Today UPI filed an article titled “US Crash Report Good News For Toyota,” which covers a “preliminary” report issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration(NHTSA) regarding it’s investigation into various high profile saftey issues reported about Toyota.
Back on March 30th, the NHTSA issued a press release titled “U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood Announces Major Investigations to Resolve Issue of Sudden Acceleration” which announced multiple government funded studies to “to get to the bottom of unintended acceleration.”
The NHTSA commissioned a study by the National Academy of Sciences’ National Research Council to look at unintended acceleration and electronic vehicle controls across the the industry. But the NHTSA decided to conduct a seperate study focused on reports of unintended acceleration in Toyotas. Why? Good question. The press release doesn’t say. I suspect it very carefully doesn’t say what spurred the investigation. About that time there were some high profile news stories about reports of unintended acceleration in Toyotas. I recall there was one national news story featuring a paniced call from a car in which the driver said something about the car being out of control.
But the anouncement of the study cited no motivation for its Toyota specific investigation at all and the stated goal of the investigation was to determine if the Toyota electronic throttle control systems “contain any possible flaws that would warrant a defect investigation. “
Sounds like a fishing expedition to me.
So with no specific impetus and the broadest of goals possible, the NHTSA conducts its investigation and today releases the preliminary reults.
The NHTSA examined 58 specific crashes in which unintended acceleration was claimed as a factor. The preliminarey report indicates that there is no evidence of the crashes being caused by electronics failures of any sort. Furthermore, “black box” data from the cars showed that in 35 of the 58 cases the brakes were not applied prior to the crash.
There was been some evidence to indicate that the floor mat might have bunched up or otherwise interfered with the pedals and possibly an accelerator may have become “sticky”. But the report didn’t say howe many cases.
But 6 months and 3 million dollars later, the fishing expedition has turned up basically nada. But fear not these are only the “preliminary” findings. They are going to continue to get to the bottom of the Toyota unintended accleration program no matter how long it takes or how much money it costs.
