Toyota Motor Sales in the U.S. has added more than 150,000 Lexus RX 350 and RX 450h 2010 models to its 2009 recall that modified accelerator pedals because of floor mat interference that resulted in unintended acceleration accidents and deaths.
In Toyota’s carefully worded filing with NHTSA just made public today, Toyota U.S. said, “the accelerator pedal can get stuck in the wide open position due to its being trapped by an unsecured or incompatible driver’s floor mat.”
NHTSA in acknowledging this terse and incomplete notification said that it lacked much of the required information under U.S. safety regulations. The Toyota report is missing the mandated chronology of events that were the basis for its decision to conduct an expanded safety recall, including a summary of all warranty claims, field or service reports, and other information, including accidents and fatalities, with their dates of receipt.
The previous cover-up by Toyota of this now apparently ongoing safety defect resulted in record fines of almost $50 million from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. It turned out that North American Toyota executives had neither the authority, nor apparently the inclination to take action about the growing number of complaints about stuck gas pedals.
Ultimately, this Toyota safety defect resulted in recalls of millions of Toyota and Lexus vehicles in 2009 and 2010 for unintended acceleration. During this period, NHTSA was called a “lapdog” of the auto industry at Congressional hearings about what was an extensive cover-up that saw former Toyota employees then working at NHTSA dismissing a growing body of evidence that there was an unintended acceleration problem.
Between July 2003 and April 2009, NHTSA opened eight separate investigations of Toyota and Lexus models for possible unintended acceleration defects. Consumer complaints caused all of those investigations. In those investigations, NHTSA never determined a cause and closed them without recommending any recalls. Worse, in revolving door Washington, former Toyota employees were part of the NHTSA investigation process that lead nowhere.
The Department of Transportation that NHTSA has a huge $79 billion annual budget, but little of the money is actually allocated to auto safety. This is curious since motor vehicles are responsible for 95% of the nation’s transportation deaths, but mysteriously only 1% of what looks to be a bloated Transportation budget. Worse, the enforcement arm of NHTSA has a budget of less than $20 million – laughable in the face of auto companies with hundreds of billions of dollars in annual revenue from vehicle sales.
In spite of promised reforms at the time by Toyota, responsibility for recalls still resides at Toyota in Japan. (See Toyota Recall Study Finds Adversarial Relationship with NHTSA)
Toyota has not responded to requests for the “incomplete information” from AutoInformed, which will – eventually – become public and be disclosed here.
I can only conclude at this time that the details of this latest Lexus safety recall are not only ugly and image destroying, but also legally damaging. You could argue that the public relations department is incompetent by issuing an incomplete statement, but that to me seems off the mark. Toyota Japan is running the show, and as far as the corporate image building act – in the words of Broadway show aficionados – it’s a turkey.
See also:
- BMW Follows Toyota by Paying $3 Million Fine for not Reporting Safety Defects within Five Days to NHTSA
- NRC Agrees Toyota Unintended Acceleration Mechanical – but NHTSA Didn’t Address Auto Electronics Safety Concerns
- Ford Recalls More than 1 Million F-Series Trucks for Fuel Tank Fires. Reverses No Risk Stance after NHTSA Digs Deeper
- Toyota Recall Study Finds Adversarial Relationship with NHTSA
