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Recalls Only Scratch The Surface Of Toyota's Defects
Toyota's multiple recalls of several models of vehicles do not address the true underlying cause of Sudden Unintended Acceleration.
March 07, 2010 /Management PR News/ -- Recalls Only Scratch The Surface Of Toyota's Defects
Toyota's multiple recalls of several models of vehicles do not address the true underlying cause of Sudden Unintended Acceleration (SUA). In the media and congressional testimony, Toyota has steadfastly refused to admit that claims of SUA are due to the Electronic Throttle Control System (ETCS) in its vehicles. Instead, Toyota has claimed that issues with floor mats, pedal defects, and driver error are to blame for many cases of SUA.
To date, there have been several recalls issued by Toyota relating to floor mats, sticky gas pedals, and even potential braking issues in attempts to address the unresolved problem of SUA.; Unfortunately, as evidenced by expert engineer testimony given at recent congressional hearings, Toyota's recalls fall short from addressing what many believe to be the real culprit behind SUA. James Lentz, President and Chief Operating Officer of Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc., even testified that the current recall repairs now being undertaken would "not totally" eliminate unintended acceleration problems.
Sean Kane, President and Founder of Safety Research & Strategies, Inc., testified to congress that ". . . neither Toyota nor the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has identified all of the causes of SUA in Toyota and Lexus model vehicles, nor has the automaker implemented remedies that address the types of complaints consumers are reporting." Research and investigations performed by Kane and Dr. David Gilbert, Professor of Automotive Technology at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, have shed light on a critical issue involving ETCS which may in fact be most likely to blame for the majority of instances involving claims of SUA in Toyota's vehicles.
Kane explained that testing of Toyota and Lexus models revealed situations in which the redundancy of electronic circuitry in the ETCS was lost and that losing circuit redundancy in the system created a loss of the "fail-safe modes" that Toyota has programmed and notably the system will not detect an error. Kane further explained that when lacking a redundant failsafe, various scenarios can be introduced in which the Electronic Control Module (ECM) can read a wide-open-throttle condition without any input from the driver and again without setting any error codes. The ECM is essentially the computer center for the vehicle.
Gilbert stated in his preliminary report that his findings bring into question the integrity and consistency of Toyota's ECMs to detect potential ETCS circuit malfunctions. Gilbert goes on to state the seriousness and importance of the preliminary findings and recommends additional testing of capabilities of ETCS circuit malfunction detection in other Toyota vehicles.
In stark contrast to Kane and Gilbert's research and conclusions, Yoshimi Inaba, President and CEO of Toyota Motor North America, Inc., testified that he is personally one hundred percent confident that the ETCS is not a possible cause of SUA in Toyota's vehicles due to his personal trust in the company's engineers; however, in the same breath Mr. Inaba admits that he holds this belief regardless of the fact that the potential ETCS problem has not been extensively tested.
"The most disturbing issue is that complaints of sudden acceleration continue to be made even after Toyota supposedly fixed the problem," states Stephen Lowry, managing partner of Harris Penn & Lowry, LLP, who is pursuing claims of catastrophic injury due to SUA against Toyota. "It is apparent that the recalls are not addressing the real problem," explained Lowry.
While the debate over ETCS will certainly continue, one point of contention that no one from Toyota is willing to outright deny is the high probability that the actual perpetrator in many of the SUA cases is likely electronic in nature and therefore unrelated to floor mats and sticky pedals.
Article provided by Harris Penn & Lowry, LLP
Visit us at www.hpllegal.com
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