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Plaintiffs In Toyota Acceleration Case: NASA Study Flawed

By Bengt Halvorson
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Loose all-weather floor mat jams accelerator pedal. Photo: NHTSA

Loose all-weather floor mat jams accelerator pedal. Photo: NHTSA

Plaintiffs in the accelerator-related cases against Toyota are likely to challenge the NASA report conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) earlier this year, reports Bloomberg.

According to the plaintiffs, the NASA study only reviewed 280,000 out of the 8 million lines of code in Toyota's electronic systems. They also pointed to so-called Tin Whiskers as a potential cause, citing their role in the failure of three commercial satellites.

The NASA report, which was revealed on February 8, concluded that the accelerator-related issues encountered by Toyota drivers were caused by sticking pedals, floor-mat jams, or driver error. The report had focused on just nine vehicles over ten months, and on those it could find no defects.

The first of several so-called "bellwether" cases dealing with the acceleration issue will be set for trial in 2013, and a U.S. District Court judge recently posted that one of the first two trials would involve a Camry and Toyota's electronic throttle system.


For more details, and a step-by-step look back at the drama surrounding the recall, see our Toyota And Lexus Recall: Everything You Need To Know index.

[Bloomberg]


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Comments (3)

  1. nancy Posted: 3/22/2011 7:52pm PDT

    Wow, I think that it is weird that nasa gets so much credibility when it comes to safety when they have had more vehicles blow up then any other company.
     
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  2. Parris Boyd Posted: 3/26/2011 2:00pm PDT

    Right on for challenging NASA's "investigation" along with Ray LaHood and NHTSA's unwarranted acclamations in defense of the Recall King. As one of Toyota's many dissatisfied customers, I've been bloggin' 'bout the Recall King for quite some time and discussed NASA's report: http://tinyurl.com/4kny6gz
     
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  3. Trudy Baltazar Posted: 3/27/2011 6:29am PDT

    Wow - did NASA forget that the SUA events are UNtraceable/unrecordable events. That's what the auto specialist professor from the Univ of So. Illinois pointed out in his video. Nothing shows up in the computer system that anything went wrong.
     
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