NHTSA cannot find electronic gremlins in Toyota vehicles, and says many unintended acceleration incidents resulted from driver error.

Federal safety regulators are giving Toyota some much-needed good news, though they aren’t completely absolving the troubled Japanese maker in an ongoing safety scandal.

With Toyota facing a rash of lawsuits for its various safety problems – legal problems some analysts estimate could cost the maker more than $2 billion to resolve – there’s significant good news for the  Japanese company in the finding by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that it could not find any sign of electronic glitches that might cause Toyota vehicles to unexpectedly race out of control.

In fact, after reviewing the vehicle data recorders taken from scores of Toyota products involved in unintended acceleration incidents, NHTSA found that the brakes were not applied in 35 of 58 cases.  That finding, supported by black box data, suggests that driver error, rather than mechanical problems, were responsible. This should not be surprising to anyone who has followed the history of such charges.

The additional incidents, however, appear to be the result of mechanical – but not electronic defects.  Toyota has so far recalled more than 8 million cars, trucks and crossovers to resolve problems that could cause a vehicle’s accelerator to stick, including faulty accelerators and loose carpets that could jam under the accelerator pedal.

In an update to Congress – which has its own investigation into Toyota’s problems underway – NHTSA noted it had found partial braking by motorists in 14 cases, one clear case of “pedal entrapment,” and one instance in which a driver applied both brake and throttle.

“At this early stage of the investigation, engineers have not identified any new safety defects in Toyotas,” said Olivia Alair, a spokeswoman for the Department of Transportation.  But, she added, NHTSA is “continuing to study whether there are electronic or software defects in these vehicles.”

The government has engaged both the National Academy of Science and NASA to assist in its ongoing investigation into what has become the most massive scandal to hit Toyota since it became a major player in the global auto industry.

In the last decade, the government has received over 2,000 complaints about unintended acceleration, along with reports of 90 deaths related to the problem.

After the first significant recall, last October, to resolve the carpet entrapment issue, Toyota said that would resolve the problem entirely.  But it later turned out the maker had already begun recognizing a second problem with sticky accelerator pedals – a defect that led to a second massive callback, in January of this year.  All told, about 8.5 million vehicles have so far been recalled.

Meanwhile, the delay in notifying the government of the accelerator pedal issue led NHTSA to levy the largest fine in the government agency’s history, $16.4 million, against Toyota.  The carmaker agreed to pay the fine without contest.

But the recalls have not satisfied some critics, many of whom contend that there are additional electronic gremlins at work.  That argument is likely to be the centerpiece of many of the lawsuits that have been filed against Toyota in recent months.

The maker will almost certainly refer to the NHTSA findings in defense.  Following the preliminary announcement by the government, the maker said the research “confirmed that the remedies it developed” will resolve the unintended acceleration problem and validate the company’s findings after 4,000 of its own on-site inspections of vehicles involved in unintended acceleration incidents.

“”In no case have we found electronic throttle controls to be a cause of unintended acceleration,” claimed the maker.

But critics are expected to counter that the black boxes may not be able to capture evidence of software glitches, or that such incidents occur so infrequently that the NHTSA study didn’t have a large enough sample of data recorders to find the problem.

A federal grand jury continues to look into Toyota’s handling of safety issues.  In June, it received a subpoena related to another ongoing concern, steering problems with models that include the popular Corolla model.  The grand jury could bring criminal charges against the maker.

And while unintended acceleration has been the ongoing headline news, Toyota has recalled more than a million vehicles over the last year for a wide range of additional problems.  That includes 2010 Prius hybrids with faulty brakes, Tundra pickups and minivans experiencing excessive corrosion, vehicles with steering problems, a luxury hybrid that can leak excessive amounts of fuel in a crash, and a number of Lexus sedans that can unexpectedly stall out due to faulty engine valves.

Meanwhile, the Toyota affair is expected to lead Congress to order a revamping of federal safety standards.  That will likely mean tougher rules and more investigators to look into alleged problems.