It was written amid cocktails and at more sobering and highly-scripted venues inside the Newseum, the 250,000 square-foot monument to journalism in Washington DC.  If Edmund’s is going to author the new chapter on safety, consumers beware.

In the conference brochure, Edmund’s CEO Jeremy Anwyl tells participants that the Toyota Unintended Acceleration crisis was the impetus for the meeting: “Edmunds.com watched as a shallow conversation made international headlines. We felt uneasy about the lack of real discussion taking place among smart people with the power to change laws, introduce technology and educate drivers.”

We have felt that same unease. Alas, the Truly Safe conference did nothing to dispel the queasiness. In fact, the event made the hair at the back of our necks prickle with alarm – particularly the portion devoted to understanding the facts and what are purported to be the facts about Toyota Unintended Acceleration. Suggestions that electronics may have played a role were quickly dismissed. Instead, Anwyl reiterated his belief that driver error was the predominant cause. Neither he nor the conference’s roster of believers discussed or introduced any scientific data. For example, the “smart people” at the conference ignored the data which show that the complaint rates for the Camry, Tacoma, and Lexus ES skyrocketed in the same year those vehicles switched from mechanical to electronic throttles – before, after, and during the intense media coverage.  How can this be explained? Anwyl singled out this specific question for scorn.

Also absent was any discussion of the actual NASA findings – not Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s reductio ad absurdum claim that the reports exonerated Toyota’s electronics.  There was no science, no evidence, no statistical analyses, no discussion of the details or nuances of engine management system design, validation, and vehicle mitigation testing. In other words, Edmunds presided over yet another shallow conversation – at, no doubt, premium prices. (Who did foot the bill for that conference?)

Driver error was the theme of the day. Indeed, driver behavior is a wild card in auto safety. But allow us a moment to adjust our tin-foil hats and get serious.

The two biggest auto safety crises in the last decade were Toyota Unintended Acceleration and the Ford/Firestone tire tread separation rollovers.  Both grew to mammoth proportions as public safety issues in an environment of antiquated and non-existent safety standards. They serve as a roadmap for the auto safety crises that inevitably erupt when there are no relevant safety standards.

You may recall that the most popular and best-selling SUV, the Ford Explorer, equipped with their original equipment Firestone tires, was prone to rollovers after tread separations, killing its occupants. The Firestone Radial ATX and Wilderness radial tires met all of the federal regulations at the time. Unfortunately, the standards belonged to another era of tire technology, when bias-plies were the norm. As for the controls on the Explorer side of the equation, well, there were no federal standards for occupant protection in rollovers. There was no minimum stability standard for Sport Utility Vehicles, a new breed of station wagon with a high-center of gravity based on a truck platform.  Industry fought off any regulations, even as the rollover death tolls in light trucks rose to epidemic levels.  (Rollovers accounted for 8 percent of light vehicle crashes, but accounted for 31 percent of all occupant fatalities.[1])

A series of gruesome high-profile crashes and some pointed news stories about the safety of Ford Explorers and Firestone tires compelled NHTSA to begin investigating. After Ford’s secret overseas tire recalls came to light, the automaker launched a series of campaigns to replace the Firestone tires. Ford insisted that the tires bore all the blame. NHTSA insisted that there were no reasons to examine the role of America’s then-best selling SUV in these tire-related fatal crashes. But the problem was more complex than NHTSA or Ford cared to admit. After all the tires were replaced, Explorer tire-related rollover deaths and injuries did not abate. In fact, independent analyses of crash data shows that the recalls and replacement campaigns by Ford and Bridgestone/Firestone did not achieve long-term effectiveness in eliminating tire-related deaths in the Ford Explorer fleet. ( http://quality-control.us/explorer_tire_fatalities.html)  If the tires were the only problem, what explains the post-recall death toll?

A decade later, the lack of a regulatory framework laid the foundation for an eerily similar scenario. Complaints of unintended acceleration dogged Toyota for six years, but NHTSA’s defect investigators can find nothing wrong. Toyota vehicles meet the federal accelerator controls standard, FMVSS 124 – only it was penned in 1972 when throttles still had cables. In the 1990s, many safety-critical mechanical automobile control systems moved to electronics systems, which rely on sophisticated sensors, computer processors and software, interpret the demands to deliver outputs needed in a driving environment. The agency attempted to upgrade the standard, but again, industry fought off any changes. In a federal rulemaking, NHTSA summarized their arguments:  “In general, the comments of vehicle and engine manufacturers did not address the specific questions in the notice. Instead, they voiced a preference for rescinding the standard altogether, suggesting that market forces and litigation pressure are sufficient to assure fail-safe performance without a Federal motor vehicle safety standard.”[2]

Then, a high-profile crash kills California Highway Patrolman and his family. The media questions the safety of Toyota’s electronics in some of the most popular vehicles produced by the number-one automaker in the world.  NHTSA investigates and finds causes no more complicated than errant floor mats, sticky pedals and driver error. And after all the floor mats and pedals are replaced, problems continue.  Two occupants died in a November 2010 unintended acceleration crash in Utah, after the two surviving witnesses in the vehicle report that the driver tried repeatedly to disengage the cruise control and apply the brake as he exited a highway off ramp. There was no floor mat interference.  This is but one of many incidents that can’t be adequately explained by NHTSA or Toyota under their pet theories.

The lack of safety requirements set the stage for both the Ford/Firestone and Toyota UA crises. Rulemaking is the process by which NHTSA develops its institutional understanding of vehicle technology and functional outcomes. Without that critical step, automakers are left to their own devices; the agency is left behind the technological curve. And when bad design and manufacturing processes kill and injure, and NHTSA is called upon to ferret out a defect, it is ill-prepared to do so. The more widespread the defect and more expensive the remedy, the more likely it is that the agency will settle for a fix it thinks it can get – whether it solves the full problem or not.

These crises involved popular, high-volume models made by companies who actively opposed the regulatory structure that could have prevented the damage to their reputations and bottom lines and to their customers. In both cases, solutions are complex and expensive. How do you prevent or minimize the loss of control crashes that follow tread separations on an Explorer?  How do you prevent unwanted events that find their way through an electronic architecture lacking robust failsafe design?  Both are economically prohibitive for the wealthiest corporations.  What is more tenable?  Put the money into fighting a small defects office in a government agency ill-equipped to independently understand the issues and build your campaign around fighting the litigation and building good public relations.

Unfortunately, high-drama defects siphon NHTSA’s resources from planned injury reduction priorities.  Absent regulation and investigators with detailed understanding of current technology, the crises will continue to occur, starting the cycle anew.

If Edmund’s had any desire to start a real conversation about auto safety, first it would educate itself about regulatory history, automotive design and defect investigation, instead of announcing silly contests. If Edmund’s wanted to host a serious discussion about improving auto safety, its CEO would actually entertain opposing points of view, instead of shutting them down with Kennedy assassination conspiracy zingers. If Edmund’s wants data-driven discussion then how about actually discussing some data?

It doesn’t. Edmund’s wants to sell cars. And, as any good salesman knows, you gotta make the customer think you care.

After taking comments from the public, and by that we mean, the remarks of a handful of advocates and consumers and the complaints of 33 trade organization reps and business owners, the U.S. Product Safety Commission is now preparing to vote on a Final Rule to establish a consumer complaint database.

The database represents a sea-change in the accessibility of consumer product information, wresting control from manufacturers, who held sway over the flow of public information for nearly three decades.

SRS President Sean Kane, who testified before the CPSC at a public hearing on the database, urged the agency to build a public database by fusing sufficient detail on the product and problem and public availability of the data in a timely fashion.

“The success of the database to meet the public interest goals and facilitate ease of use requires the agency to balance what is absolutely necessary for a minimal level of information to qualify as a “complaint,” against the detailed information demands of the agency and other stakeholders.  Like the NHTSA consumer complaint database, the consumer product database will add to the tools available for surveillance and for educating consumers who often have little viable information on the potential hazards associated with products they purchase,” Kane said in comments to the commission.

The creation of the rule began in May, with a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. Since then, the CPSC has been striving to maintain the balance between the fears of consumer products manufacturers, the requirements of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), and the suggestions of advocates.

A vote of the full commission is scheduled for Nov. 17.

“This is an important step forward for product safety,” Kane said. “For the first time, consumers are going to have tools, pre- and post-purchase, to evaluate a product’s safety, even in the absence of a recall.”

According to Section 212 of the CPSIA, the database must be available through the CPSC website and presented in a user-friendly format that encourages the public to report injuries and defects. In addition to consumer complaints, the database will include the reports that manufacturers and private-label firms are required to make under Section 15(c) of the CPSA and the actions the agency makes in response to that information.

Manufacturers have been none-too-happy with the way the CPSIA cut the legs out from under 6B—the bane of consumer and safety advocates. Under the Section 6B of the Consumer Product Safety Act, manufacturers controlled what negative information the CPSC could disclose. It required the CPSC to gain prior approval of a manufacturer before releasing any information, it allowed manufacturers to prevent the release of any information it deemed “inaccurate,” and allowed a manufacturer to sue the agency to prevent the release of such information.

The consumer database, the agency’s first initiative to which 6B does not apply, took the gate-keeper role from manufacturers, who lobbied hard to either make the reporting process more cumbersome for consumers or to create a counterbalance to negative reports about their products. The amendments are nips and tucks to the NPRM, but still keep the database weighted toward the needs of consumers.

For example, some commenters maintained that the minimum information required to

submit a report of harm for inclusion in the Database was not detailed enough for “those reviewing the report to understand the incident adequately, to weed out duplicate reports, and to promote investment in the report and Commission activities by the submitter.” Without meaningful information, a manufacturer couldn’t adequately respond to a complaint, rendering the database information “inaccurate.” Another argued that without complete information, the complaint shouldn’t be included at all.

The staff declined to take up those suggestions.

“Determining why an incident occurred can sometimes be a time-consuming process; yet section 6A of the CPSA, by establishing procedural requirements that are measured in days, requires reports of harm to be posted in the Database quickly. Thus, we cannot refrain from processing or publishing reports of harm to await a final determination of why an incident occurred.”

Instead, the proposed Final Rule added “category of submitter” and “incident date” fields to help users distinguish duplicate reports and provide context about the source of a complaint. It also changed the proposed rule to give manufacturers two more categories in which to dispute a complainant’s account. The original proposal let a manufacturer or private labeler claim inaccuracies based on the description of consumer product; identity of the manufacturer or private labeler; and description of the harm. The proposed Final Rule would also allow manufacturers to claim an inaccuracy in the reported incident date and category of submitter.

According to the staff’s analysis, “no more than an additional five percent of small manufacturers of consumer products will be affected by the Database rule annually. Of the roughly five percent of small manufacturers receiving incident reports, only a very small percentage of the incidents reported would merit a large investigation effort. Based on the CPSC’s Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) experience, it is rare that a small firm devotes substantial time and effort responding to incident reports. Thus, while it is possible that a small number of small businesses may experience a “significant” impact in investigating certain incidents, the number of small businesses experiencing such an impact would not be “substantial.”

CPSC Spokesman Scott Wolfson said that all the amendments served one purpose: to make the database as factually accurate as possible, “to ensure the highest value level of trust in the database once it goes live.”

After the Final Rule is passed, the CPSC expects to launch the database in March.

“There is a plan to do some advance testing to assess the industry’s experience and consumers experience with the database,” Wolfson said. “We are on target and on budget.”

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.

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

This regulation, enacted as part of the Transportation Recall Enhancement Accountability and Documentation Act with great speed and good intentions, has had its share of problems. There was the four-year battle over what information would be public. (The agency and safety advocates envisioned a largely public data system; the manufacturers had an entirely different idea. Guess who won?). Then there has been the suggestion that EWR has not actually been useful as a statistical canary in a coalmine. Now we’re going to have to raise a few questions about coding.Remember, this is self-reported data. Thanks to a tip from Randy and Alice Whitfield at Quality Control Systems we took a look-see at one of Toyota’s EWR reports regarding a claim filed against the automaker in a 2004 rollover crash. The driver, Zoe Chapman of Whitethorn, CA, was driving her T-100 truck at about 20 mph near Humboldt Redwoods State Park, when she lost steering. The truck climbed an embankment and rolled over. Chapman and her passengers were belted and escaped with minor injuries, but the truck was totaled. Immediately after the crash, Chapman and her passengers saw that the relay rod was severed at a line of rust. They happened to be professional and accomplished photographers who made an on-the-spot visual record of the evidence. Toyota looked at the same facts and decided that the relay rod broke as a result of the rollover and told Chapman to pound sand.

You might be scratching your head at this point, thinking: Didn’t I just read something about Toyota and defective relay rods?

You did! NHTSA just opened a new Timeliness Query to determine why Toyota recalled this very component in its Japanese truck models in 2004, but waited an entire year before it decided to grace American consumers with the repair. In fact, Toyota had told NHTSA that it was not necessary to recall the relay rods in the U.S., in part, because they had no reports of problems here.

Back to EWR. Toyota reported this claim to NHTSA, but it was coded as a rollover and powertrain- related claim.

Rollover? True. Powertrain? Nuh-uh. Where’s a reference to steering? Steering is coded 01 and Powertrain is 10.

Honest mistake? Deliberate obfuscation?

We can not answer these questions. One thing we can surmise – the data quality isn’t being checked. Regardless of the manufacturer’s opinion of what caused a crash, the law requires it to report it to EWR as it was reported to the automaker. And we quote from Compendium for Motor Vehicles having an Annual Production of 500 or more Vehicles Early Warning Reporting:  “When a claim or notice identifies or alleges any system or component as a possible contributing factor in the incident, the system(s) or component(s) are to be reported using the applicable component code as defined in the EWR regulation.”

We don’t know if “honest” really describes Toyota. But they sure are consistent.

“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?

More on Toyota SUA

Toyota SUA: Real Stories

After the Saylor family died in an SUA crash on a California highway in August, and Congress was poised to drag Toyota and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration before its investigatory committees, SRS decided that a factual accounting of the history of this issue was necessary. We threw the resources of our small company into this project and wrote a lengthy report that gathered the public record into one narrative. We released Toyota Sudden Unintended Acceleration to the public on February 5, and it became a much used road map for reporters, Congressional staffers, attorneys and interested consumers trying to understand how seven years of complaints, crashes, deaths, injuries and NHTSA investigations could produce so few results.

That report was followed by a second technical paper, Toyota Electronic Throttle Control Investigation Preliminary Report, by Dr. David Gilbert, an automotive electronics professor from Southern Illinois University. Gilbert’s preliminary research concluded that Toyota’s repeated claim that the redundancy in the system made it impervious to an undetectable error was not true.  In fact, Toyota’s own scientists-for-hire, Exponent, validated Gilbert’s findings, but argued that a short circuit in the Accelerator Pedal Position Sensor could not occur in the real world.  These attempts to find out why Toyota and Lexus vehicles were speeding out of control in a variety of driving circumstances that could not be explained by floor mats or driver error, earned SRS and Dr. Gilbert a top spot on the automaker’s enemies list. But no wildly successful global company takes down a critic willy-nilly. One must do some research, fine-tune the attack, craft the language that will resonate with the American public. Don’t just deflect, destroy.

In late February, just before the company was to roll out its counter offensive, Toyota apparently used its resources to research a marketing message that would more effectively undermine SRS.

An online survey conducted by Opinion Outpost in early March or late February prominently featured questions about Dr. Gilbert, ABC News and SRS. Opinion Outpost conducts polls for clients looking to survey a preferred demographic or market segment. The respondents are paid for each successfully completed survey in points which eventually can be redeemed for cash. This poll asked the survey takers to judge the credibility of Dr. David Gilbert, Sean Kane of Safety Research & Strategies and Brian Ross of ABC News. (See a portion of the Opinion Outpost survey)

In an article about Toyota’s tactics published by the LA Times last week, company spokesman Mike Michaels did not explicitly concede that Toyota had sponsored that survey; he said: “We do opinion surveys all the time. We were researching the potential for getting messages out, in particular for our advertising.”

The survey started with: “Prior to taking this survey, had you heard anything about Sean Kane’s report or Professor Gilbert’s test?”

Then, it proceeded to test more pointed messages:

“Toyota Motor Corp. is rebutting the findings of a study presented in a Congressional hearing and on ABC News that claimed to present evidence of a “design flaw” in Toyota’s electronics that could cause sudden unintended acceleration. The company says that this was a “parlor trick” that relied on manipulation of the wires and electronic system in a way that is “extremely unlikely” to ever occur in reality, and it could be done just as easily with vehicles from several competitors.”

“The American people deserve the truth about the safety of their cars, not biased studies by trial lawyer consultants who stand to make millions suing Toyota. The facts are: Toyota and its dealers are working around the clock to make things right for its customers. More than one million cars have already been repaired. And, a world-class engineering firm has conducted a comprehensive review of Toyota’s electronics. Their interim report confirms that our fail-safe systems work.”

“Sean Kane, a paid consultant for plaintiffs’ lawyers suing Toyota, and David Gilbert, an academic working for him, deliberately deceived Congress and the American people.”

“While Sean Kane claims to be an independent safety expert, he is the owner of a for-profit company that serves as a paid consultant for the plaintiff lawyers that are currently suing Toyota. Despite what he says, he is not working for the best interest and safety of the American people.”

“Sean Kane, the owner of Safety Research & Strategies Inc. who testified during the Congressional hearings, is a paid consultant for trial lawyers who are suing Toyota, not a “safety expert” advocating for consumers.”

This language popped up in a March 11 letter Toyota sent a letter to ABC President David Westin, demanding an apology for a story reported by Brian Ross on Dr. Gilbert’s study that the network aired on the eve of the first Congressional hearing. The letter hits all of the themes captured in the online opinion poll – Kane, Gilbert and their reports are tainted by litigation, ABC fabricated its test and together they are misleading Congress and the public. For example, Toyota General Counsel Christopher Reynolds writes that “the American public and the U.S. congress were seriously misled” by ABC, Kane and Gilbert. And he takes the network to task for concealing “the fact that Professor Gilbert’s work was financed by Sean Kane, a paid advocate for trial lawyers involved in litigation against Toyota.”

This is but a minor incursion in Toyota’s ongoing battle for its reputation and sales. The automaker is fighting multiple fronts – before Congress, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in civil and criminal courts – and the court of public opinion. Toyota’s willingness to smear its critics, in lieu of refuting the criticism, is important to highlight, nonetheless. It is a tactic from a playbook that was created a half a century ago by Big Tobacco. The attack-deny-delay triple has proven remarkably effective – which is why many industries and companies use it to minimize the impact of negative information about their products.

Tomorrow, we’ll detail Dr. Gilbert’s story, as Toyota Tactics Week continues.

More on Toyota SUA

Toyota SUA: Real Stories

The cables and rods that once linked the accelerator to the throttle butterfly began to pass into history in 1988, when BMW introduced the first electronic throttle controls in its 7-Series. Virtually all vehicles produced today employ electronic throttle systems that rely on sensors to relay the driver’s intentions to the engine control module, a computer that controls the opening and closing of the throttle. Like any electronics, these systems can be subject to error – caused by electrical shorts, mis-manufactured microchips or faulty software – and leave no trace. Selling the public on the idea that automotive electronics will always perform perfectly and that acceleration can only be commanded by the driver’s foot or some other mechanical source – such as floor mats – is akin to Microsoft trying to persuade us that every time Windows encounters a problem and closes without explanation, we’ve hit the wrong button.

The automotive industry has borrowed many of these electronic technologies from aviation, where systems were developed for extremely expensive and sophisticated machines, backed up with multiple redundancies. Automakers have reduced these to the commodity level, where saving a pennies makes a big impact to the bottom line and the temptations to dumb-down a system to trim costs is mighty.

The industry is well aware of the problems that have been caused by the proliferation of automotive electronics. In 2003, Mercedes removed 600 electronic functions because of quality concerns. Executives at Bosch, a major global supplier declared at a 2004 industry meeting that there was direct correlation between the size of a vehicles’ electronic architecture and the number of defects. Other industry experts have acknowledged that automakers have overloaded vehicles with electronics, without understanding how these systems, which might work well in isolation, operate together.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is even further behind the curve. Its job is to set minimum safety standards. They do not cover every component – nor should they. Rather, the agency develops performance standards for the safety-critical systems, such as brakes and tires. This is to ensure that manufacturers have the freedom to innovate. But many of these standards were written 40 years ago, and have not kept pace with technological advances.

The standard governing accelerator controls is a perfect illustration. The original standard was written in 1972 with mechanical throttles in mind. In 1995, the agency proposed revising it to accommodate the new electronic systems. In 2002, NHTSA issued a new draft regulation, but withdrew it in 2004, after Toyota and the Alliance of Automotive opposed the test method. In the absence of regulation, some manufacturers will produce designs that skim safety’s surface, while others set a higher bar for their products. The public needs to know the safety margin behind these sophisticated control systems. It’s past time that NHTSA revisited this issue.

A vehicle that accelerates in contradiction to the driver’s commands poses an unacceptable safety risk– no matter how rare. It can be so unsettling that some who have experienced a sudden unintended acceleration incident in a Toyota refuse to drive the vehicle ever again.  Toyota, unfortunately, has chosen to attack its critics, as it doubles down on the infallibility of its electronic throttle system. But there’s some hope for the motoring public, now that these systems are being scrutinized in ways that were ignored before the Toyota crisis.

Identifying intermittent and random errors in an electronic safety system may be difficult, but not impossible. The answers are probably not in a black box. As Toyota has consistently argued in litigation, the crash information captured by its Event Data Recorder is unreliable. (That hasn’t stopped the company from placing the data in heavy media rotation when it appears to point to driver error.)

Most certainly, the answers don’t lie in the past.

Toyota SUA Real Stories

More on Toyota SUA

“When this lawsuit was threatened, no one was surprised. This issue [sudden unintended acceleration] had been the subject of a number of meetings and the exchange of a number of documents between TMS and TMC, (did anyone ever gather and organize all those documents and memorialize the “meetings”? If so, were [sic] are the documents and information about the meetings?) [emphasis indicates Biller's comments] and the possibility of a class action lawsuit was used as one way to try to get TMC to work on a series of proposed countermeasures.”

E. Todd Tracy, of the Tracy Law Firm in Dallas, who quickly withdrew a motion to re-open 15 cases that were settled in the last six years, covering issues ranging from roof crush to restraints to rear seats, after getting a preview of the Biller documents, says that the Books of Knowledge are useless – general best practices manuals of test protocols and specifications that are not platform-specific:

“They are basically the FMVSS provisions. It’s just Biller selling more snake oil” Tracy said. “These have been produced in litigation many times. I wish there were something more sinister than that. They are not hot documents and everyone has already has access to them.”

Biller left Toyota in September 2007 with a severance package totaling nearly $4 million in wages, legal expenses, a $2.3 million lump severance payment for emotional distress. In addition, Toyota forgave a loan in an unspecified amount that it made to Biller in 2005.

Read the Towns letter here.