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Toyota Black Box Tests Show Driver Error Caused Crashes


The U.S. Department of Transportation has analyzed dozens of data recorders from Toyota Motor Corp. vehicles involved in accidents blamed on sudden acceleration and found that the throttles were wide open and the brakes weren't engaged at the time of the crash, people familiar with the findings said.

The early results suggest that some drivers who said their Toyotas and Lexuses surged out of control were mistakenly flooring the accelerator when they intended to jam on the brakes.

But the findings — part of a broad, ongoing federal investigation into Toyota's recalls — don't exonerate the car maker from two known issues blamed for sudden acceleration in its vehicles: "sticky" accelerator pedals that don't return to idle and floor mats that can trap accelerators to the floor.

The findings by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration involve a sample of the reports in which a driver of a Toyota vehicle said the brakes were depressed but failed to stop the car from accelerating and ultimately crashing.

A NHTSA spokeswoman declined to comment on the findings, which haven't been released by the agency.

The data recorders analyzed by NHTSA were selected by the agency, not Toyota, based on complaints the drivers had filed with the government.

Toyota hasn't been involved in interpreting the data.

The initial findings are consistent with a 1989 government-sponsored study that blamed similar driver mistakes for a rash of sudden-acceleration reports involving Audi 5000 sedans.

The Toyota findings appear to support Toyota's position that sudden-acceleration reports involving its vehicles weren't caused by electronic glitches in computer-controlled throttle systems, as some safety advocates and plaintiffs' attorneys have alleged. More than 100 people have sued the car maker over crashes they claim were the result of faulty electronics.

It is unknown how many data recorders NHTSA has read so far. The agency's investigators have been reading the data only since Toyota provided the agency with 10 reading devices in March.

Since then, investigators have responded to accidents involving sudden acceleration when the driver claims to have been stepping on the brakes.

Because the data recorders can lose their information if disconnected from the car's battery or if the battery dies — as could happen after a crash — the agency is focusing only on recent accidents, said a person familiar with the situation.

NHTSA has received more than 3,000 complaints of sudden acceleration in Toyotas and Lexuses, including some dating to early last decade, according to a report the agency compiled in March. The incidents include 75 fatal crashes involving 93 deaths.

However, NHTSA has been able to verify that only one of those fatal crashes was caused by a problem with the vehicle, according to information the agency provided to the National Academy of Sciences. That accident last Aug. 28, which killed a California highway patrolman and three passengers in a Lexus, was traced to a floor mat that trapped the gas pedal in the depressed position.

Toyota has since recalled more than eight million cars globally to fix floor mats and sticky accelerators.






y8s was here.

epic fail is epic

lol i can't wait tell toyota starts suing shitting drivers for damages and reclaiming the money they payed out

Just goes to show that Toyotas are overly complicated to operate.

My accelerator got stuck once. I put the car in neutral and pulled to the side of the road, called the dealer and had the car towed to them. Nobody died or got hurt.*



*Not a true story.
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Good thing our government stepped in quickly to assign blame and penalize Toyota.

So how exactly do they know for sure that the only fatal crash still attributed to manufacturer defect was due to the floormats?

This was the one where a trained police officer apparently couldn't stop the runaway vehicle.

Things just aren't adding up.

throttle sticks at :22, takes me until :32 to realize and shut it off...yes the motor blew, but no one died.

Ive met some reeeeeally dumb police officers

you should see the process it takes to get to be a Fairfax County officer.

That sucks with a vengeance. At least it didn't decide to come off the rollers at the same time. That would have been fucking tragic.

Gotta pick up a bratwurst with your butt cheeks or somethin?

+1

Watch the gubmint demand some kind of safety device to protect above-mentioned dumbass drivers.

it's called a clutch...

both feet in...car stops.

Holy shit im crying laughing:laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh: :laugh: hahahahahahahahaahahha

The fact that your waiting for the motor to stop reving and it keeps going coupled with your WTF face

Unless you just bought a used Miata a week ago and your clutch hydraulics fail at that exact moment...will you have time to surf to m.net on your iPhone and open a "Why isn't my clutch working? Did I buy a lemon???" thread before you run into a tree?

Turn key off one click?
Yank shifter out of gear/Switch to neutral?
Hydraulic Brakes?
E-Brake?

Any one of the above should stop a toyota with the engine under full load. If people get stupid with an auto tranny though, they'll initially brake and hope that the car slows down to the legal speed instead of braking immediately to 0. The autotragic transmission then downshifts to a lower gear, and these people are fighting again to keep it to the speed limit with brakes - brakes heat up in a matter of seconds, and everything goes to shit from there. When they do finally decide to stop the car, the brakes are so scorching hot, that the brake pads have melted, and dont effectively stop the car when the autotragic shifts down to first gear at 25/30mph. Instead they get even hotter, and more useless, and the car wins. If they would have just braked to 0 immediately, the brakes wouldnt have time to heat up...now they get all panicky and stop thinking logical things because these people are dumb enough that they should have never been given a driver's license in the first place. The fundamentals go out the window, and they begin to look for the nearest tree to help slow them down...

It's not the accelerator pedal thats killing people...its the autotragic transmission. :giggle:

I still think it was over-publisized to boost dumbestic sales.

+1 for content, -1 for spelling.

It's cool when you have the legal power to levy multimillion dollar fines against your market competitors.