Toyota and Electronic Throttles Cleared — Again — in New Unintended Acceleration Report

WASHINGTON — The National Academy of Sciences' National Research Council released a report today that said after months of research the NRC commissioned from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, accidents that caused the unintended acceleration scare of 2009-'10 can't be traced to any problems with engines' electronic throttle control systems, the so-called "drive-by-wire" technology some attempted to cite as the cause of unintended-acceleration accidents.

After a horrific 2009 accident in California that killed four, the unintended-acceleration furor settled on vehicles made by Toyota Motor Corp. An ensuing investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), while ruling out electronic throttles as a potential cause, led to Toyota recalling more than 10 million vehicles globally to replace potentially sticking throttle pedals and to address the possibility of improperly placed floor mats "trapping" the gas pedal once it was depressed. Toyota subsequently paid a record of nearly $50 million in fines after NHTSA determined the company was slow in addressing customer complaints about sticking throttles. The cost to Toyota's formerly impenetrable quality reputation may never be accurately calculated.

The NRC's 140-page report, which can be downloaded for free here is the result of a third-party scientific investigation requested by NHTSA in the wake of the unintended-acceleration furor. In effect, the report indicates that NASA researchers could find nothing to indicate drive-by-wire throttles could have caused unintended-acceleration accidents — if for no other reason than the vehicle's brakes should always be able to overcome the power of a runaway engine, even one running at full throttle.

The report said, "While untraceable electronics faults may be suspected causes of unintended acceleration, this explanation is unsatisfactory when the driver also reports experiencing immediate and full loss of braking. However, such reports are common among complaints of unintended acceleration, and NHTSA attributes them to pedal misapplication when investigations offer no other credible explanation for the catastrophic and coincidental loss of braking."

Further to exoneration, the report continued, "In all vehicles that it has examined — with and without ETCs — NHTSA has found no means by which the throttle control system can disable a vehicle's brakes. The agency, therefore, cannot explain how the application of previously working brakes, as asserted by some drivers, would fail to overcome engine torque and halt acceleration commencing in a vehicle that had been stationary or moving slowly."

So where's that leave us? NHTSA said it definitely needs to "become more familiar with how manufacturers design safety and security into electronics systems, identify and investigate system faults that may leave no physical trace and respond convincingly when concerns arise about system safety." The agency also admitted it is troubling that the unintended-acceleration panic demonstrated NHTSA couldn't "convincingly address public concerns about the safety of automotive electronics." The conclusion, driven by today's report: NHTSA plans to develop "additional specialized technical expertise" to help it understand increasingly complex automotive electronics.

There was another conclusion from the report, though, that shakes the hornet's nest of personal freedoms: NHTSA thinks all vehicles should have event data recorders (EDRs), the so-called "black boxes" that can record certain vehicle operating parameters prior to a crash. Most new vehicles do have EDRs, but they record only certain amounts of information — and usually only for crashes in which airbags deploy or there are "vehicle accelerations in multiple directions." The report said NHTSA is considering making a rule mandating that EDRs be installed on all new vehicles and record much more data — and record it continually.

Less big-brotherish are other recommendations from the report to improve NHTSA's ability to deal with similar future problems, including more intensive pedal-placement research and better mining of information from consumer complaints and reports from the agency's Office of Defect Investigation.

Inside Line says: The "ghost in the machine" explanation for unintended acceleration doesn't hold water. But government regulators want to mitigate the potential for similar tech-related panics in the future.