Montgomery Personal Injury Lawyer - recalls

Deaths, injuries linked to Toyota sudden acceleration continue to rise

Tom Methvin — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:14:59 GMT

A surge of new complaints involving sudden acceleration in Toyota vehicles has hit the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in the last three weeks. The additional reports came as the NHTSA and two different congressional committees step up their probe of Toyota and its handling of the acceleration problem that affects between 8 and 9 million of its U.S. vehicles.

Until January 27, the day after Toyota suspended production and sales of eight different models because of faulty accelerator concerns, the NHTSA had on file 17 complaints of acceleration-related Toyota crashes involving 21 deaths between 2000 and 2009.

However, the agency has received reports of an additional 13 deaths and 10 injuries allegedly caused by sudden acceleration accidents since 2005, bringing the total number of people killed to 34. Government officials and safety experts alike expect the number of cases reported to the NHTSA to keep rising.

Currently, the number of deaths allegedly linked to Toyota amounts to more than all other auto manufacturers combined -- a fact that has shaken the core of a company that has built its entire reputation on safety and quality.

According to Clarence Ditlow, the executive director of the Center for Auto Safety in Washington D.C., more sudden acceleration incidents involving Toyota vehicles are on their way.

"We are going to go over 100 without a doubt," Ditlow told the Los Angeles Times. "The only question is what is the true number. So many fatalities don't get attributed to sudden acceleration, especially as you go further back in time before people were paying attention to Toyota," Ditlow said.

According to the Los Angeles Times, “A number of lawsuits and police reports also indicate that Toyota vehicles suffering runaway acceleration led to fatalities, but those cases have not been registered as complaints in the government database.”

Toyota has not yet disclosed internal communications and information from its consumer complaint logs pertaining to sudden acceleration incidents. In general, consumer complaint databases of private companies are considerably larger than those operated by the government. Therefore, if Toyota submits accurate information to the NHTSA, a number of new sudden acceleration cases will likely be revealed.

New reports submitted to the NHTSA show that Toyota’s sudden acceleration problem is likely older and more extensive than most reports indicate and that not all affected vehicles are covered by the recent safety recalls.

The oldest case of sudden acceleration currently on file at the NHTSA involves a 1988 Camry that crashed into a brick wall. The majority of the incidents, however, occurred between 2002 and 2009.

For more information, including a timeline of Toyota's recalls, visit our Toyota web site.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Tom Methvin

Toyota and NHTSA officials to be grilled on Capitol Hill

Tom Methvin — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 09:55:27 GMT

It appears that Toyota’s CEO and President, Akio Toyoda, is headed for the hot seat on Capitol Hill, where he will meet with U.S. legislators who seek answers to what Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) called “the number of outstanding questions surrounding Toyota’s relationship with U.S. regulators.” No specific date has been set, but according to ABC News, Toyoda, who is also the grandson of his company’s founder, plans to visit the U.S. in the coming weeks.

Rep. Issa also asked House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform’s Chairman Edolphus Towns (D-NY) to invite Toyoda to a hearing on February 24. The hearing, part of a congressional probe into Toyota’s handling of complaints and other reports of sudden, unintended acceleration, was originally scheduled to take place today but was postponed because of the snowstorms pounding the mid-Atlantic states.

Toyoda apologized profusely to consumers after the crash that killed California Highway Patrol officer Mark Saylor and his family last August and has apologized several times since for his company’s slip in its trademark quality. He announced Tuesday that he is taking personal responsibility for Toyota’s recalls and its campaign to regain the trust of American consumers.

"Let me assure everyone that we will re-double our commitment to quality as a lifeline of our company with myself taking the lead," Toyoda said from the company’s headquarters in Japan, adding that he would be heading to the U.S. soon “to explain the conditions and the situation to those people.”

Toyota’s conciliatory tone follows a series of allegations that it ignored or brushed aside consumer complaints for more than a decade. One senior official from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration told the New York Times that Toyota executives “were dragging things out” in response to his agency’s questions. “And we’d had it,” the official said.

The NHTSA’s sudden tough stance in turn follows recent allegations by safety experts and legislators that it could have done much more to protect American consumers from cars that accelerate out of control.

Since 1999, more than 2,000 incidents of sudden, unintended acceleration have been reported in Toyota vehicles. Of those cases, 815 separate crashes have occurred, resulting in 19 deaths and 341 injuries.

The Center for Auto Safety’s Clarence Ditlow, who will testify as a witness at the House oversight hearing, told the New York Times that the NHTSA isn’t serving the American people.

“Where were they before this?” he asked of the NHTSA. “The whole relationship is really too cozy. They view their constituency as the auto industry and not the consumer. It’s a classic case of a regulatory agency that over time becomes captured by the industry it regulates.”

You can visit the Beasley Allen web site for more information about unintended acceleration and a full list of the vehicles currently recalled by Toyota for this problem.

Sources: ABC News, New York Times

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Tom Methvin

Toyota inists electronics aren't to blame for sudden acceleration

Tom Methvin — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:14:54 GMT

Toyota’s top executives steadfastly deny that the acceleration problems plaguing millions of Toyota and Lexus vehicles have anything to do with electronics, despite a growing body of evidence that strongly suggests electronics are actually the cause of many sudden, unintended acceleration incidents.

Recently, the widow of a man who died in Southlake, Texas, when his 2008 Avalon sped out of control in December told ABC News that she had experienced ongoing acceleration problems with the vehicle. Linda Hardy said that she took the Avalon to her dealer three times between Thanksgiving and Christmas, complaining that the vehicle would suddenly race out of control.

“I said please fix my car,” Hardy told ABC.

Each time, however, the dealer told her nothing was wrong with the car.

Then, on the day after Christmas, the Avalon sped out of control, crashed through a fence, and landed upside-down in a pond, killing Hardy’s husband and three fellow church friends who were also in the car. Investigators found that the floor mats had been removed from the vehicle and stored in the truck, which is what Toyota told owners of the recalled vehicles to do to prevent an unintended acceleration incident.

Hardy told ABC that money wouldn’t bring back her husband, but that it could help fix the problem “so no one else will die.”

Because of cases like Hardy’s, the federal government has launched a new probe of the electronics that link the gas pedal to the throttle in many Toyota models. According to Keith Armstrong, an electromagnetic interference expert called upon by the federal government as part of the federal investigation, “it’s the electronics, not the pedal,” that cause so many Toyota vehicles to speed out of control.

Armstrong’s conclusion echoes the findings of other experts who believe either a software glitch or electromagnetic interference with the cars’ microcomputers are to blame for Toyota’s sudden acceleration troubles.

Last week, a new scientific study conducted by Quality Control Systems Corporation of Crownsville, Maryland found substantial evidence that Toyota’s sudden problem is linked to Toyota electronic throttle control system (ETCS-i). The study sought to rest Toyota’s conclusion that there was “no indication” of an electronic malfunction in the recalled vehicles using data pulled from the NHTSA’s records.

That QCS report found that, contrary to Toyota’s claims, very strong indications exist that the electronic throttle system is the most probable culprit in some of Toyota’s unintended acceleration cases.

You can read the QCS report on Beasley Allen’s web site.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Tom Methvin

Toyota customers scared, skeptical after massive automobile recalls

Tom Methvin — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:44:48 GMT

“The gas pedal got stuck on my way to school this week, and my car kept going and going and it wouldn’t stop,” says Queanna Cole, an Alabama woman who drives a 2009 Camry. The incident put a scratch on her car, but it left a bigger dent on her peace of mind. “I’m scared to dive my car. It’s been parked since Tuesday. I haven’t driven it anywhere. I’m scared,” she said.

Cole is one of millions of Toyota customers whose cars or trucks fall under a massive recall due to sudden and unintended acceleration. Though Toyota says the defect is rare, the company has received so many reports of similar incidents that it had to take action. More than eight million Toyota vehicles around the world have been recalled to date because of the unintended acceleration problem.

Car dealers are beginning feeling the heat. The company has suspended sales of its cars and trucks this week to make the necessary repairs on them before they are sold to the public, a move that will dampen sales by an estimated 75 percent for the year 2010. On Monday, Toyota announced parts were being shipped to dealers and many dealers will work extended hours to complete the recall campaign as quickly and conveniently as possible.

Toyota dealers, like Bruce Limbaugh with Limbaugh Toyota in Birmingham, Ala., are urging customers with affected models to call dealerships for answers to questions regarding the recall. “Our first consideration and concern is for our customers, their safety, for them and their preconceived concerns,” he said.

But many consumers remain skeptical of the carmaker with the once-stellar reputation. According to the New York Times, which received information from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 19 sudden accelerator deaths involving Toyota vehicles is more than reports from all other automakers combined.

Sources: WBRC-TV, New York Times

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Tom Methvin