While NHTSA slept, people died.
Secretary of Transportation, Ray LaHood, continued his defense of the actions – and from where we sit in-actions – of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration before a Congressional sub-committee today.
Republican LaHood testified under oath before a sub-committee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that was examining how Toyota and NHTSA have handled the sudden acceleration problems.
La Hood claimed that NHTSA first became aware of the now deadly unintended acceleration issue – at least 34 deaths alleged and still counting – in Toyota Lexus ES350 model in 2007.
This is a selective cutting of the data, according to critics, who allege that such complaints existed years before this incident.
Nonetheless, LaHood testified under oath that NHTSA “quickly” opened an investigation in March of that year.
NHTSA acted based on five complaints from vehicle owners, claimed LaHood.
No “related fatalities” were reported at the time the investigation began, but there had been three crashes, allegedly, related to pedal entrapment by the floor mat. At the time, LaHood said the problem seemed most likely to occur in Lexus ES350 vehicles where an optional all-weather floor mat was used.
It was – of course- a common practice for Toyota and Lexus dealers to force customers to buy accessories such as floor mats back in the halcyon days when the vehicles were in high demand.
“So far as NHTSA knew at that time, the accelerator pedals themselves were functioning as designed and the problem centered on the way the pedal could be entrapped by these floor mats under certain conditions,” La Hood claimed.
Subsequent fatal events would prove otherwise. And it ultimately took a fatal accident where the questionable floor mats were locked in the trunk of the Toyota produced vehicle to move NHTSA to act further.
LaHood now vows that NHTSA will take a closer look at possible electronic causes of unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles.
But back then, NHTSA upgraded its investigation to a formal engineering analysis five months later, in August 2007. It appears the agency was giving Toyota the benefit of the doubt.
However, before that, a fatal crash involving a Camry occurred, which was also apparently caused by so-called “pedal entrapment.”
It is, of course, now a matter of record that in September 2007, Toyota announced a recall of the all-weather mats in some, and only some Lexus and Camry vehicles.
Toyota’s remedy that NHTSA accepted was to have the dealers remove the mats and provide a re-designed mat that was shaped in a way that addressed the “entrapment risk” even if the re-designed mat was improperly anchored.
At the time of the 2007 recall, LaHood testified that NHTSA believed that the recall and removal of the most problematic mats, along with the improved design of the replacement mats, and education of the public and dealers about the proper use of mats would substantially eliminate the “known risk” related to pedal entrapment.
Sadly this was not the case as events two years later would prove.
In August of 2009 a California Highway Patrol officer and three other members of his family were killed in a horrific crash in San Diego.
The San Diego County Sheriff’s Department examined the wreckage of the vehicle and concluded that the likely cause was “excessive speed” due to entrapment of the accelerator pedal by the floor mat. The vehicle was a Toyota Lexus ES350 on loan from a Toyota dealer for the day.
The floor mat in the vehicle was designed for a Toyota Lexus RX SUV, and LaHood claims it was much longer than the mat that would have been proper for the Lexus ES350.
LaHood testified that when NHTSA investigators viewed the wreckage, the accelerator pedal was “fused to the floor mat, apparently melted in that position by the heat of the fire that followed the crash.”
Worse, is the fact that another customer of the same dealership had used the same vehicle just three days earlier and complained of unintended, high-speed acceleration caused by the pedal having been trapped by the mat until he was able to stop the vehicle and free the pedal.
You can draw you own conclusions on the above.
Mine is simple – while NHTSA slept, people died.