Update Report: Toyota Sudden Unintended Acceleration

This is truly an opportunity for the regulators to advance their knowledge base beyond the era of the mechanical automobile and into the age of automotive electronics, rapidly migrating from a vehicle’s entertainment center to its most basic functions of acceleration, braking and steering. It is critical to future policy setting and defect analysis.

The first day featured a host of presentations from NHTSA, and some of the good news is: the agency is focusing on the 2002-2006 Camry, which has long been known to be one of Toyota’s most troubled vehicles in terms of consumer complaints. NHTSA’s Roger Saul and Mike Kirsch of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which is partnering with the agency, presented a PowerPoint that showed the huge spike in unintended acceleration complaints beginning in 2002, when Toyota introduced its Electronic Throttle Control System-intelligent (ETCS-i). (SRS and Quality Control Corp. actually mined these data many months ago and came to the same conclusion. For that matter, the agency essentially knew this in 2003, when Steven Chan wrote an IE memo noting this same spike, albeit in a shorter time frame.).

Kirsch, a NASA systems engineer, laid out the scientific approach the team expected to bring to the process of ferreting out weaknesses in Toyota’s electronics, including studying complaint symptoms, understanding how the design is supposed to work, how it might fail, developing event sequences and fault trees, and finally, testing.

Among the automotive electronics experts who made presentations to the panel were Michael Pecht, a mechanical engineering professor who heads the University of Maryland’s Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering (CALCE) and who advised Henry Waxman’s committee on Toyota SUA, and Todd Hubing, an EMC expert andprofessor of vehicle electronics at Clemson University.

Pecht was openly critical of NHTSA’s past work on unintended acceleration as well as the industry’s inability to identify root causes for defects where no faults were detected by the vehicle diagnostics and their inadequate testing standards.  Pecht also described his experience helping uncover intermittent electronic defects for the industry – including a major automaker whose cruise control modules were causing SUA – in which 96 percent of the returned modules tested fine despite huge numbers of field returns.  Standards for testing are 40 years old and they have gotten more relaxed and the testing is not being evaluated in situ, according to Pecht.

Pecht also pointed out the need for NHTSA to find better ways to obtain relevant documents from automakers to advance their investigations and that the agency “bible” on SUA, referred to as the “Silver Book,” was lacking and biased toward human error.

Also presenting on the second day was Robert Strassburger from the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers who gave an entirely general overview about the robust testing by the industry but was scant on details and instead referred the panel to the individual members of the association.

Hubing described his testing and failure analysis work for the industry and attorneys.  Hubing was cautious in his assessment of the vehicle electronic issues that can result in SUA, taking particular pains to note that the odds of an SUA event is lower than the odds of being involved in other types of crashes, and SUA events are rare occurrences in general.  But, he did note that the problem will get worse without a major change in standards and design practices.

One point that caught our attention was 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 went on to note that many of the faults created invalid signals that sometimes would be detected, other times not.  His findings were previously provided to NHTSA and NASA investigators.

But we are also a little anxious about how the panel will complete such an absurdly broad charge in a little over a year. NHTSA has asked the panel to cover the complete gamut of SUA causes. In addition, the assembled panel includes a number members retired from their careers. This is a regular feature of such National Research Council panels, because all are volunteers who must have sufficient availability to complete the task. For this reason, many of the SUA panelists are not necessarily on the technical cutting edge of automotive electronics. Also, it was clear from many questions posed by the panelists that they have a steep learning curve in understanding NHTSA’s processes or even in understanding the history of this defect.

It did not help that NHTSA Administrator David Strickland told the panel in his opening remarks that the agency had already identified two “known” causes of unintended acceleration in Toyotas –  floor mats and sticky accelerator pedals. Even Toyota – which has enjoyed some of the cover that the false linkage between its sticking accelerator pedal recall and unintended acceleration has provided – has acknowledged to Congress that it is not a cause of unintended acceleration in three-quarters of the cases out there.

We are also dismayed by the amount of attention focused on human factors. This is already a well-worn path for the agency. NHTSA actually doesn’t need any outside help on human factors and unintended acceleration – it wrote the (Silver) book on it (The 1989 electronics-denier’s Bible: An Examination of Sudden Acceleration). As presented Wednesday, the human factors influence on unintended acceleration sounds very reasonable, until you actually start reading the Toyota complaints and talking to owners who’ve had multiple instances in the same vehicle with different drivers, or witnesses who observe a crashed Toyota continuing to rev its engine with no pedal application, or high-speed events where the driver is already applying the accelerator.

It would be disappointing in the extreme if the agency wasted this crisis by retreating to its comfort zone, and concluding: See, we told ya it’s those dumb drivers!

In Other Washington News…

Rep. Henry Waxman’s Energy and Commerce Committee is very busy these days with British Petroleum’s destruction of the Gulf of Mexico, but they haven’t forgotten Toyota.

This week, the Commerce Committee’s Sub-Committee on Oversight and Investigations sent Toyota Motor Sales CEO Jim Lentz a letter apprising him Exponent’s non-cooperation in supplying the committee with key documents. In particular, the committee was miffed that Exponent, by admission of its own representative Dr. Shukri Souri, “had withheld from the Committee a ‘living document’ which he stated was ‘an incomplete set of our opinions and conclusions’ that is ‘continuously updated that is reflecting our progress.’”

Instead, Exponent submitted a substantially altered document. The Committee reminded Toyota that, despite the baffling the automaker wrapped around Exponent by hiring it through litigators Bowman and Brooke, the Committee still regarded Toyota as Exponent’s minder and asked the automaker to direct its contractor to Giddy-up.

More interesting was a request for information about a brake override mechanism that unidentified technical experts found on a 2005 Toyota Camry.

Astute hearing watchers may recall that Lentz told the Committee under oath at a February hearing that the company could not install a brake override function on the older model Toyotas, because it wasn’t technically feasible. Here’s an exchange between Sub-Committee Chair Bart Stupak and Lentz:

REP STUPAK: Well, on this rebooting of this computer there, why only some of the vehicles are going to be rebooted and not the other ones?

MR. LENTZ:  It depends on the feasibility of the unit.  Some of the computers are different types of chips in them.

REP. STUPAK:  Okay.

MR. LENTZ:  Some are not rewritable, basically.  They’re hard coded.

REP. STUPAK:  So can’t you fix those — rewrite the program so all your vehicles are covered?  I mean, what do you say to these owners who are not going to have this safety feature added to it? They’re just going to continue to drive down the road and hope they don’t have a sudden, unintended acceleration?

MR. LENTZ:  Well, again, the incident or the possibility of that happening is very, very slim.  But understanding if it happens to you, it’s a very, very important incident.

Also very, very important: Not BS-ing the Committee.

Apparently, some older model Camrys, not included in brake override recall, already have some form of override function.

According to the letter:

“We have been notified by outside technical experts that based on their examination of a 2005 Toyota Camry, some older model Toyotas may have a brake override function that activates when the vehicle’s electronic throttle control system registers a diagnostic trouble code. These experts report that this brake override function is separate from ‘limp home’ mode. In your testimony before our Committee – on February 23, 2010, and again on May 20, 2010, you described Toyota’s commitment to outfit all vehicles with a brake override function beginning with model year 2011 and to retrofit some older model vehicles that are currently on the road. On April 28, 2010, electronics experts from Toyota briefed Committee staff on brake override features in Toyota vehicles. Neither you nor Toyota’s electronics experts informed the Committee that some older model vehicles may already have a brake override function that is tied to a diagnostic trouble code.”

Question: Did NHTSA know about Toyota older brake override system? Or is this another one of Toyota’s little secrets?

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?

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

“Toyota remains confident that our electronic throttle control system is not a cause of unintended acceleration. Toyota and Lexus vehicles are inherently designed so that a real world uncommanded acceleration of the vehicle cannot occur. This is achieved by a redundant system design with dual computers and sensors as well as by robust fail safe architecture. We test our vehicles extensively to make sure that the fail safes and redundancies work. Indeed, Toyota’s ETCS-i has been subjected to comprehensive testing over more than a decade without a single unintended acceleration event. Toyota has never discovered or been provided with any evidence that the ETCS-i can cause unintended acceleration in a real world scenario,” James Lentz averred in his written testimony.

Oh, Jim, Jim, Jim, where do we begin?

We’ll start with: “Toyota and Lexus vehicles are inherently designed so that a real world uncommanded acceleration of the vehicle cannot occur.”

Stacy Stuhrenberg begs to differ. On February 11, the Goodlettsville, TN woman was almost at a complete stop at a traffic light on Long Hollow Pike, when the light changed. Stuhrenberg gave a little gas to her 2004 Sienna to proceed through the light, when the vehicle accelerated in a burst of speed.

“It was like if you slap a horse on the bottom – it just shot off,” she recalled.

Although Stuhrenberg depressed the brakes as hard as she could, she rear-ended another vehicle. Toyota hired an outside technician from Goodlettsville Collision to examine her vehicle. Stacey’s husband witnessed the visual inspection of the brakes and accelerator pedal. No electronic vehicle diagnostics were performed.

On May 6, Toyota sent Stuhrenberg a ding letter affirming that her floor mats were secured and the accelerator pedal functioned properly: “We are very sorry to hear about the unfortunate incident; however, our inspection determined that this incident was not a result of any type of manufacture design or defect. Thank you for allowing us to address your concerns.” Click on the image below to read the letter.

(State Farm finally agreed to total her vehicle and go after Toyota and subrogate the claim.)

Tim Kenkel of Denver, Co. would also dispute Toyota’s contention that uncommanded acceleration can not occur in the real world.

Kenkel experienced two incidents in his 2008 Rav4 Limited Edition in 15 minutes. Kenkel was also at a stop light with his foot on the brake, when all of a sudden, the engine revved into redline territory. Kenkel was able to keep the vehicle from moving forward and put the vehicle into neutral. The Rav4 engine continued to rev. Kenkel “slammed it into park,” and turned the engine off. He re-started the vehicle five minutes later, but upon ignition, the engine went immediately to wide-open throttle.

“Every light on the dash board was blinking like a Christmas tree,” he recalled

Kenkel killed the engine again and waited another ten minutes before starting his vehicle up again. The engine behaved normally this time, so he proceeded to the Go Toyota Scion Arapahoe dealership in Centennial. By the day’s end, the dealership called and swore it had subjected the vehicle to a battery of tests and found nothing wrong with the vehicle.

It was your floor mat, they told him.

When Kenkel returned to the dealership to ask for the copies of tests, the staff finally confessed that they had performed a visual inspection of the driver’s side foot well – and nothing else. Kenkel insisted they run a diagnostic on the electronics. Lo and behold, the ECM reported five Diagnostic Trouble Codes in the chassis, the network and electrical systems. ACTION REQUIRED, according to the diagnostic report.

Kenkel says that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Vehicle Research and Test Center is buying his Rav4 for the value of his loan — $29,000.

Maybe you aren’t finding any problems, Jim, because you aren’t looking for them.

In Toyota’s alternate-reality world, the complaints boil down to:

• Vehicles that have not yet received the floor mat entrapment or sticking accelerator pedal remedy.




• Cases requiring an explanation of vehicle characteristics where an increase in engine speed is normal, such as higher engine idle speed after a cold start, a slight increase in engine RPM when the air conditioning compressor cycles on, or a slight surge when the vehicle accelerates to the set speed once the cruise control is engaged.




• Concerns or questions about slight differences in the driving experience following a driveability programming update while the adaptive memory adjusts to the wear of certain components and their current operating characteristics

• The presence of double- or triple-stacked floor mats

• Dissatisfaction with the feel of the accelerator pedal after the reinforcement bar remedy was fitted to address th potential for sticking pedals (in which case a new pedal was installed); and

• In rare cases, vehicles that were not correctly remedied during a recall.

According to Quality Control Systems Corp, which has been closely monitoring post-recall complaints, at least 155 incidents of SUA have been reported to NHTSA in which the owner claims the vehicle was repaired under a company recall.

Here are some events happening in the real world:

ODI# 10320934

Attn: Defects Investigations Office. 2007 Toyota Camry with 38721 miles that is owned by and used as an undercover police vehicle accelerated without explanation on March 10, 2010. The operator, who is a sworn officer, advises that his foot was not on the accelerator and the vehicle increased in speed and engine revolutions without explanation. The event occurred over the course of approximately 1/10th of a mile reaching speeds just over 60 mph. The acceleration event corrected itself. There was no injury or crash associated with the event. The vehicle in question had completed a Toyota recall service program # ssc90l to address acceleration issues with this model vehicle on March 2, 2010. The vehicle was returned to the Henrico police on March 3, 2010. The extremely short period of time between the recall service and this sudden unanticipated acceleration event gives reason to believe that the recall service was not effective in correcting the acceleration issues associated with Toyota brand vehicles. The vehicle was parked shortly after the event and is currently secured by the Henrico police. The vehicle has not been driven or examined by any parties since the occurrence of this acceleration event. In light of the fact that this vehicle had recently completed the required acceleration recall service and has been secured since the date of the occurrence, this agency believes that this vehicle is an ideal candidate for examination by the office of defects investigations to determine the origin of this unanticipated acceleration event. The vehicle in question is outfitted with Toyota brand floor mats which are tethered to anchors in the floorboard of the vehicle.

ODI # 10329268

The contact owns a 2009 Toyota Camry. The owner stated that the vehicle was taken to Toyota for recall NHTSA campaign id number: 10V017000 and the remedy was performed. Approximately three months later while his wife was operating the vehicle and pulling into a parking lot, at approximately 4 MPH, to park the vehicle accelerated without driver intent. It crashed through a plate glass window and continued on and crashed in to a wall inside the building and was still attempting to accelerate. The vehicle was put into neutral then into drive and the driver was finally able to get the vehicle turned off. No injuries were reported. The Houston police responded and took a report #064969310-p. The vehicle was towed by a city approved towing company and is currently at a impound lot. The insurance company is sending an adjuster to inspect the vehicle. The failure and current mileage is approximately 50,000. Rd

ODI# 10328848

While driver was pulling into a parking space and coming to a near stop, the vehicle, a 2008 Toyota Camry, suddenly accelerated on its own accord, hopping the concrete curb, accelerating the vehicle as the car crashed struck and pushed along a trash bin, thru thick brush, a steel gated fence and eventually striking a tree where the vehicle finally came to rest. The driver attempted to stop the vehicle by applying both feet to the brakes as it traveled approximately 150 feet. The vehicle was subject to both the floor mat and acceleration pedal recalls which were repaired on February 11, 2010. This incident was post-recall repair. Since the incident, the vehicle has not been repaired and is currently being stored by an autobody repair facility and awaits inspection by NHTSA and Toyota. *tr

These are but a few of the rare cases in which uncommanded acceleration cannot occur.

“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

But what caught our attention was his exploration of how manufacturers use science – or the appearance thereof – to raise enough doubt to clog the regulatory machinery and to persuade juries and the public that their products cause no harm by countering scientific studies indicating a hazard with their own bought-and-paid-for-research showing the opposite.

As recently as the late 1990s, tobacco executives were still making public statements denying the link between cigarette smoking and cancer. We can’t help but note a striking resemblance to Toyota’s insistence that its electronics play no part in sudden unintended acceleration in its vehicles, despite numerous instances of drivers battling run-away vehicles with no floor mats and no pedal problems; or vehicle engines that continue to race at wide open throttle while in “Park;” or vehicles that exhibit this behavior right in front of Toyota techs.

But consistent denial only gets you so far. What Big Tobacco needed – and got – was the imprimatur of science to lend legitimacy to the message. Michaels describes “swarms” of consultants and scientists manufacturing “uncertainty by questioning every study, dissecting every method and disputing every conclusion.” This assault on independent research was buttressed by other industry-sponsored studies that show no link between chemicals and disease or no exposure risks.

Among the product defense firms aiding industry Michaels mentions prominently is Exponent. He describes these companies, thus:

“Their business model is straightforward. They profit by helping corporations minimize public health and environmental protection and fight claims of injury and illness. In field after field, year after year, this same handful of individuals and companies comes up again and again. The range of their work is impressive. They have on their payrolls or can bring in on a moment’s notice toxicologists, epidemiologists, biostatisticians, risk assessors the work has one overriding motivation: advocacy for the sponsor’s position in civil court, the court of public opinion and the regulatory arena.”

In its 2009 Securities and Exchange Commission 10K filing, Exponent acknowledges that it is in the business of providing science in support of litigation:

“Many of our engagements are initiated directly with large corporations or by lawyers or insurance companies, whose clients anticipate, or are engaged in, litigation related to their products, equipment or service.”

Exponent also touts its ability to hustle data in a hurry:

“Our multidisciplinary team of scientists, physicians, engineers, business and regulatory consultants brings together more than 90 different technical disciplines to solve complicated issues facing industry and government today. Our professional staff can perform in-depth scientific research and analysis, or very rapid-response evaluations to provide our clients with the critical information they need.”

By Michaels’ calculations, industry’s need for speed plus a credible defense posture equals this:

“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.”

Exponent is a frequent opponent of the plaintiffs’ bar in automotive defect litigation. According to Exponent’s 2009 SEC filing, “transportation industry-related engagements accounted for approximately 14% of our revenues for the fiscal year ended.”

Exponent entered the Toyota SUA picture in 2010, when Toyota began to lose control of the public perception and the investigative process. From 2003 to 2009, NHTSA accepted Toyota’s claim that its electronic throttle system could not fail without the engine control module taking note, despite chronic consumer petitions for investigations. But when Dr. David Gilbert, an automotive technology professor from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, unveiled at a Congressional hearing the results of preliminary testing that merely challenged the central tenet – that fault will always be detected – that had kept further inquiry at bay, Toyota needed a quick response. (See You Don’t Tug on Superman’s Cape)

This was exactly the sort of situation called for the convergence of science-for-hire and marketing that Michaels describes in Doubt is Their Product. On one front, language attacking Dr. Gilbert’s credibility is being tested in an online survey. (See Anatomy of a Smear). On a second front, Exponent offered a veneer of independent confirmation of Toyota’s electronics system.

Exponent, Inc., with standard rates of $95 to $800 an hour, and annual revenue in 2008 of $228 million, was given an “unlimited budget,” to delve into Toyota’s electronics. Its first rapid-response report tested Lexus and Toyota vehicles and found: “Exponent has so far been unable to induce, through electrical disturbances to the system, either unintended acceleration or behavior that might be a precursor to such an event, despite concerted efforts toward this goal.” (See Testing and Analysis of Toyota and Lexus Vehicles and Components for Concerns Related to Unintended Acceleration.)

A second Exponent report, rolled out in an elaborate press conference, more directly confronted Gilbert’s work. It found that the fault Gilbert introduced in the Accelerator Pedal Position Sensor was unlikely to occur: “For such an event to happen in the real world requires a sequence of faults that is extraordinarily unlikely. Furthermore, the individual “faults” required individually are far more likely to result in a detectable problem (for example, setting a trouble code or entering a fail-safe mode of operation), than combining in just the right manner to produce a sudden unintended acceleration (SUA)” Exponent also concluded that it could introduce faults in other manufacturers’ vehicles without a setting a trouble code.” (See Evaluation of the Gilbert Demonstration .)

Electronics experts serving as consultants to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce criticized the first Exponent report, according to a February 22 letter Committee Chair Henry Waxman and Bart Stupak, chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, sent to Toyota Motor Sales President Jim Lentz. 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), enumerated a number of deficiencies: a very small sample size, a focus on obvious and simple failures, the lack of a fault tree analysis or a failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) of the myriad ways SUA could be triggered.  Neil Hannemann, a highly-regarded engineer, told the Committee that the report “does not follow a scientific method” and fails to test “major categories” of potential causes of sudden unintended acceleration, including “electromagnetic interference/Radio frequency interference,” “environmental conditions,” the electronic control module (ECM), and “the software algorithms in the ECM.”

Why turn over this, what can only be described as quixotic, root cause quest to Exponent? Despite the company’s roster of 643 engineering and scientific staff, could any Exponent engineer know more about Toyota’s electronic throttle control system than its own engineers who not only designed it but wrote the Failure Modes and Effects Analysis that could provide so much insight? The Committee on Energy and Commerce complained that nowhere in the paper blizzard of 75,000 documents provided by the automaker was any indicating that Toyota had comprehensively tested or analyzed any electronic causes of sudden unintended acceleration – except for the Exponent report.

Perhaps this answer is also found in Michael’s book. In a chapter devoted to the hazards of chromium 6, a carcinogenic dust that is a byproduct of chromium processing, he details how the Chrome Coalition a trade association of chrome producers trying to stave off regulations to lower workers’ exposure limits, hired Chemrisk and Exponent. These outside consultants were introduced to the process through the coalition’s attorneys “so that materials produced by the consultants could be shielded under the attorney’s work product and attorney-client privileges.”

Another reason to do it this way is because it is remarkably effective. On the field of academic battle, Bowman & Brooke scared SIUC badly enough to shut down Gilbert’s work with Toyota accelerator pedal position sensors. And there isn’t much of a price to be paid in the public relations arena. While Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., chairman of the Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation, called the Exponent report “a flawed study conducted by a company retained by Toyota’s lawyers,” many news outlets reported the results of the Exponent report neutrally, without mentioning Exponent’s strong ties to industry defense litigation. The Wall Street Journal, for example, described Exponent as a “Menlo Park, Calif.-based engineering research firm.”  BusinessWeek characterized it as a company that “provides scientific, medical and engineering consulting services in the U.S., Europe and China.” A few, notably the LA Times and CBS, put the hiring of Exponent into the larger context.

Manufacturing doubt ain’t cheap, but unlike the products it’s often used to defend, it works!

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Toyota SUA:  Real Stories

Perhaps Lentz actually meant to say that Toyota would work over Dr. Gilbert, because, rather than dispatch its technical team to Carbondale for scientific inquiry, Toyota’s corporate counsel Vince Galvin, accompanied by another lawyer and a gas turbine efficiency design expert from Exponent showed up at SIU to cowl university administrators, before treating Gilbert to a preview deposition.

For Dr. Gilbert, the meeting was a first: “I don’t live a daily life of controversy,” he says

That changed in January, when Gilbert, a Tundra owner with 30 years experience teaching automotive electronics, decided to run some basic diagnostic tests on a Toyota truck at the school’s automotive technology lab. What he found surprised him – you could put a fault in the system that wasn’t detectable. He had focused on the Accelerator Pedal Position Sensor (APPS), figuring it was the ETC’s one major input. In early February, Dr. Gilbert verified his first tests and then contacted some technical folks he knew at Toyota and NHTSA to report his findings. When neither expressed any real interest, Gilbert contacted Safety Research & Strategies.

In early February, SRS hired Gilbert for the modest sum of $150 an hour, and provided him with $4000 in diagnostic tools to examine and test the APPS in a array of Toyota and Lexus models to ascertain how they function and the whether corrupted signals can introduce unwanted outcomes.  The university approved his research on February 10.

Gilbert’s work was important because it challenged Toyota’s central argument in deflecting several National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigations into its electronic throttle control. The automaker had consistently argued that its electronics could not be blamed for any sudden unintended acceleration complaints because multiple redundancies ensured that any uncommanded acceleration would be detected by its failsafe system. A Diagnostic Trouble Code (DTC) would be sent, and the vehicle would be sent into limp-home mode.

The agency, however, wasn’t getting complaints about Toyota vehicles limping home – it was fielding reports from motorists describing runaway vehicles that no amount of braking could stop. Indeed, one might sensibly ask: why is no fault code set when the system is getting extreme contradictory commands – wide open throttle and heavy braking? But NHTSA, armed with an institutional bias toward driver error and no clue how to probe the complaints beyond test drives and some generic tests, accepted Toyota’s explanations.

With the first Congressional hearing looming on February, Gilbert labored quickly to complete a preliminary round of tests and memorialize his protocols in a report submitted to the House Committee on Commerce and Energy, along with his testimony. Toyota Electronic Throttle Control System Preliminary Investigation showed that there are conditions in the Toyota and Lexus models tested in which the failsafe redundancy of electronic circuitry in the ETC can be lost – particularly in the APPS – without detecting an error code or employing a failsafe mode.  Once the redundant failsafe is lost and it is not detected as an error, the vehicle is in an unsafe condition.  The purpose for setting an error code and putting the vehicle into a failsafe mode is to protect the driver from any further potential scenarios in which the ETC behaves in a manner inconsistent with driver input.

Dr. Gilbert’s findings also showed that once the failsafe is lost and undetected by the vehicle computer as an error, various scenarios can be introduced in which the Electronic Control Module (ECM) can read a wide-open throttle condition without any input from the driver, again without setting any error codes. Simply increasing the voltage to the APPS while in a compromised state can induce an uncommanded wide-open throttle condition, again resulting in no detectable codes. These scenarios can occur because the Toyota failsafe parameters are broad – the design allows a wide window of opportunity for problems to occur that are not seen as abnormal. (Read Dr. Gilbert’s report here)

Dr. Gilbert’s testimony was well received by the Congressional committee. Many members of the Sub-committee on Oversight and Investigations asked questions that Dr. Gilbert answered in his unassuming style. A staffer from Congressman John Shimkus’ office (R-Dist. 19) discretely passed his business card and invited Dr. Gilbert for a personal tour of the Capitol and the House chambers.

But, as the old Jim Croce song goes, you don’t tug on Superman’s cape. Toyota had come bearing its own report, prepared by the defense-litigation experts from Exponent. Exponent was meant to provide Toyota with a fig leaf of independence (purchased at premium prices) as the automaker defended the integrity of its electronics to Congress. Lentz testified that Exponent had been working until the wee hours of the morning to perform its independent analysis.

The automaker didn’t take kindly to Gilbert pointing out the weaknesses in its infallible failsafe system. And it moved on a number of fronts to shut Dr. Gilbert down.

Dr. Gilbert’s name appeared prominently in an online opinion survey posted in late February to gauge public reaction to Dr. Gilbert’s credibility and to test the resonance of an attack message based on his presumed ties to plaintiffs’ attorneys.  With an “unlimited budget,” according to Lentz’s congressional testimony, Exponent went to work on its refutation. In early March, Toyota held a high-profile web-streamed press conference featuring Exponent and Christian Gerdes of Stanford to dispute Gilbert’s findings. Exponent also issued a 30-page report to counter Gilbert’s work. It actually validated his results, but argued that the sensor couldn’t short-circuit in the real world.

“Their reaction was surprising. It’s not a little-known fact that you can have problems like this that go undetected. I think that’s what caught them off-guard,” Gilbert said. “I came out of nowhere and said here’s how it can happen.”

Then, Toyota headed for Carbondale to rattle the university’s cage. The automaker, like other major manufacturers, had a relationship with SIU Carbondale. For more than 20 years, Toyota had donated vehicles, provided internships and professional networking opportunities for SIU’s Automotive Technology students. In November 2008, SIU celebrated Toyota’s $100,000 donation to the Automotive Program.

“It’s nice to bring national limelight to SIU,” said Jack Greer, chairman of the automotive technology program, in an SIU press release about the donation.

This time the limelight was more of a blinding glare. Terry Martin, manager of customer quality at Toyota and Neil Swartz, an SIUC alumnus and corporate manager for distribution in Toyota’s North American Parts division, resigned from the department’s advisory board.

University officials, more accustomed to the high blood pressure that accompanied a Saluki basketball victory, was ill-prepared for the corporate pick-and-roll. On March 2, after a morning meeting with Vince Galvin of Bowman and Brooke, administrators called Gilbert into an afternoon interrogation, in which Toyota tried to get Gilbert to defend his testimony. He refused to elaborate on what he had already presented in sworn testimony.

Although Gilbert had kept his supervisors apprised of his actions, administrators took Gilbert’s keys to the lab’s test vehicles and barred him from doing further research. They re-wrote his employment contract to compel him to visit Exponent’s Menlo Park, California facility. On March 17, Gilbert watched their demonstration, but was unable to assess exactly what Exponent had done, because the vehicles were festooned with extra wiring.

On March 26, Congressman Henry Waxman wrote letter of thanks to Gilbert, and sent copies to President Glen Poshard, Duane Stucky, Senior Vice President for Financial & Administrative Affairs; Paul Sarvela, Vice President for Academic Affairs; Jerry Blakemore, Vice President and General Counsel; David Gross, Executive Director for Government & Public Affairs; Rita Cheng, Chancellor; Terry Owens, Dean of the College of Applied Sciences & Arts and Greer. It stated, in part:

“Your work in examining how electronics may play a role in the phenomenon of sudden unintended acceleration has been praised by independent engineers and has enhanced public understanding. It has also led Toyota and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to reevaluate their responses to the problem of sudden unintended acceleration. Thank you for your contributions to our investigation and for your efforts to advance the public interest.”

In an e-mail to The Safety Record, university spokesman Rod Sievers said that the university was not taken aback by Toyota’s response:

“Toyota and SIUC have been partners for some 25 years and that collaborative relationship continues today.  In the course of his research, Dr. Gilbert made what he felt was an important discovery relating to Toyota’s Sudden Unintended Acceleration issues.  Dr. Gilbert is now working with Toyota and its research partners, Exponent Research of Menlo Park, CA in an effort to get a better picture of these on-going problems.  As a matter of fact, Dr. Gilbert recently returned from a visit to Exponent’s facilities where worked with a number of automotive experts and compared testing methods and procedures.”

Today, Gilbert has his keys back; he was working on his response to his Exponent visit. A university attorney conceded that after reviewing Gilbert’s action, they could not find that he violated any policies. Gilbert now says he looks forward to having more time to develop his research.

“My life has improved a little bit,” he says. “The whole Toyota thing is settling down. My colleagues in the department have come to terms with it. You can’t turn back the clock. Would I do it again? Yes. I know it was tough decision. I didn’t expect as much of a repercussion, but I can survive it.”

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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.

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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

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