Top Toyota officials to testify at Senate 2nd March

Toyota officials will get a further grilling at the US Senate (Guardian 2 March).

What evidence is their that the recalls are not solving the Toyota acceleration problems? More News about Toyota safety concerns. (Google News).

Jay Rockefeller, chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, said that the documents raised questions about whether the company put profits over customer safety. Opening the hearing, which has been called to examine several safety recalls of more than six million Toyota vehicles in the US, Mr Rockefeller said: “It is clear that somewhere along the way public safety took a back seat and corporate profits drove the company's decisions.”

The hearing coincided with the release of new data by the US Department of Transportation that the number of deaths linked to possible unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles in the US has risen to 52, a significant increase on previous estimates of up to 34 deaths.


Toyota issued a first recall of "runaway vehicles" last autumn after reports of accidents in which cars accelerated out of control. A second recall followed in January. The company has insisted that the problems were a result of misplaced floor mats or poorly designed pedals. But many drivers and experts believe that problems with the company’s electronic throttle control system may be responsible.

At the hearing, Senators were shown a document the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), showing that it had investigated Toyota's electronic throttle control system as far back as 2003, after a number of reported problems in Camry sedans.

The document noted an increase in complaints of unwanted acceleration in Camry models after 2002, when the electronic throttle control system was first installed. It said that the electronic control module could be to blame, adding that pedal misapplication, or driver error, was "unlikely".

The NHTSA didn't identify a defect trend and closed its investigation in July 2004. The agency "found nothing abnormal in the control pedal configuration", according to another document published by the committee.

In prepared testimony to the committee, Toyota executives also repeated assertions made by the company last week that they did not believe the problem of runaway cars was because of a fault in the electronic systems of Toyota vehicles.

Takeshi Uchiyamada, executive vice president of Toyota and chief engineer on the Prius, said: “I want to be absolutely clear: as a result of our extensive testing, we do not believe sudden unintended acceleration because of a defect in our ETCS (engine throttle control systems) has ever happened.”

In his closing remarks, Mr Rockefeller called for strong legislative action including a requirement for all US vehicles to be equipped with brake override technology that will stop a car when both the accelerator and brake pedals are activated.

Ray LaHood, the US Transportation Secretary, told the committee that the Obama Administration was considering such a proposal. "We are looking at the possibility of requiring the brake-override systems in all (cars)," Mr LaHood said.

Toyota has already announced that it will install the override systems on all new models sold in North America and was installing them on seven existing models. 

Mr Rockefeller also called for a requirement for manufacturers to provide hardware to read the “black box” data recorders in their vehicles.

The committee heard that plaintiffs' lawyers and their clients in car-accident cases have been unable to gain access to access to black-box data because Toyota’s North American unit has only one decoder to read the data and will not share it with others.

Ford, General Motors and Chrysler have black-box formats that can be read using readers available comercially.

Mr Uchiyamada told the Committee that Toyota would provide three black box readers to the NHTSA. Others would be made available later.

The committee hearing coincided with sales figures showing that Toyota’s US sales fell fell to 86,240 vehicles in February, a drop of 11 per cent on the same period last year, but short of the 26 per cent forecast by some analysts.


Source: The Times 3rd March