Nope. I for one do NOT believe the official Toyota/NHTSA-approved story.
http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/22399644/detail.html
Toyota Confident In Fix, Others Not Sure
Lentz Says The Fix Is In
Guy Gordon
POSTED: Monday, February 1, 2010
UPDATED: 12:41 pm EST February 1, 2010
In an exclusive interview on NBC’s Today Show, Toyota Sales Chief Jim Lentz told Matt Lauer the company is confident this is the final fix to the persistent unintended acceleration issue. Lentz says: “We’ve studied the events of unintended acceleration and it comes down to two issues, one is the mat (pedal entrapment), and we announced a recall on that late last year. The sticking issue we just announced and put a stop sell out. We are confident we have a fix for that, and between those two things, this will be under control. ”
In a 6:30 A.M. release Toyota says it has a “rigorously tested solution.” It amounts to a steel reinforcement assembly “that eliminates the excess friction that has caused the pedals to stick in rare instances. In addition, Toyota has developed an effective solution for vehicles in production,” it said in the statement.
Lentz says mechanics in dealerships are being trained. Parts will be shipped today (Feb. 1) and notification of consumers should begin by the end of the week. New assemblies will be placed in vehicles now in the production process. It will take months to fully service the 2.3 million vehicles under this recall.
There is a growing body of skeptics who are unsure sticking pedals or mats are responsible for the bulk of the complaints, accidents, and deaths associated with sudden acceleration. The L.A. Times reviewed more than 2000 complaints of sudden acceleration going back to 1999. Only 5% of the complaints were blamed on sticky accelerator pedals.
The pedals in question were manufactured by CTS of Elkhart, Indiana and were made to Toyota’s specifications. The company insists its product is not to blame: “The problem of sudden unintended acceleration has been reported to have existed in some Lexus vehicles and Toyota vehicles going back to 1999, when CTS did not even make this product for any customer,” the company told the Times.
Other safety experts are unconvinced: “The way the sudden-acceleration problems are occurring in reported incidents doesn’t comport with how this sticky pedal is described,” said Sean Kane, president of Safety Research & Strategies, a Rehoboth, Mass., auto safety consulting firm. “We know this recall is a red herring.” As we’ve reported, Kane and others are focussing attention on Electronic Throttle Control Systems. The Times reported the acceleration complaints rose rapidly in the years after electronic throttles were introduced, by fivefold in some cases. But Lentz insists the company “tested the electronics thoroughly as have other independents. There are redundant fail-safe mechanisms within that pedal.” The company says it is certain electronics are not to blame. “We are convinced and confident that it is in fact the sticky accelerator and the issue of entrapment.”
Skeptics will have a chance to voice their concern when the U.S. Congress begins hearings into the issues of sudden acceleration February 25th. The federal government’s own safety agency will also face a grilling. Safety regulators repeatedly denied requests for investigations into the unintended acceleration complaints. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigated the electronics and found no defect. There were in fact 6 separate NHTSA investigations that found to solution for the occurences, and the New York Times reports: ”In at least three cases, the agency denied petitions for further investigative action because it did not see a pattern of defects and because of a “need to allocate and prioritize N.H.T.S.A.’s limited resources” elsewhere, according to agency documents.”
It’s hard to imagine what could be a higher priority than a runaway acceleration of vehicles, but we’ll await the answers of safety czars when they face Congress later this month.
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I stll think Toyota
does know what the problem is but
doesn't know how to fix it.
Wi-Fi anyone? These incidents all are happening in large cities with veritible electromagnetic blizzards. TV and radio, cellphone towers, police, fire and EMT comms, civilian and military comms, satellite uplinks and downlinks to and from TV and Radio stations, businesses, cars and now wi-fi. Yes, these things operate on different frequencies, but they are all ER. Maybe Toyota's drive-by-wire system has become sensitive to them.
