That a large corporation would conceal a deadly problem to protect its interests is hardly news – although the systemic and exacting strategies Ford employed in this case are notable. What makes this story important is how Ford also re-wrote the history on this issue and helped to shape the agency’s thinking about an ongoing problem for decades hence. We have only the public record regarding Toyota UA at our disposal – and precious little of that has actually been made public – so we can’t know how Toyota has assessed its own UA problem; if and what parallels in corporate misdirection might be drawn between Ford and Toyota. But one can see how Ford’s actions back in the 1980s still resonate with the agency today and how it has kept NHTSA from advancing its knowledge in electronic causes of UA that are not already detected by the vehicle diagnostics.

The Emergence of a Defect in the Age of Audi SUA

As recounted in the Judge Swigert’s order, the history of Ford and unintended acceleration goes back to 1973, when Ford’s cruise control was under development. Ford Engineer William Follmer “warned about the risk posed by electromagnetic interference, and cautioned that ‘to avoid disaster’ it was imperative to incorporate failsafe protection against EMI in the system’s design.” In 1976, two Ford engineers obtained a patent describing a design for the cruise control system’s printed circuit board to reduce the risk of a sudden acceleration posed by EMI.

But, in that same year, the company’s Electrical and Electronics Division determined that electromagnetic interference did not pose a significant risk and, therefore, “No special consideration was given to designing in electromagnetic compatibility.”

The switches in the cruise control system Ford developed and installed in millions of vehicles, such as Stimpsons’ Aerostar, were vulnerable at gear engagement to a current spike from electromagnetic interference that can bypass the control logic and induce the servo to pull the throttle wide open. The judge suggested that Ford had considered this possibility in 1979, putting $75 million in reserve to cover a recall for UA.

But the problem really blossomed in1984, after Ford introduced an advanced version of its engine electronics: EEC-IV. Where UA complaints before the introduction of this new technology were few, they began to increase rapidly once the 1984 models entered the fleet. During the 1980s, field investigations into UA complaints were documented in Service Investigation Reports, or SIRs, that were forwarded to Ford headquarters in Dearborn. This flood of complaints moved a Safety Office manager named Edward I. Richardson to begin informally reviewing the SIRs, in anticipation of a NHTSA investigation.

Richardson’s staff found a fact pattern in these UA complaints: “sudden accelerations from a standstill invariably began at gear engagement; drivers frequently reported that braking during the event was ineffective; field engineers often identified the cruise control electronics as the cause; field engineers frequently recommended replacing the cruise control servo; and there were no field reports identifying driver error as the cause of a sudden acceleration.”

On September 30, 1985, NHTSA opened the first of several investigations involving Ford. But the automaker kept its fact patterns to itself, and told the agency’s Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) that its “vehicle systems are not defective.” NHTSA closed the investigation in August 1986, because no component-related root cause could be determined.

Having skirted one NHTSA investigation, a manager in Ford’s Customer Service Division Alan Updegrove, met with Ford counsel and the office that employs in-house litigation experts to express his dismay over the inflammatory opinions found in the SIRs. At that September 1986 meeting, he recommended a new format for investigating UA complaints and assembled a team to develop a new investigative approach.

What was the source of Updegrove unease? The legal decision focuses only on the events that concern Stimpson v. Ford. But one need only consider what was happening elsewhere in the industry regarding what was known back then as Sudden Unintended Acceleration to understand Ford’s desire for pre-emptory action – namely Audi.

By September 1986, Volkswagen was had already recalled Audi 5000 vehicles with automatic transmissions from the 1978-83 model years in the U.S. and Canada twice to resolve drivers’ complaints of SUA from a standstill, with ineffective braking. The recalls, to secure the floor mat and prevent pedal interference, however, did little to squelch the complaints. Volkswagen was seemingly trapped in a public relations nightmare featuring injuries, deaths and hundreds of crashes trumpeted to anyone who would listen, by a group of well-organized, articulate and highly vocal owners.

On March 19, 1986, the founder of what would become the Audi Victims Network teamed up with the New York Public Interest Research Group, NY Attorney General Robert Abrams and Center for Auto Safety to hold a press conference demanding that NHTSA investigate Audi SUA.  Sales of the once-popular make were plummeting and despite Volkswagen’s launch of a service campaign to move the accelerator and brake pedals of the 1984-1986 Audi 5000′s, the agency decided to open a formal defect investigation into SUA involving 1978-86 Audi 5000s. In August 1986, after the agency launched its probe, Volkswagen announced that it would install a brake to shift interlock in the troubled vehicles. By November 1986, CBS would air its infamous segment on Audi SUA, which drove down vehicle sales even further.

The Ford Problem Grows

As Audi thrashed in the spotlight, Ford was receiving a steady stream of “malfunctioning cruise control servos under warranty for which no cause could be identified” complaints. In October 1986, Ford’s Electrical and Electronics Division documented for senior management “the reasons behind the rapid rise in undiagnosed failures in electronic components. The report identified six components, including the cruise control servo, whose undiagnosed failure rate had experienced the greatest increases. According to the report, prior to 1984, the cause of servo malfunctions had been identified 80 percent of the time, while after 1984 the rate plummeted to 20 percent. The EED report specifically identified ‘electromagnetic influences in the vehicle environment’ due to ‘the increasing complexity of electrical system’ as the root cause of this quantum increase in undiagnosed servo malfunctions; and since servos removed by field engineers investigating sudden accelerations were testing normal in Ford’s laboratories, it was clear that ‘electromagnetic influences’ were also the cause of the findings contained in SIRs the Safety Office was reviewing at the time.”

NHTSA wasn’t done, however. In December 1986, the agency notified Ford that it had identified 439 reports of “unexpected vehicle acceleration” that had resulted in “193 accidents, 106 injuries, and 5 fatalities … in 1983-1986 Ford vehicles” that could result in a safety recall. Ford would tell the agency in 1987, that they could find nothing amiss with any components.

Internally, however, Ford was working on solving the problem, as it tried to conceal it.

On January 12, 1987, Ford created a multi-disciplinary task force to study “how interactions between the engine and cruise control electronics were contributing to sudden accelerations.” The EED’s recommendation explicitly recognized that malfunctions involving the cruise control servo were caused by system level interactions, and not by detectable failures in individual components of the interacting systems.”

In March 1987, Ford began working on the flip side of the coin. The company assembled about 200 field engineers in Dearborn to receive new marching orders that would help Ford obscure the data. The old SIR format was discontinued and Updegrove’s new approach to UA investigations would take its place. All sudden acceleration related-SIRs would now be purged in the year they were generated. (Federal law requires that safety-related records have a five year retention period.)

Ford presented a very different face to NHTSA. As the NHTSA defect investigation wound on, Ford scratched up only 38 SIR reports – with only 21 relating to UA from a standstill. (In his decision, Judge Swigert agreed with the plaintiffs that the paucity of SIRs had more to do with the new retention policy than a lack of complaints.) In March 1987, Ford told the agency that an electronically-rooted SUA “would be expected to reveal physical evidence of causal origin,” even though the SIRs and the EED report said otherwise.

As it tried to hold off the agency, Ford continued to work on solving the problem.  A February 1988 memo from Stephen Hahn, a senior electrical engineer and leader of Ford’s SUA task force lent support to the conclusions of previous internal studies showing the problem was rooted in the system-level interactions between the cruise control and the engine.  He observed that “only when the vehicle speed control function is integrated into the EEC-IV system does the EEC system have the potential to produce a wide open throttle acceleration.” That fall, Ford engineers assembled the factors that could cause an unintended acceleration into a fish-bone schematic known as an Ishikawa diagram, “which identified electromagnetic interference on the output side of the cruise control electronics as a potential cause.”

Alan Updegrove’s investigation into sudden acceleration claims produced a detailed database of incidents, analyzed by a team that included representatives from the Powertrain Electronics Unit, the Automotive Safety Office, and the Customer Service Division. Their task was to “guide the investigation into key areas that included the engine control electronics, underhood linkages, wiring and speed control … and an extensive interview with the operator of the vehicle and any available witnesses to the event.”

One of the engineers on Updegrove’s team, James Auiler, testified that the “Updegrove database was a special study to get premium factual information so that we could do engineering analysis and due diligence and understand what was really going on.”

The foundation of the database was a questionnaire to be used by field investigators “to record facts and information indicating the likely cause of the occurrence.” The questionnaire was quite detailed, including information about driver behavior, direct observations from witnesses to the event, braking effectiveness; physical evidence, such as tire marks, and how the event terminated. The results were divided into six possible categories relating to causation and three categories identifying the engine behavior during the event. Updegrove’s team gathered a total of 1,900 cases in which the UA occurred upon gear engagement. The summaries of those cases determined that less than one percent were classified as pedal misapplication, and for 99 percent “the evidence collected logically supported the driver’ claim of an uncontrolled acceleration, but no physical explanation for the event was found during the vehicle inspection.”

Yet, in a December 1989 response to NHTSA’s sticking throttle investigation of Thunderbird and Mercury Cougar vehicles, Ford told the agency that “the Updegrove results supported the agency’s conclusion that driver error was the “most plausible cause” of sudden accelerations.”

Managing the Experts

Swigert ruled that keeping this information in-house required Ford to misdirect its own go-to electronics litigation expert, Victor Declercq, manager of the Ford Electromagnetic Compatibility Laboratory. DeClerq has been frequently dispatched to testify for Ford that there is “no evidence that Ford’s electronics are susceptible to an EMI-induced sudden acceleration.” But Judge Swigert added up a number of his pre- and post-trial assertions and determined that Declerq was not privy to any of the internal studies and memos outlining how electronic malfunctions in the cruise control could result in a wide-open throttle.

- Declerq admitted in post-trial testimony that a lawyer from the automaker’s Office of General Counsel denied that there was any engineering summary of the Updegrove results.

- Declerq acknowledged that “no Ford model with the cruise control electronics at issue here had been tested following a sudden acceleration; and that no testing replicating EMI on the output side of the cruise control had been performed.”

- In a 1999 in-house video, DeClerq could be seen using a table-top model of Ford’s cruise control system to demonstrate that five failures would have to occur simultaneously before a UA was possible.

- Declercq acknowledged “that he has frequently cited [the 1989 NHTSA study, An Examination of Sudden Acceleration,] to juries as support for his opinion that multiple, simultaneous, and detectable failures are prerequisites for a sudden acceleration.”  As the following section details, Ford misdirected the agency about the causes of UA as NHTSA gathered string for this study.

Tarnishing The Silver Book

One of the most riveting portions of Judge Swigert’s decision was his take down of An Examination of Sudden Acceleration, the 1989 study known within NHTSA as The Silver Book, in reference to the color of its cover.

In the wake of the Audi case, NHTSA commissioned the Transportation System Center to conduct an independent, industry-wide study of sudden unintended acceleration. It announced its intention in October 1987, just before Ford’s Electronics Reliability Study Team pegged EMI and the lack of uniform procedures for circuit analysis as contributory causes to the electronic problems plaguing Ford vehicles. As part of the information-gathering process, NHTSA had asked manufacturers to provide to the agency “all reports, studies, or investigations that might assist the TSC study.” Ford did not produce any of its internal studies showing the effect of EMI on its cruise control servo, it did not disclose the Ishikawa analysis or the Updegrove study.  The judge determined that Ford’s fraud in unintended acceleration had extended to misleading NHTSA in the preparation of this study.

When An Examination of Sudden Acceleration was finally published in January 1989, the researchers concluded, based – in part – on representations from manufacturers, like Ford, that “EMI was not a contributing factor to sudden accelerations; that at least two simultaneous and detectable faults would have to occur for the cruise control electronics to cause a sudden acceleration; and that, in the absence of such detectable faults, the most ‘plausible explanation was driver pedal error.’”

Ford knew from its own investigations that this was not true. But in October 1989, when NHTSA opened Preliminary Evaluation 90-001, asking Ford for studies or investigations that could explain a “failure of the throttle control system to properly control vehicle speed in 1988-1989 model year Thunderbird/Cougar models,” Ford cited The Silver Book to buttress its argument that, like NHTSA, it has been diligently searching for causes, but can’t find anything beyond driver error:

“Ford has received and investigated reports alleging sudden acceleration incidents, both with and without explicit allegations of brake failure, on virtually all vehicles it produces including the vehicles which are the subject of this inquiry. Ford’s investigations, like those of NHTSA and others encompassed numerous components, systems, complex interrelationships, and human factors. The typical scope of such analysis is manifested by

the diverse studies documented within the Transportation System Center CTSC) report; similar efforts continue at Ford, as exemplified by a schematic diagram, provided as Attachment 1, which was formulated by Ford engineering personnel to structure sudden acceleration-type incident analysis.”

In view of Ford’s decision to keep its knowledge about the causes of UA to itself, Judge Swigert was particularly critical of the underlying assumptions on which An Examination of Sudden Acceleration was based. He pointed to depositions of Richard Schmidt, a human factors expert, former Exponent scientist and co-author of driver error studies on which NHTSA relied to deny a 2000 petition to re-open an investigation into the phenomenon of UA, in which Schmidt was unable to explain the empirical starting point that led to the conclusion that most UA events are caused by driver error. Swigert first observed that Schmidt’s theory about the events that create a pedal-misapplication UA-crash is at odds with his working definition of UA.

Schmidt defined UA as: “A full, uncommanded full throttle situation from a stop or near stop after shifting from park or a drive gear with a perceived brake failure.” He further testified that in his view, drivers misposition their feet, mistakenly depress the accelerator instead of the brake, simultaneously as they shift into gear. But Schmidt conceded that he had not done any baseline research to determine what drivers typically do during vehicle start up – when and where they place their feet. And Schmidt said that in his view, the move to a full-throttle event is gradual, rather than immediate.  He believed the UA crash occurred when drivers lightly depress the accelerator pedal, thinking it’s the brake. When the car starts to move upon gear engagement, the driver presses a little harder still under the assumption that his foot is on the brake. As the vehicle continues to move, the driver gradually applies more pressure to the brake, until the vehicle movement is arrested by a crash.

“Since it is undisputed that in a classic sudden acceleration the throttle rapidly goes to wide open at gear engagement, Schmidt’s hypothesis is obviously inconsistent with this generally accepted description of a sudden acceleration. The core question, however, is whether there is a scientific or empirical basis for Schmidt’s hypothesis that pedal errors cause most sudden accelerations,” Swigert wrote in his decision.

Then, the judge attacked Schmidt’s scientific rigor. In examining Schmidt’s deposition testimony, Swigert found:

“It is apparent that Schmidt assumed that if no tangible or detectable evidence of a malfunction is found in the vehicle, the cause must be the driver. However, when Schmidt was pressed to explain the basis for this assumption, he conceded that: (1) he was unaware of any research showing that drivers occasionally misposition their foot on the accelerator pedal at start up; (2) he never consulted with an electrical engineer regarding his assumption that two detectable faults at least that ‘fix themselves’ were necessary for a sudden acceleration; ‘(3) that he had heard about Ford’s Updegrove investigation, but knew nothing about the results; (4) he has done no research regarding brake pedal force needed to stop an open throttle acceleration;’ and (5) when confronted with the fact that many sudden accelerations had been terminated by the driver disengaging the engine before a crash occurred, he said he would be ‘surprised’ if that were the case.”

Ancient History?

This decision tells a story that resonates beyond whatever Ford shoveled at NHTSA in the 1980s. In all that compost, Ford’s decision to withhold what it knew about the connection between EMI, its cruise control servo and unintended acceleration, were the seeds of thought that have taken root, and flourished at the agency.  These opinions continue to be expressed 30 years later. Even as late as 2003, the agency was using An Examination of Sudden Acceleration, as a reason to dismiss complaints of UA in Toyota vehicles. In a Federal Register notice denying a defect petition from a Lexus owner who experienced three UAs in his vehicle, NHTSA cited its 1989 study as part of the supporting evidence. The 1999 Lexus at issue, however, was equipped with a new electronic throttle control system; the Silver Book examined mechanical throttle control systems.

Take for example, a particularly striking e-mail from Toyota manager Chris Tinto recounting a June 2004 meeting with NHTSA ODI investigator Robert Young on the subject of unintended acceleration in Toyotas:

“Mr. Young was shown all of the failure modes of the ETC [Electronic Throttle Control] system, and was clear in expressing that none of the modes felt ‘unsafe’ to him, and he felt that the modes were unrelated to sudden acceleration. Mr. Young also drove the vehicle in such a way that he was able to apply both the accelerator and the brake pedal at the same time. He referred to this as “Dual Pedal Application.” He expressed his opinion that the complaints that the agency has received were most likely dual pedal application (i.e. not vehicle malfunction related). He also stated that it was very difficult to achieve this dual pedal application condition because the Camry has utilizes a wide (i.e. good) spacing between the accelerator pedal and the brake pedal.”

If Tinto’s retelling is accurate, this belief in driver error is so unshakeable that one of the agency’s most experienced investigative experts was ready to conclude that the complaints were due to dual pedal application even though the data – which showed a 400 percent increase in UA Camry complaints after Toyota went to electronic throttle controls – and his own direct observation – that the pedals had good spacing and that it was hard to actually hit both pedals at once – told him the exact opposite.

(Young was once similarly confident that a high-profile 1998 fatal crash involving a Ford police van in Minneapolis was a case of driver error, until he learned months later that an aftermarket device often used by police to keep brake lights flashing disabled the shift lock. This allowed the vehicles to surge forward upon gear engagement without touching the pedal.  The story of this crash and the agency’s subsequent findings are detailed in a Wall Street Journal article from November 1, 1999:  “A Simple Case of Sudden Acceleration – Or So It Seemed at First to Bob Young.”)

This assumption in the primacy of mechanical causes in Toyota UA incidents snakes it way through several subsequent NHTSA investigations – regardless of the absence of evidence or contradictory evidence. It’s woven into a conversation with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police, trying to make sense of the January 2004 deaths of George and Maureen Yago in their 2002 Camry XLE.

Two witnesses following the Yagos into a casino parking garage said that they saw the vehicle pull slowly into a space and come to a stop (observing that the Camry’s brake lights were lit), when the vehicle suddenly took off, and shot off the fourth floor.

NHTSA never investigated this death. Nonetheless, ODI investigators speculated about causes with the police. According to the police report, ODI investigator Steve Chan carefully explained that “in the past two years there have been numerous complaints about a problem with the 2002 and 2003 model year Toyota Camrys. The complaint stems from a sudden acceleration problem, supposedly, operators of this type of vehicle have been slowing down or stopping, and suddenly, the car accelerates. In the previous complaints, some of the incidents had resulted in a collision, this was the first death. Chan explained how in 2002, Toyota went to a new type of accelerator. In the previous years, a gas pedal was connected to the engine via some type of cable or linkage. In 2002, the gas pedal is now connected to some type of a pedal position sensor, this sensor is in turn connected to wires, these wires connect to the cars computer, there are more wires which connect to some type of a servo or actuator. This connects to the engine to control the engine RPMs. After this change is when these type of incidents started to occur.”

But, then the conversation turns to pedal misapplication, and that is where it is left:

“Although, it does need to be brought up, there may have been other changes which coincided with this modification, changes such as pedal or seating position changes. We spoke about misapplication, being a possible cause of these types of collisions, misapplication is where a person goes to step on the brake, but is actually pushing on the gas. As the vehicle accelerates forward, the driver panics, and pushes down harder because the vehicle is not stopping, the vehicle only accelerates more, so until the driver realizes what is going on and lifts off the gas, or what happens more often is, they hit something. Although I do not have any current statistics, the type of case where a collision results predominantly occurs with the elderly. Plus their reaction times are slower and by the time they realize what is occurring a collision has occurred. [Chan] did not have any information on the ages of the drivers involved in their complaints, during my inspection of the gas pedal, locations of this vehicle, it seemed to me the pedals were extremely close. Furthermore, they appeared to be at the same height. It seemed to me a person could easily push on both pedals at the same time, and not know it. This would lead to a driver accelerating while braking.”

It shows up in the agency’s decision to deny a 2008 petition from William Kronholm, a Tacoma owner who experienced two brief UAs in his 2007 truck. Kronholm said that NHTSA investigators pushed pedal misapplication as a cause, because he was wearing ski boots at the time. An attempt to hit both pedals at once showed Kronholm, just as it showed Bob Young four years earlier, that he would have to move his foot into an unnatural position. For Kronholm, this was evidence that dual pedal application was not a cause.  Investigators, however, took pains to mention dual pedal application in their denial of Kronholm’s petition.

It culminated in the denial of an April 2009 petition from, Jeffrey Pepski, a Lexus ES 350 owner from Minnesota. Pepski asked the agency to re-open its probe of UA in Lexus vehicles equipped with electronic throttle control, and criticized it for focusing narrowly on all-weather floor mat interference. Pepski’s incident occurred at high speed in a vehicle that was only outfitted with a standard carpet mat. Although he had tried pumping and pulling up the accelerator with his foot, he could not stop the acceleration. Pepski requested “an additional investigation of model years 2002-2003 Lexus ES 300 for those ‘longer duration incidents involving uncontrollable acceleration where brake pedal application allegedly had no effect.’”

On May 5, about a week before Toyota would send an official response to NHTSA, one of Toyota’s Washington staffers, Chris Santucci sent an investigation status report to colleague According to Santucci, NHTSA was looking for help in crafting a denial:

“For background, NHTSA did inspect the petitioner’s vehicle. While they did not see clearly the witness marks of the carpeted floor mat on the carpet in the forward, unhooked position, they do suspect that the floor mat was responsible for the petitioner’s issue.”

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

Jeff Pepski is adamant that the carpeted floor mat played no role in his incident. In an e-mail to SRS he said:

“My incident occurred on February 3, 2009. My petition to NHTSA was dated March 13, 2009 and I met with the NHTSA reps [Bill Collins and Stephen McHenry with the DOT] and Toyota rep [Mike Zarnecki, the Field Technical Specialist from the Lexus Central Area Office] on May 1, 2009. Since no chain of evidence existed, the possibility of any observable witness marks as of May 1 would be remote and the level of reliability would be non-existent. All three parties were present when I asked Mike Zarnecki to demonstrate how the floor mats could have possibly caused the accelerator pedal to become entrapped. After much manual manipulation of the floor mat, he was able to show how it may occur. At my request he pulled up and pushed down on the gas pedal; the floor mat immediately became free. I explained that the SUA that I experienced did not cease after I had done the same while driving on February 3. If the floor mat had entrapped the accelerator pedal as all three claimed, the vehicle would have stopped accelerating after dislodging the floor mat. The SUA I experienced continued as the floor mat was not the cause.”

Once again, NHTSA investigators were confronted with a direct observation that floor mat interference was not a probable cause of this incident. Toyota had never identified carpeted floor mats in Lexus vehicles as a cause of UA; nor had it ever recalled carpet mats in Lexus vehicles. Yet, months after the incident, ODI still wanted to believe that Pepski’s event was just another case of mechanical interference, and was uninterested in receiving information that challenged that belief.

Systematic and scientific metrics to determine what to investigate remain undeveloped. Instead, ODI relies on a system of “feelings.”

Since the agency never developed its own knowledge base of automotive electronics, it is wholly dependent on the representations of manufacturers. While automakers are always going to know much more about how their vehicles work than any outside entity, NHTSA appears ill-equipped to challenge even the falsehoods that are easy to detect. During the early Toyota investigations of 2003 and 2004, the automaker insisted that the UA events showing up in consumer complaints could not be electronic, because the failsafe system had not detected them, and set a Diagnostic Trouble Code. This was the gospel according to the Silver Book – at least two simultaneous and detectable faults would have to occur for the cruise control electronics to cause a sudden acceleration; and that, in the absence of such detectable faults, the most ‘plausible explanation was driver pedal error.

Toyota knew that errors could occur without setting a DTC. (For example, in an unrelated investigation into unpredictable engine failure in 2005-2008 Corollas, Toyota submitted multiple field technical reports showing problems that the ECU did not catch and record.) In a matter of hours, Dr. David Gilbert, an automotive electronics professor from Southern Illinois University and Toyota owner, showed that the accelerator pedal position sensor’s circuitry could allow the vehicle could go to a wide open throttle without the ECM catching the error. Automotive techs know that a vehicle can have a problem with no code and a code with no problem. Yet NHTSA readily accepted Toyota’s representations about the infallibility of its system.  The agency remains far behind in its understanding of complex vehicle electronics engineering and diagnostics, unable to refute or fruitfully examine potential malfunctions.

It can also be seen in the agency’s hiring decisions – ODI is still the province of mechanical engineers. Only after it was shamed in Congressional hearings about its lack of electronics expertise did it move to acquire a little. And because it doesn’t understand what it is supposed to be investigating, NHTSA doesn’t seem to understand what it should be regulating. Or is it the other way around? In either case, we are still awaiting the resumption of rulemaking around FMVSS 124 accelerator controls, written in 1972.

When Ford decided to bury evidence of the electronic root causes of UA, within the company and without, it helped to freeze the agency’s understanding of how to diagnose and remedy this difficult defect. This legal decision is as good an explanation as any for why, when it comes to automotive electronics, the agency isn’t even in the ballpark, let alone the ball game.

Researchers Bhanu Sood, Michael Osterman and Michael Pecht studied a pedal assemblies performed a physical analysis of an engine control system from a 2005 Camry XLE, V-6 and an accelerator pedal assembly from a defunct 2002 Camry. The 2005 engine control system included the ECM, an accelerator pedal unit, throttle body, electrical connectors and electrical connecting cables.

This tear-down of the accelerator pedal position sensors (APPS) in both Camrys revealed tin whisker formations. Tin whiskers are crystalline structures emanating from tin solder that can produce electrical shorts and current leakage, and have been associated with numerous electronic failures.  The trio of researchers did not have access to the vehicles’ history, so it was not known if the presence of tin whiskers was associated with any malfunctions during the life of either car.

“We were looking at the overall manufacturing of assembly circuit and looking for what level of construction had the potential for defects throughout the entire engine control system,” says Osterman, Senior Research Scientist and the director of the CALCE Electronic Products and System Consortium.

CALCE’s analysis, published in the current issue of the international journal Circuit World, lends support to the work of NASA scientists who found tin whiskers growing in the accelerator pedal unit of every potentiometer they examined. The February report, Technical Support to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on the Reported Toyota Motor Corporation Unintended Acceleration Investigation, was unclear on the subject of the total sample; NASA found tin whiskers growing in the APPSs of either three or four Camrys. One was associated with a vehicle in which the consumer reported that her pedal was ‘jumpy” and that the vehicle was “completely undriveable.” However, based on an analysis of warranty data which was performed by Toyota’s defense expert, Exponent, NHTSA concluded that the presence of tin whiskers did not represent a safety hazard. (see How NHTSA and NASA Gamed the Toyota Data)

On this point, the CALCE scientists sharply diverged. CALCE researchers have been examining the tin whisker phenomenon since 2002, looking at mitigation strategies, growth patterns and tin whisker failures. In addition, they have published widely on the subject of intermittent failures in automotive electrical environments and the difficulties manufacturers face in isolating their root causes. On this study, researchers found as many as six tin whiskers growing on one APPS. Unlike NESC, which used warranty data (secret, time-limited, and otherwise unreliable) as the basis for determining the prevalence of tin whiskers in the fleet and its effect on safety, CALCE used its algorithm and came up with the opposite conclusion:

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

In addition to tin whisker formation in the APPS, the CALCE researchers found the potential for tin whisker formation in the ECM:

“The ECM contains surface mount electronic devices connected with tin-lead solder to a multilayer PCB. … Interconnect terminals of the perimeter leaded devices were found to be plated with tin. In addition, tin plating was found on terminal pins of the edge connections. As previously discussed, tin-finished leads can grow tin whiskers which can lead to unintended electrical shorts.”

“We know whiskers can form on tin finished terminals,” Osterman said. “In this case, Toyota has tin plating in a rather sensitive area, where the system relies on changes in resistance to provide a signal for acceleration.”

In their discussion about the printed circuit board manufacturing processes of Toyota Camrys, CALCE scientists questioned the lack of a safety standard regarding automotive electronics, given broad range of whisker-induced failures. They were openly critical of NHTSA’s lack of action.

“It is highly likely that tin whiskers could induce a failure that is later undetected. For this reason, best practices for electronics design stipulate that tin not be used as a plating material. It is very questionable why the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, with a stated mission to ‘save lives, prevent injuries and reduce economic costs due to road traffic crashes, through education, research, safety standards, and enforcement activity,’ has not come out with a requirement that no electronics use pure tin as a material component, since the potential for tin whiskers presents an unreasonable and unnecessary risk.”

In his withering decision, Senior Judge William T. Swigert of the Fifth Judicial Circuit in Sumter County, Florida ordered a new trial in which the jury would only consider compensatory and punitive damages in Stimpson v. Ford. The post-trial order is a victory for Attorney Thomas J. Murray, of Murray & Murray based in Sandusky, Ohio, who represented the Stimpson family.

The case concerned an October 28, 2003 crash which left Peggy Stimpson permanently paralyzed. Her husband alleged that he was unable to stop the couple’s 1991 Ford Aerostar, when it suddenly accelerated from their carport as he put the van into gear. The Aerostar hurtled more than 100 feet, and crashed into a utility pole.

In his 51-page decision, Judge Swigert excoriated Ford for systematically concealing a long history, stretching back to the 1970s, of studying the problem of electromagnetic interference and unintended acceleration, working to resolve it, but nonetheless finding many instances of it in the real world. Swigert enumerated each step Ford took in achieving a high level of corporate malfeasance – among them, lying to NHTSA, systematically destroying field technical reports that identified electromagnetic interference with the cruise control servo as a cause of unintended acceleration and misleading its own experts, who have repeatedly testified in other cases that driver error had to be the cause of such events.

“The proofs introduced at trial include various patents owned by Ford showing that electronic malfunctions in the cruise control system can cause sudden, unintended acceleration, in addition to reports from Ford’s engineers, including SIRs and CQIS reports, diagnosing sudden acceleration as a problem with the cruise control system. Ford’s Ishikawa engineering diagram likewise shows that EMI is a cause of sudden unintended acceleration.”

Swigert’s decision also rapped Ford’s Counsel J. Randolph Bibb for accusing the Stimpson’s attorney of lying and withholding the results of expert witness tests conducted to show what caused the tire marks left by the Stimpson’s Aerostar as it rocketed out of the carport. Both sides agreed that testimony regarding the tests would not be introduced, since they had not been recorded. But at trial, Ford’s attorney brought them up in a cross-examination and in his closing arguments, suggesting that the results had been withheld from the jury because they were unfavorable to the Stimpsons’ theory of the case.

We will recount the history of Ford’s concealment in all of its ignominious detail in a future blog post, and its implications for the much-relied-upon conclusions of the1989 An Examination of Sudden Acceleration, known within NHTSA as “The Silver Book.” Manufacturers, such as Ford, have been waving this tome in front of juries in UA cases, as proof positive of driver error. Judge Swigert, weighing it against Ford’s knowledge of electronic causes of unintended acceleration, as sketched by the internal documents and Ford employee testimony that the plaintiffs introduced at trial, was not impressed. He found it was based on false information and untested assumptions, for which no empirical evidence existed.

Stimpson V. Ford:  Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law and Memorandum Decision

Stimpson V. Ford: Order on Plaintiffs’ Motion for Relief from Judgement, Partial Final Judgement in Favor of Plaintiffs on Liability, and Order Conditionally Granting New Trial.

• - NASA identified numerous failures in Toyota electronics that could lead to unwanted acceleration.
• - The report was heavily influenced by Toyota and its experts, including Exponent.
• - The reports were narrowly construed examinations of limited vehicles and components.
• - Much of the reports remain shrouded in secrecy.

On February 8, Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood released Technical Assessment of Toyota Electronic Throttle Control (ETC) Systems and Technical Support to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on the Reported Toyota Motor Corporation Unintended Acceleration Investigation. The two reports, LaHood said, exonerated Toyota’s electronics as the alleged cause of unintended acceleration complaints: “The verdict is in,” LaHood said. “There is no electronic-based cause for unintended, high-speed acceleration in Toyotas.”

The Safety Record’s analysis of the NESC report shows that Toyota’s primary contention in previous government investigations of unintended acceleration is false – there are several scenarios in which engine speed can be increased, RPMs can surge, and the throttle can be opened to various degrees in contradiction to the driver’s command, and not set a Diagnostic Trouble Code (DTC). Among those causes of electronic malfunction in some Toyota vehicles the investigators found were tin whiskers in the Accelerator Pedal Position Sensor (APPS) of potentiometer-type pedals. Tin whiskers are hair-like structures that can cause electrical shorts. The team found the presence of this well-known electronics phenomenon in virtually every potentiometer accelerator pedal assembly inspected – including a vehicle whose pedal was replaced by Toyota following acceleration problems.

The NESC and NHTSA teams did not engage independent engineers with expertise in vehicle engine management design, validation and testing to assist them in evaluating Toyota’s system. Rather, they allowed Toyota to guide this research. In addition, NHTSA relied on Exponent, a science-defense firm specifically retained by Toyota’s counsel for the purpose of defending the company against a class-action lawsuit, to perform an analysis of warranty claims without identifying Exponent as the source of this information. This analysis was used by NHTSA and NESC investigators to dismiss the significant finding of tin whiskers in accelerator pedal sensor circuits causing resistive shorts that can lead to unintended acceleration without triggering fail-safes.  Further, the NESC report is littered with redactions, making it impossible for other scientists to replicate the studies.

“These studies were far from independent. They are the products of Toyota’s involvement and that of the company’s litigation defense experts who provided the statistical analysis that the agencies used to dismiss the physical evidence that showed flaws in Toyota’s electronics,” says SRS President Sean Kane. “Contrary to Secretary Ray LaHood’s pronouncements, the investigations actually showed numerous ways that Toyotas can experience unintended acceleration without alerting the fault detection system. They were simply dismissed as unlikely.”

Finally, The Safety Record challenges NHTSA and NESC’s claim that media hype is responsible for generating a surge of baseless UA reports. An independent statistical analysis shows that prior to any news reports, owners of Camrys equipped with ETCS-i reported UA at significantly greater rates than owners of Camry vehicles without ETCS-i.

“As flawed as the NHTSA and NESC reports are, they tell us a lot about problems with Toyota’s electronic architecture,” Kane said. “They are a valuable starting point. We hope that others will read our report, and build on our observations.”

To download the full report published by The Safety Record, click on the thumbnail below.

Unintended Lessons in Quality Control: Toyota Motor Corp. - Quality Control Systems Corp.

To download the document linking Exponent to the warranty claims data analysis cited in the NHTSA and NASA reports, click on the thumbnail below.

Click here to visit NHTSA’s Toyota Unintended Acceleration website, including links to the full reports and publicly available supporting materials.

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

Behold! Our latest Toyota Recall Matrix:

The remedies are a complex welter of fixes:

• New floor mats

• Shorter accelerator pedals – or not

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

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

• New Retention clips—not once but twice

• Shaved plastic pads

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

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 finishing touches on their reports saying that there is nothing wrong with Toyota’s electronics or software, Scott experienced an unintended acceleration event in his 2007 Lexus RX350, on his way home from the gym. Here’s the narrative that Scott, 46, the chief financial officer for the International Union of Police Associations, wrote:

“At approx. 8:05 am on Thursday, December 2nd I was stopped behind a school bus that was picking up children at the intersection of Sarasota Square Blvd and Crockers Lake Blvd in Sarasota, FL. After the bus cleared the intersection (1-2 min wait) I gave the car enough gas to make the right hand turn onto Crockers Lake Blvd. which is only approx. 150-200 ft in length. I estimate the speed was between 10-15 mph when I began braking to make the left hand turn into the Citation Club Apartments when I noticed the vehicle was not slowing. I pressed the brake pedal harder and the car continued to pull against the brakes. As I approached the end of Crockers Lake Blvd I had both feet on the brakes and the car was slowing, however the engine was “screaming” and the tachometer was approaching to “red-line”. I managed to make the left hand turn and as the car slowed I shifted it into park to stop it. The engine was screaming so I turned the ignition to the off position. I attempted to restart the vehicle and it immediately red-lined again; I immediately turned the car off. At this time two employees of Citation Club approached me on the passenger side in a service golf cart and asked what was wrong. I indicated I didn’t know but they should “hear this” at which time I started the car again and it again red-lined. I immediately turned the ignition off. One of the Citation Club employees told me they would push me out of the entrance area to prevent my vehicle from being struck should someone attempt to enter the complex. Once safely parked, I exited the vehicle and immediately checked to be sure the floor mats were still secured by the anchors; they were. I looked for any type of obstruction near the accelerator and found none.”

The dealership, Wilde Lexus, however did find a problem – they found three different problems. Or, rather, one problem that changed three times. First, they told him that his vehicle was equipped with the wrong carpet mats. Then they told him that the floor mats were the right size, but that they were “bunched up” around the accelerator. Then they told him that the driver’s side floor mat appeared to dislodge a section of molding that obstructed the accelerator. So – wrong-size floor mats, bunched up floor mats, then dislodged molding. Are you with us?

About a week later, the dealership informed him that even though they had isolated the problem to a carpeted floor mat, Lexus was sending a team of engineers to examine the vehicle. When the engineers arrived, they called Scott to ask if the accelerator was 25-percent or 50-percent depressed. The accelerator was zero-percent depressed – Scott was braking at the time the UA occurred.

Back to the narrative: “Late in the afternoon of December 20th I received a call from Lexus (Corporate) stating that the engineers had determined they ‘didn’t want to take any more chances with the vehicle on the road and that they wanted to purchase my vehicle back if I was interested.’ ”

Scott was interested – and stunned.

“I never anticipated hearing that out of the blue,” Scott told SRS. “It was supposedly a floor mat issue. I remember telling the service manager, ‘I find it hard to believe Toyota buys back cars because of a floor mat problem.’ ”

And today, the mystery deepened. Toyota announced more floor mat recalls and under-the-floor-mat and trim interference recalls!

First, Toyota added three more models to its earlier all-weather floor mat recalls (also see Toyota All-Weather Floor Mat Entrapment) to address the potential for unsecured or incompatible floor mat entrapment of the accelerator pedal: the 2003 through 2009 4Runner; 2008 through 2011 Lexus LX 570; and the 2010 RAV4.

Second, it announced a new safety recall of approximately 20,000 2006 and early 2007 Model Year GS 300 and GS 350 All-Wheel Drive vehicles to modify the shape of the plastic pad embedded in the driver’s side floor carpet, which apparently can be moved during a service operation, and interfere with the gas pedal.

Third, it announced a recall of 372,000 2004 through 2006 and early 2007 RX 330, RX 350, and RX 400h vehicles, and 397,000 2004 through 2006 Highlander and Highlander HV vehicles, to replace the driver’s side floor carpet cover and its two retention clips, because “if the forward retention Ilip used to secure the floor carpet cover, which is located in front of the center console, is not installed properly, the cover may lean toward the accelerator pedal and interfere with the accelerator pedal arm.”

And the freaky thing is – Toyota had already recalled the 2004-2005 and early 2006 Highlanders and 2004 – 2005 Lexus RX 330 and 2006 RX400h center console to replace the forward retention clip used to secure the floor carpet cover in front of the center console. In 2006 (06V253)!  The campaign warned: “The two Retaining Clips for the driver’s side forward Center Console (Floor Carpet Cover) can become loose. If both clips separate from the Floor Carpet Cover, the cover may lean toward the accelerator pedal, causing interference with the accelerator pedal rod. In the worst case, this condition may interfere with the accelerator pedal returning to the idle position and thus may increase the possibility of a crash.”

So is this a re-notification? The forward retention clip Toyota replaced five years ago is already breaking and they are worried about the rear clip, too? So many questions.

Now, Scott is no little old lady. He’s a strapping guy of 250 pounds who, as an RX owner, had been following all the Toyota news. The first thing he checked when he stopped his vehicle was the state of his carpet mats. They were secured, in place and nowhere near his accelerator.

“I don’t scare easy, but that scared the s—t out of me. If it had happened three minutes earlier, I would have plowed into the back of a school bus. I had all my weight on those brakes. The engine was screaming. And when I got the car to stop, I almost jumped out, because I thought it was going to explode,” he says “It’s a travesty what they are trying to do. The fact that there’s another massive round of recalls just underlines that there’s a problem. I don’t like that large corporations can get way with putting people’s lives in jeopardy.”

Obviously, Mr. Scott did not get the memo from Ray and his band of rocket scientists: all mechanical causes of unintended acceleration have already been identified and remedied. There are no electronic or software problems with Toyotas.

P.S. Toyota, we don’t know if truth is stranger than fiction, but fiction sure is more work to maintain.

Last week, NHTSA pitched its two technical tomes on Toyota unintended acceleration at a pack of reporters, declared that the automaker’s electronics were fine, and ran away. Our esteemed Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood then made the media rounds, grousing that the critics hadn’t read the report, which leads us to ask: Did Ray?

We’ve been reading it and re-reading it, and conferring with a wide range of technical experts – some of whom have extensive experience in engine management control design, validation and testing. And we gotta tell you, Ray, we aren’t ready to buy our kid a new Toyota.

Far from exonerating Toyota electronics, the reports by NHTSA and the NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) confirm the paucity of the automaker’s safety diagnostics. The NESC team also identifies how the two signals in the accelerator pedal position sensor can be shorted in the real world – leading to an open throttle (aka, tin whiskers). Hell, NESC found the potential in three pedals – that’s a pretty significant percentage in a very small sample. Tin whiskers are such a serious issue that NASA has devoted considerable resources to studying them. They have wreaked electronic havoc on everything from medical devices to weapons systems and satellites. Yet, the NESC report treated the discovery of tin whiskers in a third of their pedal sample like a dead end, instead of a promising avenue of study.

And what’s up with all those black blotches over key bits of data? It’s mighty suspicious – especially since some of the information clearly wasn’t proprietary, but might allow an independent assessment of exactly what NHTSA and NESC did.

Now, Ray is a politician, not a safety expert – no matter how many compliments he gives himself in the third person. He’s a good one – and he knows he can count on the nation’s passing acquaintance with science to swallow the headline without understanding the details. Or, to judge by some of the reactions from the business-rag pundits, without reading the report, either. The issue loop-de-loops another news cycle, and the problem goes away. Bit of a sticky wicket, though – engineering and design defects can’t be fixed with scientific words.

We will be releasing our preliminary observations shortly. In the meantime, consumers should not lose heart. Keep reporting your SUA incidents to Toyota and NHTSA — and let us know when you do.  It is not all in your head, or in your two left feet.

Interesting fact: A raft of academic and industry studies show that customers who complain and have their complaint successfully resolved bring in more money to the company than it costs to fix the problem.

In the topsy-turvy Toyota World, however, it’s the customers who are already happy that get the red carpet treatment and big bucks. Have you heard about Nick and Sharyn Davis, from Parker County, Texas? You will soon. According to The Weatherford Democrat, the Davises are among the lucky winners in a Toyota advertising campaign, touting “real people with real stories about their Toyotas. And, the Davises are part of those real people.”

A crew of nearly 100 from an LA ad agency and a catering truck descended on the Davises’ remote ranch. And, after signing the couple up to the Screen Actors Guild, and a 12-hour shoot, the checks started rolling in.  By keeping it real for Toyota, the Davises have made $23,000 and counting.

Gee, we’ve got real people with real stories about Toyotas and we didn’t have to pay them a dime. They keep calling us, frustrated because after they’ve suffered a crash after their Toyota took off on them, or merely a very frightening experience or multiple events with different drivers, same car, Toyota writes them a nice letter explaining that nothing is wrong with their vehicle and to please pound sand.

These are the inconvenient real stories – the ones that can’t be explained by floor mats, driver error, or sticky pedals. Check them out (more to come…)  These Toyota and Lexus owners are out of considerable cash, afraid to drive a vehicle with a dangerously unpredictable streak and conscience-stricken about selling the vehicle to another victim of Toyota’s decision to roll the dice on SUA.

Unlike the Davises, there’s no check in the mail.

The MDL, filed this week on behalf of Toyota and Lexus owners alleging that the automaker’s SUA defect has caused their vehicles to lose value, shows that Toyota has known, at least since May 2003 that its Electronic Throttle Control had a “dangerous” unintended acceleration problem with an unknown cause. That civil action, and a second one claiming damages for Toyota and Lexus owners who were injured or killed in crashes alleged to have been caused by SUA, cite six incidents which occurred between 2003 and 2010, witnessed by Toyota technicians, dealers and others. The e-mails also show that Toyota spent considerable energy trying to divert NHTSA from looking too closely at the issue. Here are some highlights from the class-action complaint:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?