Archive for the 'advocacy' Category
Wednesday, July 14th, 2010
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 [...]
Posted in Accelerator pedal, Black Box, Dr. David Gilbert, Electronic Throttle, Electronic Throttle Control, Event Data Recorder, NHTSA, National Academy of Science, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Stuck Throttle, Sudden Unintended Acceleration, Throttle Body, Throttle Contols, Todd Hubing, Toyota, advocacy | No Comments »
Friday, June 4th, 2010
Congress has never been one to let a motor vehicle crisis go to waste, and the Toyota Sudden Unintended Acceleration debacle has been no exception. Hearings before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce has revealed some distressing regulatory gaps – such as a federal motor vehicle safety standard for accelerator controls that was established [...]
Posted in Accelerator pedal, Congress, Henry Waxman, NHTSA, Sudden Unintended Acceleration, advocacy | No Comments »
Friday, May 21st, 2010
Yesterday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Oversight and Investigations Sub-committee rendered its verdict after conducting interviews with key personnel from Toyota and Exponent and reviewing some 100,000 Toyota- and NHTSA-produced documents about the much-heralded “exhaustive” efforts to determine if there was a connection between Sudden Unintended Acceleration and Toyota’s electronic throttle control system: Toyota [...]
Posted in Accelerator pedal, Bart Stupak, Benenson Strategy Group, Congress, Congressional Hearings, Electronic Throttle, Henry Waxman, Stuck Throttle, Sudden Unintended Acceleration, Throttle Body, Toyota, advocacy | No Comments »
Thursday, May 13th, 2010
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, [...]
Posted in EWR, NHTSA, Relay Rod, Timeliness Query, advocacy | No Comments »
Thursday, April 22nd, 2010
When the auto industry needs America’s best scientific minds to validate a foregone conclusion, they turn to Exponent. As we reported during Toyota Tactics Week, David Michaels called out the Menlo Park, California defense-litigation firm in his 2008 book Doubt is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health: “Exponent’s scientists are prolific [...]
Posted in Accelerator pedal, Congressional Hearings, David Michaels, Electronic Throttle, Electronic Throttle Control, Electronics, Exponent, Stuck Throttle, Sudden Unintended Acceleration, Throttle Body, Toyota, advocacy | No Comments »
Monday, April 12th, 2010
What do you do when bad news about you product gets out? If your highly prized brand is synonymous with reliability, job one is to kill the bearers of the bad tidings. While Toyota Sudden Unintended Acceleration stories regularly set up shop on the front pages of all national dallies these days, Safety Research and [...]
Posted in Congressional Hearings, Dr. David Gilbert, Electronic Throttle, Electronic Throttle Control, Electronics, Sean Kane, Stuck Throttle, Sudden Unintended Acceleration, Throttle Body, Toyota, advocacy | No Comments »
Friday, April 9th, 2010
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 [...]
Posted in Accelerator pedal, Audi, Congressional Hearings, Electronic Throttle, Electronic Throttle Control, Electronics, Floor Mat Interference, Stuck Throttle, Sudden Unintended Acceleration, Throttle Body, Toyota, advocacy | No Comments »
Monday, March 1st, 2010
Last week, Ed Towns, Chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform went to town on Toyota, asking five very pointed questions about the automaker’s “Books of Knowledge,” compendiums purportedly containing, among other things, damning information about the automakers acknowledgement of design issues and countermeasures, by component and vehicle. References to these [...]
Posted in Accelerator pedal, Congressional Hearings, Dimitrios Biller, Edolpus Towns, Electronic Throttle, Stuck Throttle, Sudden Unintended Acceleration, Toyota, advocacy | No Comments »
Monday, March 1st, 2010
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 [...]
Posted in Accelerator pedal, Electronic Throttle, Electronics, Stuck Throttle, Sudden Unintended Acceleration, Throttle Body, Toyota, advocacy | No Comments »
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 [...]
Posted in Accelerator pedal, Electronic Throttle, Floor Mat Interference, NHTSA, Stuck Throttle, Sudden Unintended Acceleration, Throttle Body, advocacy | No Comments »