed light on why Toyotas experience non-mechanical forms of unintended acceleration, we can take solace in future rulemakings that will at least give drivers a fighting chance to avoid a crash in an SUA event.

While the committee and sub-committee chairs, Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Bart Stupak (D-MI) respectively, did not state things quite so baldly, they came darned close in their opening statements:

Waxman characterized Toyota’s assurances to the committee that it had conducted extensive testing and research into the ETCS “baffling.”

“What we have learned is deeply troubling.  There is no evidence that Toyota has conducted extensive or rigorous testing of its vehicles or potential electronic defects that could cause sudden unintended acceleration.  Our colleague, Mr. Burgess said there’s a top to bottom review; we shouldn’t jump to conclusions.  Well NHTSA had — but Toyota has already jumped to the conclusion and made it over and over again that they’ve ruled out any problem with the electronics.” (Read Waxman’s Opening Statement)

Stupak re-iterated:

“The record doesn’t support Toyota’s statements that it conducted extensive testing.  The truth is that we don’t know whether electronics plays a role in sudden, unintended acceleration, and Toyota doesn’t know either.” (Read Stupak’s Opening Statement)

The documents showed Toyota’s vow to devote itself to the grueling legwork of getting to the bottom of SUA to be an O.J. Simpson-like promise to find his wife’s real killers. The “extensive” testing turned out to be pre-market and prototype testing on an extremely small sample of vehicles and no testing of Post mass-produced vehicles. Exponent, purportedly hired with an unlimited budget to solve this technical mystery, was actually hired to protect Toyota in a class-action lawsuit. (Read the contract between Exponent and Toyota.)

Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) also had a burr under under her saddle about Toyota’s claim of infallible failsafes:

“Furthermore, we learned that fail safe mechanisms in Toyota vehicles are designed to detect single-point, single event faults.  In other words, faults that occur in isolation and effect only one vehicle component.  Toyota’s testing of critical components of the electronic throttle control system reflects this focus in that they do not test for multiple event or multiple component faults.  Numerous academics and independent experts told committee staff that rare multiple event faults could play a role in sudden unintended acceleration.  It seems to me that Toyota should try to identify all potential faults, not just the most frequent ones, and develop tests to prevent them.”

So, what has the world’s Ichiban automotive company with $1.2 billion in first-quarter profits been doing with all it’s time and money? Apparently, they have used it to go on a jihad against Safety Research & Strategies, Dr. David Gilbert and consumers who have been left holding the bag.

As we’ve reported previously at The Safety Record Blog, Toyota’s defense counsel and marketing team had been working feverishly to discredit SRS and Dr. David Gilbert, the automotive electronics professor from Southern Illinois University Carbondale who had the unmitigated gall to show that Toyota’s failsafes could fail, and therefore, were not very safe.

But the documents that the committee released supporting our stories were great reads. Toyota hired the Benenson Strategy Group, who worked for none other than POTUS himself, to test the automaker’s most effective lines of attack. Benenson, which bills itself as “a global strategic research and consulting firm known for its energetic, agile and analytically aggressive approach,” pinpointed SRS and Gilbert as Toyota Enemy Number One for their ability to influence the “Elites,” (who, by the way, are undefined.). After testing messages with a sample of consumers, BSG came to a few conclusions.

Here are a few of our favorites:

- Despite very low levels of awareness of Sean Kane and David Gilbert, all 3 audiences view the individuals as credible, with more than 8 in 10 saying they would be credible figures to discuss Toyota safety.

- Notably, the statements tested do work to significantly damage Kane to Gilbert’s credibility

- However, while the statements are effective at increasing the proportion of audiences that say “ETC is not a cause of sudden acceleration”, the majority of respondents still believe ETC is at least somewhat to blame for Toyota’s issues.

Recommendations:

To have the most impact, particularly among Elites, Toyota needs to:

– Call out Kane/Gilbert’s monetary or self interested motives to undermine credibility, indicate other third-parties have questioned their credibility

- Referencing other studies that reproduced same results on other vehicles to diminish the belief that ETC causes sudden acceleration in Toyota vehicles

- Portray transparency, open and honest

(Read: Toyota Debunking Kane/Gilbert Message Study.)

Here’s Stupak unloading on Toyota:

“Toyota told the committee that the company did not follow its pollster’s suggestion to attack Dr. Gilbert, but the documents suggest otherwise.  On March 8, a Monday, Toyota held a press conference and released a report by Exponent criticizing Dr. Gilbert’s work.

Two days before the press conference, the vice president of Toyota’s public relations firm noted in an e-mail to a colleague the importance of finishing the poll before this event saying — and I’m quoting now — “We really, really need to get this done especially with elites.  Toyota has a press conference on Monday and need our data to know what to say.”  That’s the document we have right here.” (Read the emails here)

As it turns out, you can hire the best and throw cash at a public-relations nightmare like SRS and still come up short. Who knew? Perhaps, it’s best expressed by BSG’s slogan:  With BSG, events don’t shape you; you shape events.” And that did turn out to be true – although perhaps not exactly in the way Toyota paid for.

And speaking of paid-for, Exponent. The Menlo, CA firm’s work for Toyota was another sore point with the committee. Between 2004 and 2009, Toyota paid Exponent $11 million; for the SUA project, Exponent has so far billed Toyota $3.3 million for 11,000 hours of work. According to the contract, a team of five, including company principals Sabbaiah Malladi and Paul Taylor, can bill for a combined hourly fee of $1,665.

(Contrast that with the big-bad-bucks Gilbert was getting from SRS – $150 an hour and $4,000 in equipment – which was central to BSG’s debunking message of monetary self-interest. Maybe the Elites don’t realize what the Big Boys and Girls make per hour.)

The committee complained that Exponent was not responsive to its requests for documentation. That all it produced was the same interim report and the Gilbert study which Toyota had released publicly. There was no written project plan, no written timeline, no written specifications for the experiments Exponent had run or planned to run, no written list of potential causes of sudden unintended acceleration that it planned to study; no written notes on Exponent’s work.

“A former Exponent engineer told our committee staff that the reason they didn’t write anything down is to avoid creating documents that might have to be produced to the lawsuit,” Waxman said.  “Well, Toyota’s lawyers appear to be involved in every aspect of Exponent’s work.  The lawyers have the right to approve the publication of Exponent’s work.  Dr. Souri reported that committee staff — to committee staff that all communications with Toyota have counsel present.  And the two reports Exponent has issued both state that they were prepared for Bowman and Brooke, the law firm defending Toyota in litigation.”

(Gee, we wonder what Bowman and Brook attorneys make per hour?)

In a lengthy interview with committee staff, Dr. Shukri Souri argued that it wasn’t necessary to write all that down – it was so obvious, he just carried it around in his head.

Well, when you think about it, it’s kind of appropriate – after all, that’s what Toyota tells customers who have experienced an SUA event: it’s all in your head.

We could not possibly unpack all of the hearing’s revelations in one blog post, so stay tuned next week for our take on the 600 on-site vehicle inspections and the 1,400 dealership inspections TMS USA President Jim Lentz bragged about to the committee.

See yesterday’s hearing

“Exponent’s scientists are prolific writers of scientific reports and papers. While some might exist, I have yet to see an Exponent study that does not support the conclusion needed by the corporation or trade association that is paying the bill,” Michaels wrote.

Which brings us to the news: the House Committee on Energy and Commerce has scheduled their second Toyota hearing on May 6 to focus in part on the automaker’s work with Exponent to ferret out any possible electronic root causes of Sudden Unintended Acceleration.

In April 16 letters to Toyota Motor Sales President and CEO James Lentz and Exponent’s Paul Johnson, Committee Chairman Henry Waxman and Bart Stupak chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, asked for:

* All contracts or agreements between Exponent and Toyota or an agent of Toyota regarding work related to unintended acceleration or electronic throttle control systems and any amendments or addendums thereto;

* All memoranda or correspondence, including e-mail, concerning the scope of Exponent’s work for Toyota or an agent of Toyota related to unintended acceleration or the electronic throttle control systems; and

* Any documents, including reports, analyses, or other communications, describing the results of Exponent’s work for Toyota related to unintended acceleration or electronic throttle control systems.

The views of Waxman and Stupak on Exponent’s scientific independence were already sufficiently jaundiced in the first go-round. On February 22, Waxman and Stupak sent a letter expressing their extreme irritation with Toyota for dumping a truckload of documents, with nary a piece of paper devoted to systematically investigating whether electronic defects could lead to sudden unintended acceleration – except for the Exponent report. They wrote:

“The electronics testing documents Toyota provided include thousands of pages of
engineering standards; test methods; pre-production vehicle and component evaluations; e-mail correspondence between Toyota engineers about field testing of new features of the company’s ETCS-i system; engineering change instructions; reports on field testing of competitor vehicles; and sketches, diagrams, test engineering reports, photographs, e-mails, and Powerpoint presentations by Toyota and part manufacturers related to proposed fixes for “sticky pedals.”

Except for one recent report, the documents did not include any analyses that purported comprehensively to test and analyze possible electronic causes of sudden unintended acceleration. The only document Toyota produced that claims to address the phenomenon of sudden unintended acceleration in a systematic way is a February 2010 report on testing conducted by Exponent, a scientific and engineering consulting firm located in Menlo Park, California. This report was commissioned in December 2009 by Toyota defense counsel Bowman and Brooke, LLP. Exponent representatives told the Committee staff that Bowman and Brooke requested the report just days before its publication date of February 4, 2010, at approximately the same time that we sought substantiation of your claims about electronics testing. According to Exponent, at the time the report was written, testing was still on-going and an interim report like this one is not customary for the company.”

The Committee has been using electronics expert Michael Pecht, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Maryland, and director of the University’s Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering (CALCE), and veteran automotive engineer Neil Hanneman to locate the dross in Exponent’s first report.

What treasures might they find in this new cache of documents? Technical revelations? Or a behind-the-scenes view of the science-for-hire business?

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