Toyota blames sudden acceleration incidents on driver confusion
July 28th, 2010 by Kurt Niland
In response to a Toyota Motor Corp’s conclusion that virtually all of crashes blamed on sudden unintended acceleration were actually the result of driver error, former National Highway Traffic Safety Administrator Joan Claybrook said, “that is totally ludicrous.”
Toyota has reviewed about 2,000 reports of sudden acceleration in its cars and trucks, including analyses from event-data recorders (vehicular “black boxes”) from the incidents that resulted in crashes, and says the devices reveal in nearly all cases the accelerator to be at full throttle without the brakes being engaged at the time of the crash. Toyota interprets this to mean that all those drivers stepped on the gas when they meant to step on the brakes.
However, safety advocates aren’t buying it. Ms. Claybrook, who now serves as president of watchdog group Public Citizen, says that Toyota’s conclusions are wrong.
“They should be looking at the electronics in their cars and everyone knows it.”
Ms. Claybrook’s assertion is actually supported by most independent research. To satisfy his own curiosity about the sudden acceleration problem and acting without any affiliation with or endorsement from outside groups and special interests, Southern Illinois University automotive technology professor David Gilbert ran some simple tests on a Toyota Avalon. He found flaws in the cars’ electronic throttle controls.
Without much difficulty, Professor Gilbert found that he could he could create a sudden acceleration event without triggering trouble codes in the car’s computer – a finding that the professor said he found “startling.”
As for the black box data, we can only take Toyota’s word for the information present on it. Only one laptop computer with the ability to read the black boxes exists, and that lone black box reader is always accompanied by a Toyota representative who extracts and processes the data. The process is unlike that of most other car manufacturers, whose event data recorders can be read by law enforcement officials and other investigators.
April Yergin, a Houston-based accident reconstruction expert, told Newsweek that “even when they do perform a download, it’s usually not that useful.” Yergin investigated the acceleration crash in Southlake, Texas that left four people dead in an overturned Avalon the day after Christmas last year. But the only black box data Toyota shared in this case was that the car was traveling 44 mph when it crashed.
No laws currently exist requiring black boxes in passenger vehicles. As such, there are no laws governing the information recorded by the black boxes.
Considering Toyota’s culture of secrecy and its systematic, documented disregard for U.S. regulations, isn’t it odd that anyone would be quick to embrace Toyota’s findings?