Safety group sues NHTSA for release of Toyota sudden acceleration probe records
January 27th, 2012 by Kurt Niland
“The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has acknowledged what it has emphatically denied so far: Not all instances of Toyota Unintended Acceleration are linked to sticky pedals, floor mats or driver error,” said Safety Research & Strategies Inc. (SRS) in a report Wednesday.
The Massachusetts-based research group disputes claims made by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and NASA that incidences of sudden, unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles do not stem from an electronic malfunction. SRS has filed a Freedom of Information lawsuit in an effort to obtain documents and videos that it says may show how an electronic problem could cause Toyota vehicles to suddenly speed out of control.
Toyota insists all instances of sudden unintended acceleration in its cars and trucks can be traced to floor-mat entrapment, sticking accelerator pedals, or driver error. The federal agencies, using analytical methods that SRS believes were flawed and possibly dishonest, ultimately concurred with Toyota and reported that no electronic causes are to blame for the sudden, unintended acceleration problem.
The problem with this conclusion, as SRS points out, is that federal investigators with the Office of Defects Investigations (ODI) documented and videotaped a case of unintended acceleration in a 2003 Prius that was not linked to floor mats, sticking accelerator pedals, or the driver.
The Prius belonged to Jospeh McClelland, an engineer and director of the Office of Electric Reliability at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Mr. McClelland gave a sworn statement to SRS saying he was driving between his home and Washington on May 5, 2011, when his Prius surged repeatedly, prompting him to shift to neutral, pull off the road, and shut the engine off. This happened to Mr. McCleland several times.
“The engine started to rev — actually almost roaring — and the vehicle picked up speed,” he told SRS. Being an engineer, Mr. McClelland said he checked to see if the floor mat was somehow interfering with the gas pedal and found that it was not.
After contacting the NHTSA, two investigators visited Mr. McClelland at his home and took his Prius for a spin. According to the New York Times, “Mr. McClelland said the car over-accelerated three times and its electronic displays began blinking wildly. He noted that the investigators videotaped the events and inspected the floor mats for interference. At the end of the test, he said they connected a computer to the car to read its software codes.”
Mr. McClelland told SRS the investigators “seemed excited,” and told him that they hadn’t seen a vehicle behave this way before and were glad they captured it in real time. They also said the car might play an important role in unraveling the sudden acceleration mystery. Ultimately, however, NHTSA never followed up, and dismissed the incident to the car’s age and high mileage.
“This car took off with two N.H.T.S.A. engineers in the vehicle,” SRS co-founder Sean Kane told the New York Times. “The dashboard went crazy, and they recorded it with video cameras. Then three months later, they’re not interested and don’t even file a complaint?”
SRS has since bought the car from Mr. McClelland for $27,000, believing that an electronic glitch is to blame for the car’s unpredictable behavior and that the information NHTSA is withholding could produce evidence that some kind of electronic malfunction is at play.
SRS has also sued for the release of a nine-page NHTSA report, videos, and photographs documenting a case of sudden unintended acceleration that occurred in Sarasota, Florida, in December 2010.
Mr. Kane also said Toyota drivers “continue to experience unintended acceleration events that are ‘not linked to known causes,’ i.e., electronics.” He added that NHTSA received 330 complaints involving unintended acceleration last year, but that these consumers “have been turned away by the automaker and the regulatory agency charged with protecting them.”
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