Mike Michels, Vice President for External Communications of Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., wrote an editorial, in response to a well-reported and written story by the Huffington Post’s Sharon Silke Carty about one of the most significant physical findings of the NASA Engineering Safety Center’s (NESC) study of the electronic causes of unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles: tin whiskers. Tin whiskers are crystalline structures that emanate from tin and other alloys used as solder on printed circuit boards. These nearly microscopic metal hairs can bridge circuits, leading to electrical shorts and significant malfunctions. They have caused failures at nuclear power plants and medical devices and downed satellites. While we don’t believe that they are the cause of UA in all Toyota vehicles. Clearly, tin whiskers have been strongly implicated as a cause of UA in some Toyota vehicles.

This story touched off an interesting and intelligent discussion among readers, generating more than a thousand responses. While there were a few of the “loose nut behind the wheel” and “evil trial lawyers” variety, the majority of comments appeared to come from readers with technical backgrounds who were well-versed in the headaches caused by tin whiskers, a longstanding issue in the electronics industry.

Mr. Michels effort to beat back a challenge to Toyota’s preferred narrative, however, is rife with mischaracterizations and falsehoods.

Mr. Michels says that the engineers at the National Aeronautics and Safety Administration (NASA) have been “clear and unequivocal” in their conclusions. They have not. The February report, 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, written by the NASA Engineering Safety Center (NESC) actually said:

“Due to system complexity which will be described and the many possible electronic software and hardware systems interactions it is not realistic to prove that the ETCSi cannot cause UAs. Today’s vehicles are sufficiently complex that no reasonable amount of analysis or testing can prove electronics and software have no errors. Therefore, absence of proof that the ETCSi caused a UA does not vindicate the system.”

Mr. Michels said that there are no real-world scenarios in which Toyota electronics can cause unintended acceleration. That is not true. The NESC team, which found tin whiskers in every potentiometer pedal it examined in a very small sample, studied one from a Camry that had experienced unintended accelerations. The owner described the pedal as “jumpy” and the car as “completely undriveable.”

Further, in May two NHTSA engineers witnessed, videotaped and captured data from a 2003 Prius that had multiple UA events in their presence. Yesterday, the agency conceded that there was no evidence that these UA events were linked to the” known causes” of floor mats, sticking accelerator pedals or driver error. This suggests that the culprit is to be found in the software or electronics.

Mr. Michels says that the National Academies of Sciences laid to rest “this discredited theory,” concluding that all the data available indicated that there was no electronic or software problem in Toyota vehicles and that NHTSA was justified in closing its investigation.

The NAS panel did not actually examine the tin whiskers phenomenon. It devoted one paragraph in a 158-page report to the subject. As for clearing Toyota, the NAS report actually said:

“The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

Mr. Michels also cited the affirming pronouncements of “respected independent experts,” such as Edmunds.com and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood. Edmund’s.com sells cars. Ray LaHood is a politician who taught high school social studies before winning public office. Neither are automotive electronics experts.

Mr. Michels says that Toyota’s systems are designed to reduce the risk that tin whiskers will form in the first place and that “multiple robust failsafe systems” detect faults, illuminate the malfunction indicator light and put the vehicle into ‘limp home’ mode.

Neither is true.

In August, some actual electronics experts from the University of Maryland’s Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering (CALCE) published an analysis of the potential for tin whisker growth in Toyota vehicles. The scientists 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. The tear-down of the accelerator pedal position sensors (APPS) in both Camrys revealed tin whisker formations. In addition, the CALCE researchers found the potential for tin whisker formation in the ECM, which contained surface mount electronic devices connected with tin-lead solder to a multilayer PCB; interconnect terminals of the perimeter leaded devices plated with tin. And tin plating on terminal pins of the edge connections. The CALCE scientists concluded:

“In our analysis, a significant number of tin whiskers were found. Using the calceWhiskerRiskCalculator (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.”

Other automotive electronics experts, such as David Gilbert at Southern Illinois University have demonstrated that Toyota’s fail-safe strategy is not robust and under certain circumstances fails to detect faults that can lead to open throttle.  In an August 2010 recall intended to correct stalling in 2005-2008 Corolla and Corolla Matrix vehicles, Toyota submitted field technical reports on the problem, many of which noted that diagnostic trouble codes were not set, even when the technician could duplicate the problem. Toyota’s fault-detection system does not always function properly and does fail to detect abnormalities and set trouble codes.

Mr. Michels asks: “Why, then, is Toyota continuing to be subjected to unwarranted speculation in the news media about an issue that has long since been put to bed?”

Well, it’s not due to the fanciful conjecture of plaintiff’s lawyers and its paid consultants or a frenzy of non-news news. It’s because Toyota’s customers continue to report unintended acceleration incidents that cannot be credibly blamed on floor mats, driver error or sticky pedals. NHTSA alone fielded 330 complaints from Toyota owners who experienced a UA event in 2011. Some 247 customers have complained to the agency about events that occurred after they had their floor mats and accelerator pedals remedied through the recalls.

Toyota’s problem is that it has treated unintended acceleration in its vehicles as a public relations dilemma, rather than a technical issue.

If Toyota wants the public to stop discussing Unintended Acceleration in its cars, why don’t they just fix them?

In addition, a separate review identified 247 unique UA incidents following repairs made to the vehicle in one or more of the Toyota recall remedies.

The 2011 NHTSA complaint data suggest that Toyota has not recalled all of the vehicles in need of a remedy. The post-recall UA incidents, reported to the agency between February 2010 and January 2012, further suggest that the remedies were ineffective.

What is most striking in reading the 2011 complaints is how little anything has changed. The most troubled vehicles – the Camry, the Tacoma and Lexus ES350 – continue to show up in the complaints. The scenarios vehicle owners report are the same:

* Low speed incidents, often described as occurring while parking or repositioning a vehicle, during which vehicles accelerate or surge very quickly while the driver is braking or lightly pressing on the accelerator pedal.

* High speed incidents, often described as occurring on highways, during which vehicle speed increases without increased driver pressure on the accelerator pedal, or highway speed that is maintained after the driver has removed his or her foot from the accelerator pedal.

* Incidents in which vehicles are described as hesitating, surging, or lurching. Consumers reporting this type of incident often indicate that their vehicles are not immediately responsive to pressure on the accelerator pedal; instead there is a delay between operator input and acceleration, followed by higher acceleration than intended, often described as a surge or lurch.

As ever, the vast majority are low-speed/parking incidents, resulting in property damage. However, there continue to be high-speed, long duration events and cruise control-related events. Toyota dutifully inspects these vehicles and tells the owner that the car is “operating as designed.” Dealers continue to follow the floor mat/driver error script.

One thing that appears to have changed: more Toyota owners, now educated about Toyota’s UA problems, have a strategy for dealing with an incident and also take note of the position of their feet. Many drivers specifically report braking at the time of the UA, and shifting the transmission into neutral to bring the vehicle under control. Here are their stories.

[NOTE:  SRS’s systematic review uses a combination of keyword searching and manual review to identify consumer complaints describing UA incidents in Toyota vehicles. We define UA as any uncommanded torque to the wheels of a vehicle or incidents in which drivers report uncommanded engine RPM increase when the vehicle transmission is in the Park position. Our manual review decreases the likelihood of including complaints unrelated to UA. We also acknowledge that this method introduces subjectivity into our characterization of the complaints. We reduce that bias via agreement by multiple readers that a complaint should be included.]

Teresa Young, Pasadena, California

On May 26, Teresa Young, a biologist from Pasadena, Calif., was early for her morning class at the Shan Tung Kung Fu martial arts center in the Roosevelt Place shopping center.  She spotted a space right in front of the studio and turned left. She had her foot on the brake of her 2005 Prius and was cruising slowly toward the low concrete parking stop. She was about to shut down the car, when the engine started to race. Young had her foot on the brake, but the Prius continued to move forward. She pushed the brake harder, but the vehicle engine revved, continuing on its path, over the concrete stop, the sidewalk and through the plate glass window of the martial arts studio. The Prius was in the martial arts studio when Young shifted the vehicle into neutral and tried to turn the engine off.  The Prius did not respond to Young’s repeated attempts to shut it down. At this point, Young’s feet were on the floor pan – not on any pedal, and the Prius continued to move forward, but in the leftward direction of the wheels. The Prius drove right into a wall. In a small panic, Young grabbed her key fob and her purse, and exited via the passenger side door.

“My thought was: ‘I’ve got to get out of this car,’” she recalled.

By this time, her martial arts instructor and security guard were on the scene. The passenger door was still open, the Prius engine was still revving, but stationary, and still in neutral.

“The security guard decided to get everyone out of that side of the building. He feared my vehicle and he had every right to fear that vehicle,” she says.

A tow truck driver attempted to pull the vehicle out of the wall, but after 20 minutes of futile effort, the police handed him the key fob. The tow operator put the vehicle in reverse and backed it out. The vehicle was never examined by Toyota as far as Young knows. It sat, covered at the Pasadena dealership, until she agreed to sell it for research, and replaced it with a Chevy Volt.

Young had been the sole owner of her Prius. She bought it out of environmental concerns and kept it well-maintained. She was aware of the Toyota unintended acceleration controversy, but didn’t pay it much mind. Young did make sure that she took her vehicle in for all of the UA recall remedies. The Prius never gave her a day’s trouble, but about month before her spectacular entrance at Shan Tung Kung Fu, she does recall not being able to shut off her Prius one day. The vehicle did not respond to depressing the ignition button. It took several tries and prolonged push to finally shut the engine down.

“I just thought it was weird,” she says.

Tanya Spotts, Hamilton, Virginia

Tanya Spotts had only owned her 2011 Lexus ES350 for six months, when she experienced an unintended acceleration event on December 26. She was pulling into a second-floor space in parking garage in Reston Town Center, with her foot on the brake. With about three feet to go before coming to a complete stop, her vehicle surged and slammed into the concrete wall in front of her. Spotts, a Realtor, looked down and saw her foot firmly on the brake. In fact, she was braking so hard that she sprained and bruised her foot, requiring treatment.

While her car sustained minor damage, Spotts’ confidence in her Lexus was completely shattered.

“I honestly loved the car,” she says.

Spotts had been a dyed-in-the-wool Toyota fan, who had always owned Toyotas. She spurned her husband’s advice to buy a Jaguar last spring. The Lexus ES350 was her dream car, and while Spotts knew about the unintended acceleration controversy, it did not dissuade her, either.

“I really dismissed it, because the government was involved and they concluded there were no other problems,” she said.

Spotts promptly reported the incident to her insurer and to the dealership, Pohanka Lexus of Chantilly, Virginia. Toyota has scheduled an inspection to read the EDR data. But Spotts does not expect the EDR to reveal anything, since the airbag did not deploy. Nor does she hold out any hope that Lexus will take back the sedan. Her Lexus remains parked and Spotts now finds herself in the dilemma of many Toyota owners before her.

“Thank God, there was nobody in front of my car. My biggest fear is that I carry so many people in my car. If this had happened at my office, there are so many pedestrians. I could not live with myself if I took this car and continued to drive it after an unexplained acceleration,” she says. “I feel like I’m held hostage by this car. I can’t drive it and I can’t sell it.”

Russell Damsky, Cragsmoor, New York

Russ Damsky experienced two unintended acceleration events in his leased 2011 RAV4 within three days of driving the SUV.  Damsky was another Toyota fan who was not put off by the unintended acceleration news stories.

“I thought, obviously this is something they are going to fix so I didn’t give it a second thought when I went in for the 2011 RAV4.”

In January 2011, he leased a new RAV4. Two days later, on January 12, he experienced his first incident. He was in the midst of a right-hand turn into a shopping center, travelling well under 20 mph.

“I thought, ‘That’s funny. I’m stepping on the brakes, but the brakes aren’t working. I put all of my weight and stood on the brake. The car was roaring,” Damsky recalled. “I instinctively put it into neutral and kept my foot on the brake. In a moment, the car went back to idle.”

Damsky immediately called the dealership in Newburgh, New York, and made an appointment the next day to have the RAV4 inspected. On the way to the dealership, about 30 miles away, Damsky experienced a second unintended acceleration. Again, Damsky had his foot on the brake, slowing for a red light, when the SUV’s engine began to accelerate. The former actor employed the same strategy, throwing the vehicle into neutral, and it returned to idle.

Dealership personnel were skeptical, Damsky said. The general manager was “brusque.”

“He went into the rhetoric: ‘This was going to be a problem; that doesn’t happen, the RAV4 has never had that problem.’ I told him: ‘I’ve been driving well over 40 years and it wasn’t driver error. This car has a problem.’”

When Damsky learned that Toyota was sending a tech to inspect the vehicle, he asked the dealership if the technician could wait until he got there. Damsky wound up missing the test drive by a few minutes, but he never had to get in that RAV4 again. During his field test, another vehicle rear-ended it and pushed the SUV into a guardrail. The insurance company totaled the vehicle. Damsky got a different RAV4, which he intends to drive until the lease expires. But, his affection for Toyota is gone:

“I wouldn’t buy another Toyota,” he says. “Not because I didn’t like the car, but because of the way they handled it.”

Don Oxley, DeSoto, Kansas

On January 23, 2011, Don Oxley intended to wash the road salt off of his 2004 Camry. Instead, he added some scrapes to the Camry’s hood, windshield pillar and roof in an unexpected encounter with a rising carwash door. Oxley was stopped in front of the door of the automated car wash, and had punched in the code to initiate the sequence. The light turned green and the door began to open, so he shifted the Camry out of “Park” and into “Drive” to inch forward. As soon as he let off the brake pedal, the Camry suddenly accelerated forward, hitting the car wash door before it could fully open.

“I thought I was going to sail right through the whole car wash,” he recalled. “It freaked me out real bad. I slammed on the brakes with both feet and put it in park and shut it off and it was normal after that.”

Oxley estimates he traveled about 15 to 20 feet before he successfully stopped the Camry.

“I took it into the Toyota dealer, they checked and found nothing, but blamed it on the floor mats. I’m not quite dumb enough to believe the floor mat jumped on the accelerator and stomped it to the floor, but that’s what they want people to think.”

Larraine LeBlonde, Mt. Prospect, Illinois

Larraine LeBlonde was thrilled last October to make the final payment on her 2006 Corolla, when her vehicle began to behave erratically. She has an easy commute from her home in the Chicago suburbs to her job at a retail outlet in an area mall. And her first unintended acceleration event occurred when she was at a stop light at a highway entrance ramp. Her Corolla attempted to surge forward, up an incline. LeBlonde was able to hold it into place with her foot on the brake.

“I thought, ‘Oooh, this is different,’” she recalled.

The surge eventually stopped, the light changed and LeBlonde continued on her way. But that wasn’t the last of it. From mid-October to the first week in December, the Corolla had dozens of similar surges. The scenario was roughly the same: the UA occurred when her foot was already on the brake, at a light or stop sign or while parking. She was able to control the vehicle by firmly pressing the brake – the surges didn’t push the engine beyond 2,500 rpms – and moving the transmission to neutral. A few times, when the engine refused to return to idle, she would turn off the Corolla and re-start it.

LeBlonde’s Corolla was part of the Toyota’s August recall for 1.3 million Corolla and Matrix vehicles to replace the Engine Control Module for an unexpected stalling condition. And although she never had that problem with her Corolla, she tried twice unsuccessfully to bring it into an area dealership for the remedy.

Her surging condition, however, sent her to the Internet in search of information about Unintended Acceleration, and she called Toyota’s customer service line looking for an answer.

“I thought I could call them and be advised about what to do, so I wouldn’t go into a mystery situation,” she said. “I thought that if they had heard about it before, they would be able to name a part. I’m not very car savvy and I didn’t want my car to spend a ton of time at the dealership while they tried one thing after another. The representative was pretty much skeptical. She said that the Toyota mechanic would need the car to replicate the behavior, and I told her that could be quite a while, because it’s unpredictable.”

LeBlonde hung up, dissatisfied. The next morning, she got a call from the local dealership, saying that they had an opening for her to bring her car in.

“They said, ‘We hear that you are having a problem with your brakes,’” she recalled. “I did not take them up on this because it made me feel that they weren’t interested in the actual problem. I lost confidence in Toyota as being able to understand or admit what was really going on.”

LeBlonde was once a loyal Toyota customer. She can remember the day she bought the Corolla:

“I just marched right in on a July 4^th weekend and bought it. Not a second thought. I was constantly convincing friends to buy a Toyota.”

LeBlonde sold the Corolla. She now drives a Honda Civic.

William O’Brien, Cincinnati, Ohio

Bill O’Brien’s 2009 Corolla appears to be a more extreme version of the condition that plagued LeBlonde’s 2006 Corolla.  With a background in science, O’Brien made an Excel spreadsheet of his numerous vehicle unintended accelerations for easy reference. It details the date, time, mileage, weather conditions, road grade, duration and rpms of the event. O’Brien began dealing with engine surges in his 2009 Corolla in March 2010 and has experienced a total of 15 events through January 2012. His 2009 Corolla was recalled for the accelerator pedal shim; and the change from CTS to a Denso component. None of the recall remedies have made a difference in his vehicle’s performance. The incidents typically happen at low-speed, with his foot on the brake, upon cold start. Initially, the engine surged to about 2500 to 3,000 rpms during the UA event. O’Brien would hold firm on the brake, shift the vehicle from drive to neutral and back to drive again, and the engine surge would cease.

“The first time is happened was Easter Sunday, 2010, a month after recall to remove and trim the accelerator pedal,” he said. “The way the recall notice framed it, it occurred in vehicles with high mileages. I had 6,000-7,000 miles on my car. I didn’t think anything was going to come of it. I do know that I didn’t hit the wrong pedal.”

The last several events occurred in November and January in O’Brien’s driveway. These were the most extreme events, with the engine revving to 6,500 rpms.

Toyota and the dealership personnel have examined the vehicle and found nothing, O’Brien says.

“I’ve been through an arbitration and it was evident that it wasn’t going to make a difference. I can produce up to four witnesses to these events. But, none of it matters unless a Toyota technician sees it.  I guess I’ll have to have someone from Toyota riding with me fulltime. Then they would have to move in with us, and God knows how much they eat,” he joked.

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.

And son of a gun if Toyota didn’t release its long awaited quality report on the same day! (A little awkward, we know.) This panel of Very Serious People outside of the company was charged with the task of evaluating just what went wrong:

“The Charter directs the Panel to conduct a thorough and independent review of the soundness of these processes and provide its assessment to Toyota’s senior management.”

The 60-page result, A Road Forward: The Report of the Toyota North American Quality Advisory Panel was pretty much a re-hash of everything that has already been reported, and largely air-brushed at that.

The panel did find some room for improvement, and we liked the part about Toyota’s response to outside critics: “First, while it is clear that Toyota applies the TPS [Toyota Production System] process and the Toyota Way to problems or flaws found internally, Toyota does not appear to treat feedback from external sources, including customers, independent rating agencies, and regulators, the same way.” SRS must have been dropped from that list.  “For example, it doesn’t appear that Toyota applied genchi genbutsu [go and see] as quickly and thoroughly as it could have in investigating and seeking out the root causes of customer complaints regarding issues such as UA.” Instead it reacted to customer complaints with “skepticism” and “defensiveness.” Would hiring a well-connected public relations firm to smear SRS count as skepticism or defensiveness? What about charging down to Southern Illinois University to scare the begeebers out of Professor Dave Gilbert’s bosses? (This stuff was no doubt edited from the final version.)

We personally had a lot of fun reading the footnotes – 160 of them – to see what heretofore unknown documents contributed to this deep dive into the quality problems plaguing the world’s number one automaker.  Let’s see: A lot of Toyota press releases, some NHTSA press releases and news clippings; a few books about the Toyota company culture you can buy on Amazon and the NHTSA and NASA reports.

The panel was positively cheerful about the last two. It cited them as the number one reason to feel optimistic about the quality of Toyota vehicles: “..extensive testing and analysis by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) have revealed no electronic problems or software errors that could have resulted in unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles.”

Geez, we know that a lot of scientific words can be off-putting, but did anyone read that NESC report? We mean the whole thing. We read it and re-read it, and it doesn’t inspire confidence in Toyota’s electronics.

At least one panel member, Brian O’Neill, former president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, might have read it. In a story by Bloomberg News about the report, O’Neill averred that perhaps the safety of Toyota’s electronics had not been so definitively settled.

“There’s still a serious debate as to whether these were serious safety problems,” O’Neill said.

• - 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.

The veteran NASCAR driver emerged from his flaming Toyota unscathed – and puzzled.

“We had a throttle stuck wide open – not sure why,” Truex said to The News Virginian.  “There’s a lot of big chunks of rubber flying around out there. I don’t know if one of those got up in the carburetor linkage or what, but just never had any warning. Went to let off to go into three and it was stuck to the floor. Not much you can do at that point here.”

We’re not sure all the theories have been explored. Did he check his floor mat? Was NASA consulted?

The commentators noted that Truex appeared as though he couldn’t slow his vehicle down – and maybe lost his brakes. Those guys apparently hadn’t got the memo that the brakes on a Toyota always overcome the throttle. They are two separate systems, and a stuck throttle and simultaneous brake failure isn’t possible. We’re serious. Toyota’s told that one to a lot of customers who complained that they crashed because their Toyota or Lexus took off on them and braking didn’t help.

Now we know that a race track is not I-95, that a NASCAR professional is no muddled blue-hair, and that the vehicle in question had a mechanical throttle instead of the vaunted, never-to-be defeated ETCS-i.

And yet. And yet, Truex’s observations – no warning, happened too fast to avoid a crash – ring more bells than a Jehovah’s witness.

The jury found that the floor mat had nothing to do with the crash. The judge ruled the electronics evidence out of the trial. But we don’t think this ruling is “key” or “much-anticipated,” or “an early indicator of the strength of the legal theories behind current unintended acceleration claims.”

The verdict is an indicator that there was no proof offered by the plaintiffs, no relevant discovery from Toyota and a plaintiff’s expert without an automotive electronic design expertise.

Don’t over-think this one too much.

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.