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.

This tough stance on recall timeliness is welcome – but does not resolve the larger issues raised by Toyota unintended acceleration – namely how defects are defined in the era of automotive electronics and how such defects are investigated when they are rare, multi-root-cause, and potentially deadly?

The dribble of documents released by the Multi-District Litigation and Congress so far show that UA has been duplicated by Toyota technicians and, contrary to attempts by Toyota advocates and agency investigators to pass off all incidents as driver error, sticky pedals, big shoes and floor mats, there are instances when reliable technical personnel take the vehicle for a test spin and experience UA with no pedal involvement. In fact, we have discovered that Toyota techs were able to duplicate UA in one of very public and widely debated case – but lied to the consumer about it. (We’ll feature that story in a future post.)

The root cause – or causes – of such instances remain obscured, for the moment. There are multiple possibilities. (We suspect that Toyota execs and technical staff in Japan have a much better idea of why these instances occur.) We know that Toyota has bought back vehicles that have experienced a UA event in front of dealership personnel for further testing. Independent testing and vehicle inspections continue to show Toyota’s fault detection software has some serious flaws – flaws that allow unwanted events to occur undetected and without activation of the failsafe features.  There are no regulations that govern the layers of safety need in today’s sophisticated vehicle electronics.  While some manufacturers follow strict multi-tiered safety strategies that catch inevitable (and sometimes rare) occurrences, Toyota appears to be missing some core layers.  How and whether this gets addressed will set the foundation for the future of motor vehicle defect investigations and recalls.

Eventually, this knot will be untangled – but by whom? The National Academy of Sciences is still working on its report. But the panelists aren’t experts in vehicle electronics and have an incredibly broad mandate to review everything from electronic controls design and reliability to environmental factors to cyber-security of automotive electronic control systems.  We don’t expect any revelations there. The Inspector General is looking at NHTSA’s investigatory process, and this work may yield some insight and suggested improvements. The joint NASA-NHTSA effort is scheduled to conclude in 2011.  NHTSA still has an open Recall Query, RQ10-003, to determine if Toyota too narrowly defined the defect in its two UA-related recalls.

And that takes us back to our first question. ODI investigators have traditionally been broken parts guys and gals. What happens if the defect is a line of code or a faulty detection strategy made of digital Swiss cheese? The agency itself may have to broaden the concept of defect to address the evolution of vehicle computer systems and electronics and whether rare events with serious consequences are safety-related defects under their mandate.

To our second question about investigations into a rare, random, and yet potentially deadly defects – the agency isn’t going to get anywhere until it catches up to today’s engine systems. Some of the agency’s public efforts to date, such as the “study” of SUA events using Event Data Recorders, showed how far NHTSA has to go. The agency mischaracterized the data and failed to address the many discrepancies in the readouts. Further, it omitted any context about the questionable reliability of Toyota’s EDRs and about the incidents it included.  The “results” didn’t add much of anything to the discussion other than blaring headlines that alleged NHTSA exonerated Toyota of electronic defects.

Toyota SUA has also exposed more regulatory fissures. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 124 Accelerator Controls has pretty much lost its relevance. Its purpose is: “to reduce deaths and injuries resulting from engine overspeed caused by malfunctions in the accelerator control system.” In 2005, NHTSA proposed amending it. But, the industry sought to rescind the standard, arguing that market forces and litigation pressure were sufficient to assure fail-safe performance without a safety standard. The agency terminated the rulemaking.

And, while these broad questions beg for answers, automakers are experimenting with even more sophisticated and integrated electronics.

Three record fines in one year ain’t beanbag. In all three cases – the relay rods, the accelerator pedal and the floor mats – Toyota had recalled the affected vehicles overseas months before it got around to recalling those components here. It’s refreshing to see the agency enforce the law. But penalizing a manufacturer for failing to file a timely defect report only requires counting to five. The agency will greet 2011 with the much more complicated issue of unintended acceleration hanging in the balance. We’ll address that in a future post.

In the meantime, back to the fines. The details were MIA. NHTSA did not say when it thought Toyota had a duty to recall those components. Toyota didn’t admit it did anything wrong. Since the agency hasn’t made its case for the penalty to the public, the Safety Record Blog will do it for them.

Why Toyota Was Late in Recalling the Floor Mats

In March, Toyota submitted a detailed chronology of the events leading up to its first floor mat recall in September 2007, when Toyota shut down Engineering Analysis 07010, by launching a floor mat recall. The chronology contained scant detail, but it did yield several interesting points: Toyota claimed to have had practically no complaints about floor mat interference; it scrambled to take action beginning in March 2007 to avert a NHTSA investigation; and it initiated a floor mat “field action” in the European market sometime in July 2007, two months before the automaker announced a recall in the U.S.

Further, the chronology was at odds with information presented to the agency in PE-07016. The chronology did not explain these discrepancies.

For example, the chronology showed that prior to taking any action, Toyota had only two reports of floor-mat interference – a field technical report in February 2006 involving a 2005 Prius and September dealership report involving a 2007 Lexus 350ES, using multiple floor mats – before it decided to stop the sale of all of All Weather Floor Mats to implement changes. In its June 11, 2007 response to PE07-016, Toyota says it had no field reports related to pedal entrapment in MY2007 Lexus ES350s.  Further, according to the response Toyota filed in June 2007 to PE07-016, it had received 38 consumer complaints related to pedal entrapment in Lexus 350ES vehicles – eight involved crashes; five with injuries. The chronology does not mention any of these incidents as influencing their ensuing actions.

On March 27, 2007, the automaker says that added a hangtag to be removed by customers and put a product usage label on the packaging. A stop-sale would appear to be an extraordinary reaction, if there were only two incidents in seven months involving different makes, models and model years. However, it is more likely that Toyota’s decision to add these warnings was an effort to get out in front of a pending NHTSA investigation.

According to the Toyota chronology, the automaker learned on March 29, 2007 that NHTSA opened a Preliminary Evaluation on the floor mat issue. However, e-mails offered as exhibits in the multi-district litigation show that Toyota already knew that an Opening Resume on floor mat interference in the ES350 was soon in the offing. In the days leading up the official opening on an investigation, Toyota’s manager of government affairs, Christopher Tinto, informed his colleague Mitch Kato, about the state of negotiations with NHTSA, which clearly began before Toyota’s March 27 decision:

“I spoke to NHTSA management today (K. Demeter) about a potential compromise on the ES350 floor mat Issue. In lieu of a Part 573 safely recall, I offered the following:

Toyota will send a letter to all 2007MY ES350 owners reminding them not to install all weather mats on top of existing mats; In addition, we will enclose a caution label advising owners of the same, and ask owners to affix the label on the flat surface on the backside of the mat; We will also alert dealers of the issue, and remind them not to install mats on top of existing mats; If the owners want to have the dealer affix the label to the mat, Toyota will offer that they bring their vehicles to the dealer to ask them to do it, free of charge. However, we will NOT file a 573 (i.e. this is not a safety recall), because a) this is an ‘aftermarket’ install b) there is no design or manufacturing defect in the mat or vehicle, and c) the issue really boils down to improper installation of the mats by the owner or the dealer (but I noted that Toyota has no evidence that dealers are actually doing this.) Ms. Demeter said that there is precedent in NHTSA’s history for safety recalls in this area, but understood our idea she pledged that they would discuss it internally and get back to me with a response to our proposal in a few days. She also insured me that NHTSA would not open a formal PE until she gets back to me.”

Toyota also acknowledged that before it launched the first, limited floor mat recall in September 2007, it had initiated some sort of a floor mat campaign for its European customers in July. Little is publicly known about what Toyota calls a “field action.” Under the TREAD ACT, manufacturers must report an overseas safety recall or “other safety campaign in a foreign country on a motor vehicle or motor vehicle equipment that is identical or substantially similar to a motor vehicle or motor vehicle equipment offered for sale in the United States.”  There is no evidence in the public record that Toyota did reported this floor mat “field action” to NHTSA prior to disclosing it in TQ10-001.

In the ensuing two years, the cycle repeated itself. According to the chronology, Toyota reported having received only two more complaints. (SRS is aware of a January 2008 crash involving floor-mat entrapment in a Lexus ES350, which occurred on a Connecticut highway. This crash was reported to Toyota. It was noted on one of Toyota’s quarterly EWRs, but it is not one of the complaints mentioned in the chronology.)

After the Saylor crash spotlighted Toyota’s SUA problems, the automaker again ramped up a response. The very public loss of life, involving a California Highway Patrol officer caught Toyota’s attention in a way eight previous NHTSA investigations did not.

In a September 2009 e-mail from Toyota’s Koji Sakekibara to his colleagues underscored the delicate position in which the automaker found itself:

“In light of the information that two minutes before the crash, an occupant made a call to 911 telling that the accelerator pedal was stuck and the vehicle would not stop, I think that the Body Engineering Division should act proactively first, (investigate issues such as whether the accelerator assay is the cause, how to secure floor mats, the timing of introducing shape improvements.) Furthermore, taking into account the circumstances that in this event a police officer and his entire family TMS-PQSS Public Affairs Group thinks that the NHTSA and the USA public already hold very harsh opinions in regards to Toyota (As I think you know, in some cases in the USA killing a police officer means the death penalty.”)

This time, the internal assessment took other solutions into account: “Toyota conducted various analyses to evaluate the emergency shutdown method of Toyota vehicles and competitor vehicles, to evaluate the brake override system of competitor vehicles, to evaluate the accelerator pedal shape change to reduce the risk of pedal entrapment by floor mats, and to compare the shift levers of Toyota vehicles with competitor vehicle,” Toyota wrote in its chronology.  After initially advising owners to remove the All-Weather Floor Mats from their vehicles, Toyota issued a second-phase response, which included a brake-to-idle override for some models, and newly designed floor mats for all vehicles under the recall.

The chronology admitted to no virtually internal evidence of a problem over a four-year period. Was Toyota suggesting that consumer complaints, early warning reports and legal and warranty claims had no role in driving their recall decisions? Did Toyota expect the experienced ODI staff to accept the explanation that on the basis of two field reports, Toyota initiated a stop sale? Based on Toyota’s EWRs, NHTSA opened at least five Death and Injury inquiries on incidents in which floor mat entrapment was alleged. Toyota did not mention any on these incidents in its chronology.

The outline of events cast Toyota’s floor mat recall campaigns in September 2007 and October 2009 as rear-guard actions, driven by NHTSA or other externalities. While the agency investigation is in the preliminary evaluation stage, the automaker conducts pedal entrapment analyses in an Avalon and Prius in relation to pedal geometry and the All-Weather floor mat, and finds nothing wrong. Once NHTSA elevates the investigation to the engineering analysis stage, Toyota decides to conduct a floor mat recall in September 2007.

In conclusion: Toyota claimed to have practically no complaints about floor mat interference; it only acted in March 2007 to shut down ODI; it initiated a floor mat “field action” in the European market sometime in July 2007, two months before the automaker announced a recall in the U.S.

Ding!

Why Toyota Was Late in Recalling Defective Relay Rods

The relay rod recall chronology was much less tortured. In October 2004, the automaker disclosed to NHTSA that it had recalled Hilux and Hilux Surf vehicles sold in Japan for defective relay rods – but not its U.S. counterparts, Toyota 4Runner, the Toyota Truck and Toyota T100. The rods had a tendency to snap, leaving the driver with no steering controls. But Toyota blamed it on driving conditions unique to the Japanese market:

“TMC has received field information from the Japanese market, but no similar information from the U.S. market has been received. In addition to the different steering linkage design between the right hand drive and the left hand drive vehicles, TMC believes that the unique operation conditions in Japan, such as frequent standing full lock turns, such as for narrow parking spaces and close quarters maneuvering, greatly affects the occurrence of this problem.”

The Hilux recall was a scandal in Japan; with police referring three Toyota executives for criminal prosecution. Top managers avoided jail time. Instead, the Japanese government publicly criticized Toyota and ordered the company to reform its recall practices.

Back in the U.S., Toyota told NHTSA that it had not received any reports of relay rod failures.

Here’s one of those complaints the automaker didn’t receive in 2004, as reported among its 2004 EWR data:

The driver, Zoe Chapman of Whitethorn, CA, was driving her T-100 truck at about 20 mph near Humboldt Redwoods State Park, when she lost steering. The truck climbed an embankment and rolled over. Chapman and her passengers were belted and escaped with minor injuries, but the truck was totaled. Immediately after the crash, Chapman and her passengers saw that the relay rod was severed at a line of rust. They happened to be professional and accomplished photographers who made an on-the-spot visual record of the evidence. Toyota looked at the same facts and decided that the relay rod broke as a result of the rollover and told Chapman to pound sand.

On September 6, 2005, Toyota finally recalled the defective steering relay rods on 977, 839 1989-1995 Toyota pick ups and 4Runners in the U.S. The repair rate was so low, Toyota took the unusual step of issuing an owner re-notification, but it came too late for 18-year-old Michael “Levi” Stewart of Idaho, who died in a September 2007, after the relay rod on his 1991 Toyota pickup fractured. The Stewart family received a recall notice two months later.

Attorney John Kristensen, who represents the Stewart family, did some digging and discovered that Toyota had actually received at least 44 reports in the U.S. since as early as 2000, including crashes involving rollovers and injuries, plus a bunch of warranty claims. In May, Kristensen called on NHTSA to open a Timeliness Query for the relay rod recall, which it did.

In conclusion: In 2004, Toyota recalls vehicles in Japan for broken relay rods, but not in the U.S.; Toyota lies to the agency and claims it has no reports of relay rod failures in the U.S.; Toyota recalls U.S. vehicles with broken relay rods one year later.

Ding! Ding!

In total, Toyota paid $48.8 million in timeliness fines – a slight wobble on their $2.2 billion bottom line. Individual drivers and passengers paid for that delay – in economic losses, and in some cases, with their lives.

The WSJ in a subsequent story identified George Person, recently retired head of the recall division at NHTSA, as the source.  (see No Black Box Exoneration for Toyota and Lawsuits Fill in Outline of Toyota Sudden Acceleration Cover-Up)

Person’s leak appears to have prompted the briefing and, based on the briefing memo, Person accurately described the findings.  But what is missing from the WSJ – and most other reports about the data – is context.

(And while we’re on the topic of Person, we failed to mention that we do appreciate Mr. Person’s concern about government transparency – Person told the WSJ “When I asked why it hadn’t been published, I was told that the secretary’s office didn’t want to release it.”  But he lost us when he claimed “The agency has for too long ignored what I believe is the root cause of the unintended acceleration cases … It’s driver error.  It’s pedal misapplication and that what this data shows.”  Sorry George, but, we still hold fast that your statement tells more about your bias than it does the facts.)

Let’s start with the data, what is it and what has NHTSA disclosed about it:

NHTSA claims it conducted 58 field inspections and the vehicles it selected for inspection were crashes in which:

“There was an allegation of unintended acceleration or the possibility of unintended acceleration based on preliminary incident information; the vehicle was still available with the EDR intact; the vehicle contained an EDR with pre-crash data; and the owner of the vehicle was willing to allow NHTSA to read the EDR.  It is also important to note that most Toyota models manufactured before 2007 were not equipped with EDRs capable of pre-crash data.”

NHTSA noted that it gleaned the following breakdown from the data in the 58 cases:

35 showed no brake application

14 involved partial braking

9 involved braking late in the crash

3 involved early braking

2 involved mid-event braking

1 event was said to have involved pedal entrapment

1 event showed both brake and accelerator application

1 case the EDR contained information related to a separate incident

1 case NHTSA is still working to resolve inconclusive data from the EDR

5 cases resulted in no EDR activation at all

How has NHTSA characterized these findings:

“At this early point in its investigation, NHTSA officials have drawn no conclusions about the additional causes of unintended acceleration in Toyotas beyond the two defects already known – pedal entrapment and sticking gas pedals.”

NHTSA made it clear that these data are only a small piece of the puzzle, and while driver error is a likely cause of some SUA events, the EDR data don’t make for a compelling case that this is all that’s happening – particularly as independent experts and Toyota continue to document events in which the vehicle diagnostic systems fail to detect unwanted acceleration events.

NHTSA has included in the 58 cases events that have “the possibility of unintended acceleration based on preliminary incident information.”  How many is not known.

We have examined many possible SUA crash events too, and those “possible” SUA events tend to involve single vehicle run-off-the-road crashes with no explanation and no witnesses.  While these events need to be investigated, they are far from the more typical events in which no EDR is activated, the driver, passengers, other witnesses, or in some cases Toyota dealers report first hand engines racing that can’t be explained by mechanical interference or driver error.  Some of these cases were detailed in the Multi-District Litigation complaint against Toyota which cited dealer reports produced by Toyota.  (see Lawsuits Fill in Outline of Toyota Sudden Acceleration Cover-Up)

The NHTSA EDR data don’t address pre-2007 Toyota / Lexus model vehicles as those vehicles are not equipped with EDRs that capture pre-crash data – yet many of the pre-2007 vehicles (including the Camry and Tacoma) have the highest SUA complaint rates and are not part of any recall.

Safety Research & Strategies has already addressed the murkiness and accuracy of Toyota’s EDR’s (see EDR: Toyota’s Electronic Doubt Receptacle).  And since most of the news reports failed to mention it, we would like to remind you again of an important bit of context: Toyota has always stated that the accuracy of the black boxes has never been scientifically validated. In fact, the company fights to keep the data from being used in litigation because it says the EDR data aren’t reliable.

Now, NHTSA’s briefing yesterday noted the agency has done its own EDR validation testing on two 2007 Camry’s and one 2008 Highlander and they have found “Toyota EDR data the same as the data produced by the NHTSA test equipment.” So, what’s the take-away from this set of data:  The Toyota EDRs report accurate information when the vehicle is functioning properly.  What happens when a vehicle experiences an unintended event, sets no error code, and a crash ensues?

In summary, upwards of 95 percent of the SUA reported incidents don’t involve EDR activation.  The recent NHTSA EDR data summary is interesting and worth further examination, but it clearly cannot be extrapolated to the thousands of incidents of SUA in which an EDR didn’t activate and witnesses report racing engines without driver input or mechanical interference.

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 company has completed more than 600 on-site vehicle inspections and our dealership technicians have completed an additional 1,400 inspections. We have submitted 701 field technical reports to this Committee, including on-site SMART team evaluations. These examinations are giving us a better understanding about the reasons for unintended acceleration complaints. Significantly, none of these investigations have found that our Electronic Throttle Control System with intelligence, or ETCS-i, was the cause.”

That’s so nice, that Toyota let Congress see those reports. Customers are not so fortunate. The typical Toyota experience for owners who report an unintended acceleration incident is a visit to the dealership, where the vehicle is presumably checked out and given a clean bill of health. The consumer is not privy to what precise tests were conducted or what they showed. Customers who ask for the test data are told they aren’t allowed to have it.

Diana Buckley of Canton, GA hit a pole in a Lowe’s parking lot on April 10, after her 2004 Sienna lunged forward while her foot was on the brake. Buckley described maneuvering into the parking spot at a very low speed. Her foot was on the brake in preparation of bringing her vehicle to a complete stop, when the vehicle “lunged forward. I quickly looked down at my foot, and it was definitely, definitely on the brake. I pushed down, but it was too late – I only had 10 or 12 feet to respond,” she says

The Buckleys had already experienced seven or eight prior experiences, like the one that resulted in the parking mishap. Diana Buckley says they started in 2005 and 2006. Sporadically, in low speed situations, the driver would give the Sienna a little gas and it would hesitate and then lurch forward powerfully. The Buckleys had taken the vehicle in to the dealership each time, the vehicle was returned with a clean bill of health. Once, however, the dealership mechanic conceded:

“We’ve got lots of these complaints and sooner or later, they are going to have to do something,” Buckley recalled.

After her April incident, Buckley pursued a claim against Toyota. There was a six-week runaround between the dealership and Toyota. The company sent an independent inspector to look at her Sienna, who also cleared the vehicle. Buckley asked to see the Tech Stream data along with any other documentation of the tests and he politely told her that he wasn’t allowed to share the data generated by the vehicle with the vehicle owner. She would have to go to Toyota for that information. She’s still waiting.

Stewart Stogle, a journalist by trade and a dogged consumer by nature, was also left in the dark. Stogle, the owner of a 2009 Camry, ping ponged from Toyota to NHTSA trying to obtain the details contained within the field inspection report the automaker sent to the agency – to no avail: Stogle of New Rochelle, N.Y., experienced three bouts of sudden unintended acceleration in his 2009 model and turned his vehicle over to Toyota twice for a high-level corporate inspection. While Toyota gave him a copy of the Health Check, they would not release to him the more detailed field report. Here’s the digital brush-off from regional customer service manager Vincent Favorito:

Date: Friday, March 12, 2010, 4:45 PM

Good Morning Mr. Stogel…..

As per Toyota’s Agreement with NHTSA, we agreed to perform a complete inspection on any vehicle where a customer complains about “Unintended Sudden Acceleration”…. before or after the recall fix is complete. Furthermore, this includes vehicles that do NOT fall under one of our open safety campaigns. Upon completion of our inspection, a detailed Field Technical Report is submitted to our corporate office for review followed by submission to NHTSA.

After speaking with Joel Goldschmitt (Field Technical Specialist)….Joel indicated that he could not duplicate your concern after having “test driven” the vehicle for more than 200 miles under normal everyday driving conditions. In addition, Joel performed a complete “Health Check” (using a scantool) of the vehicles operating system to ensure the vehicle is operating as intended under the manufacturer’s specifications. Last, Joel inspected the workmanship performed by the dealership to ensure that the “Safety Campaign” was completed properly.

Upon review of the various tests performed on your vehicle, Joel could not find anything abnormal that would impair the vehicles ability to operate normally and or safely. Attached for your review is a copy of your Repair Order and “Health Check” that you should have received from the dealership. These documents specifically explain what tests and repairs were performed on your vehicle as well as the outcome.

The “EDR Readout” you mentioned also commonly referred to as the Black Box only records data when the vehicle is in an accident whereby the airbags are deployed. Given that your vehicle was never in an accident it would be impossible to extract data that was never recorded. As far as the “Field Technical Report” that Joel submitted to our corporate office, please feel free to contact NHTSA to retrieve this report for your use.

Sincerely

Vincent R. Favorito
Regional Customer Relations and Field Technical Manager

Stogel tried mightily to pry the field technical report on his vehicle from Toyota’s, and then NHTSA’s hands. He’s still waiting.

Maybe Toyota doesn’t want to give consumers access to their own information because, as another persistent consumer found out – that “inspection” may not be all it’s cracked up to be. Tim Kenkel of Denver CO drove his 2008 Rav4 Limited straight to the dealership after multiple SUA incidences in a half-an-hour time span. You’ll recall that the dealership tried to return it with a clean bill of health after claiming to have done a thorough inspection. Turned out that the thorough inspection consisted of looking at the driver’s side foot well. It was your floor mat, the technicians insisted. Kenkel asked to see the documentation of the tests, and that’s when the dealership revealed that it hadn’t actually run any diagnostics. His vehicle went back in the shop for real tests, and the techs found multiple diagnostic trouble codes.

Kenkel shared his paperwork with SRS and that’s when things got interesting. One page was entitled: “Toyota Dealer UA Process Flow” and sub-titled “Scenario II Owner claims to have experienced unintended acceleration, but has not been involved in an accident.”

What follows is an elaborate flow chart involving corporate claims case managers, owner interviews, and a more involved set of diagnostics that may involve an EDR download or a system scan. Woven neatly into the chart were the contradictions that have dogged Toyota and NHTSA since this mess began — to wit:

Explain normal vehicle system characteristics that are of concern to the owner

Discuss what to do if the owner experiences unintended acceleration

Drivers are at the dealership because their vehicle does not exhibit characteristics that would be considered normal in any automotive universe. (Or maybe Toyota’s saying that it’s normal for your vehicle to suddenly redline? Not sure.) As for any discussions about what to do if unintended acceleration occurs, they’d have to be pretty short, because Toyota has repeatedly argued that UA can not occur in their vehicles.

The $64,000 question: What’s Scenario I? Kick the tires? Drive the vehicle and see if the intermittent and random fault occurs? Return it to the customer and blame the floor mats? Just asking.

If you can just whack that big dog down to puppy size, or drag your feet long enough to ramp up your recall response, maybe it won’t be so bad. Of course, denial that the problem even exists is the top-line defense. As the documents trickling from the hands of federal investigators to the press indicate, Toyota was once a master of the art.

It was proud of its success in managing the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Unlike other automakers, it had pulled off the gutsy move of hiring ODI staff directly from the agency. Negotiators who knew ODI from the inside – its culture, its process, its personalities – certainly couldn’t hurt. And up until recently it helped – a lot.

Toyota considered the management of its relationship to NHTSA a critical element in dodging defect investigations. Toyota’s Washington D.C.-based regulatory team consisted of two former ODI staffers, Chris Tinto, Vice President of Regulatory and Technical Affairs, and his assistant manager Chris Santucci. Both used their institutional experience to minimize the effect of any Office of Defects Investigations on the fortunes of their new employer.

For example, according to a deposition taken in Alberto v. Toyota, in 2004, during a critical phase of an investigation into SUA in Camry and Lexus vehicles, Christopher Santucci testified that Toyota and ODI had discussions about the scope of PE04021 early on. Later, in March 2004, ODI investigator Scott Yon wrote a memo noting that the scope of the investigation would be narrowed to eliminate longer duration events where applying the brake pedal didn’t stop the vehicle. This definition of SUA wiped away all of the incidents with the most harmful outcomes – injury and death. It also helped make the whole thing go away – PE04021 was closed with no finding

That delayed action for about three years. But in March 2007, the agency opened Preliminary Evaluation 07016 based on five complaints, three crashes and seven injuries. This investigation focused solely on the role of an unsecured floor mat in Toyota SUA. However, in this investigation, the allegations were more serious. Drivers told ODI that they experienced unwanted acceleration after releasing the accelerator pedal and that subsequent and repeated braking did not stop the vehicle. In some cases, drivers traveled significant distances at high vehicle speeds (greater than 90 mph) before the vehicle stopped. These were exactly the scenarios that the agency tossed out of consideration in PE04021.

Toyota tried to hit the brakes on this probe by sending out a warning to dealers and customer about the possibility of pedal entrapment.  But the agency bumped up the status to an Engineering Analysis in early August 2007. In a series of internal emails that month, Tinto and Santucci discussed the pressure that NHTSA was putting on the automaker to do something about the floor mat situation. Despite Toyota’s attempt to fend off further action by adding new warning labels, NHTSA was on the verge of issuing a public service announcement:

“They claim that this remains a serious issue, even subsequent to our mailings to Lexus owners;  They recognize that this is a misuse issue (stacked mats), however, they believe that something about the throttle pedal or floorpan design lends itself to easier jamming than other models produced in the past; they also believe that the Prius, Camry and Avalon may also be prone to being overly sensitive to floor mat jamming and claim to have some evidence of such; they claim that jamming can occur with Toyota mats or aftermarket mats; they claim that the issue is further complicated by the fact that NHTSA believes that customers do not know how to shut off the car when in motion (i.e. hold the start button for 3 seconds). NHTSA said that they feel that this is so important/urgent that they are considering a NHTSA public service announcement, informing the public to insure they install the mats correctly (i.e. proper clip use, and no stacking) as well as how to shut off the vehicle with the push button start,” Santucci wrote in June 2007.

NHTSA was also suggesting that Toyota install a brake-to-idle override, similar to the feature that Volkswagen had installed in its vehicles and to tweak the ignition button so that pressing the button multiple times would also turn off the engine. Toyota resisted ODI’s suggestions for a more comprehensive fix. Instead, the agency settled for much less. EA07010 was closed two months later, when Toyota initiated a limited floor mat recall campaign. One year later, Toyota executive Yoshimi Inaba boasted in an internal presentation that the company had saved $100 million in limiting the remedy of sudden acceleration in Lexus and Camry vehicles to a 55,000-unit floor mat recall.

Two weeks ago, NHTSA hit Toyota with the biggest fine it could: $16.4 million for failing to file a defect report on its sticking accelerator pedals within the five days required by regulation. Let’s remind everybody: sticking accelerator pedals have nothing to do with sudden unintended acceleration. One of the documents now available online is a chronology Tinto submitted to ODI showing that Toyota had confirmed the phenomenon of slow return of the accelerator pedal containing PA 46 friction lever in high temperature and humid conditions as early as January 2008. Six months later, “a meeting was held to discuss the phenomenon of Tundra accelerator pedals being slow to return. A decision was made that the phenomenon was not a safety-related issue.”

In the offing is likely another whopper related to the accelerator defect and, perhaps a third fine related to the floor mat recall – TQ10-001, according to DOT Secretary Ray LaHood’s broad hints. The latter will be interesting, indeed.

Less than two months after Inaba bragged about saving the company big bucks with a limited floor mat recall, the Saylor family died in an SUA-related crash. From that day forward, Toyota’s SUA problem accelerated out of control. A Consumer Advisory to remove accessory floor mats issued in late September morphed into a recall of 3.8 million vehicles by October 5. On November 25, Toyota rolled out a plan to reconfigure the accelerator pedal on vehicles going back to the 2004 model year, modifying the floor area around the pedal and in some models, installing a brake-to-idle override – this fix comes nearly three years after NHTSA informed Toyota that braking in these high-speed SUA events, was, to put it kindly, challenging. On January 27, Toyota added another one million vehicles to the floor mat recall. And, in late March it added the 2008-2010 Highlander Hybrid to the target population.

Starting from the first Lexus Sudden Unintended Acceleration investigation in 2003, Toyota bought itself seven years of delay – and counting. We know that errant floor mats, sticky pedals and driver error do not account for many consumers’ experiences. Will seven years of sowing customer discontent, tarnishing the brand, losing NHTSA’s confidence turn out to be worth it? While NHTSA does not have another SUA defect investigation open on Toyota, many well-qualified electronics experts are looking at the ETCS-i to determine what problems may exist in the software, the failsafe logic or the circuitry that could cause these vehicles can go to wide open throttle in a variety of scenarios.

If someone establishes a SUA root cause before Toyota, delay may turn out to be the more expensive route. (And that’s not even counting the $1 million Edmunds.com is offering to any researcher who can crack the unintended acceleration conundrum.)

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!

More on Toyota SUA

Toyota SUA:  Real Stories

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Toyota SUA Real Stories

More on Toyota SUA