When you’ve shelled out big bucks for a message, the dissenters have to be squashed – and fast. Yesterday, Toyota public relations rapid response team tried to bring the Toyota Unintended Acceleration (UA) problem back into its multi-million-dollar corral at the There’s Nothing to See Here, Folks Ranch. Mike Michels, Vice President for External Communications [...]
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has acknowledged what it has emphatically denied so far: Not all instances of Toyota Unintended Acceleration are linked to sticky pedals, floor mats or driver error. The UAs in a 2003 Prius witnessed by ODI engineers last May were not linked to “known causes.” True, the agency response (see [...]
As part of our ongoing investigation into Unintended Acceleration in Toyota vehicles, Safety Research & Strategies has identified 330 UA complaints reported to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for incidents that occurred in 2011. These complaints range from consumers who experienced multiple instances of UA to events that resulted in a crash. Below, we’ve [...]
Last month, we reported a Florida circuit judge’s extraordinary decision to set aside a civil jury verdict in favor of Ford Motor Company, based on evidence and testimony that Ford had concealed an electronic cause of unintended acceleration from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration – and its own expert witnesses. Judge William T. Swigert’s [...]
A new technical paper from the research scientists at the University of Maryland’s Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering (CALCE) buttresses the findings of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and NASA’s Engineering Safety Center investigation into Toyota unintended acceleration: Toyota vehicles with potentiometer type accelerator pedal position sensors have a propensity to grow tin [...]
We here at the Safety Record Blog are getting caught up on our blogging after a hectic before-the-holiday-weekend week attending Edmund.com’s Let’s Blame it on the Drivers conference and releasing our response to the NHTSA and NESC report on Toyota. If you haven’t had a chance to read this special edition of The Safety Record, [...]
REHOBOTH, MASS – The Safety Record, Safety Research & Strategies’ watchdog publication, published its new findings on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) reports on Toyota Unintended Acceleration. Following extensive review of those reports and previously unavailable documents recently released by NHTSA and interviews with numerous [...]
More than a year ago, NHTSA whomped Toyota upside the pocketbook with a $16.4 million fine for failing to recall 2.3 million vehicles with defective accelerator pedals. It was just slightly more than chump change to billionaire Toyota, but at the time, everyone gasped at the largest civil penalty the agency had levied against an [...]
Well, here we are, 14 months after Toyota began admitting to the world that it could no longer design a simple pedal, a floor mat or a floor pan, by launching Phase I of many phases of a recall to replace all-weather floor mats that may entrap the accelerator. Initially, the recall 90L, the mother [...]
Dear Toyota: Why did you buy back Tim Scott’s 2007 Lexus RX? We mean, really? You gave him a bunch of different reasons, but he doesn’t believe you. (We’re finding it a little hard to swallow, too.) Awaiting your reply, SRS Here’s Tim Scott’s story. In early December, as NHTSA and NASA were putting the [...]
