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Post by TonyV on Mar 3, 2010 21:09:28 GMT -5
Toyota complaints persist despite fixes
Ken Thomas and Tom Krisher / Associated Press
Washington -- Some Toyota owners say they're still having trouble with unintended acceleration after their recalled cars were repaired, and the Transportation Department said Wednesday it is looking into their complaints.
David Strickland, the administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said in a statement the agency is reaching out to consumers about the complaints "to get to the bottom of the problem and to make sure Toyota is doing everything possible to make its vehicles safe."
"If Toyota owners are still experiencing sudden acceleration incidents after taking their cars to the dealership, we want to know about it," Strickland said.
The government has received a limited number of acceleration reports from the Toyota owners whose floor mats or gas pedals have been fixed, but the fresh complaints raise new questions about whether Toyota's remedy will solve the problem. Toyota and the government are investigating potential electrical problems as part of the Japanese automaker's recall of more than 8 million vehicles worldwide.
NHTSA has linked 52 deaths to crashes allegedly caused by Toyota's acceleration problems. The company has blamed mechanical causes or drivers pressing the wrong pedal and repaired about 1 million vehicles, but has said it is looking into electronics as a potential cause.
Toyota did not immediately comment on the new complaints.
Stewart Stogel, 49, of Mount Vernon, N.Y., said his 2009 Camry accelerated to about 15 mph on a street near his home on Saturday, five days after a dealership trimmed the gas pedal and installed new brake override software as part of the floor mat recall. The car didn't stop for several seconds even though he pressed on the brakes. Stogel said he barely avoided a wall and nearly went down an embankment.
"At first the brakes didn't engage at all," said Stogel, a freelance journalist. "Just as I approached Terrace Avenue, the wheels were able to get some traction, and all of the sudden the engine did disengage."
Stogel said the car had accelerated two previous times, and both times Stogel said he took it to dealerships to be checked. In one case it was inspected by a Toyota corporate technician who could find nothing wrong, he said.
After the latest incident, Stogel called his dealer, who told him to return with the car. He also left a message with Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. President Jim Lentz. On Tuesday, Stogel's dealer called and asked him to return with the Camry so Toyota engineers can inspect it.
Carolyn Kimbrell, 59, a retired office assistant in Whitesville, Ky., said her 2006 Toyota Avalon accelerated last weekend as she pulled up to her mailbox near her home -- about a week after the car had been fixed. Kimbrell had just returned from a shopping trip to the mall with her 9-year-old granddaughter.
Kimbrell's car dealer on Feb. 20 inserted a small piece of metal into the gas pedal mechanism to eliminate friction that was causing the pedal problems. The dealer is scheduled to provide a separate fix to prevent the accelerator pedal from becoming trapped in the floor mat. But now Kimbrell said she wonders if the company's fix will solve the problem.
"It just scares you," Kimbrell said. "If I had been trying to stop at a busy intersection, that would have been bad."
The recalls have prompted three congressional hearings, hurt Toyota's safety and quality reputation and generated death and injury lawsuits. Federal prosecutors in New York are conducting a criminal investigation into the recalls and the Securities and Exchange Commission is probing what the automaker told investors.
Toyota on Tuesday said its U.S. sales fell 9 percent in February but it would offer repeat buyers two years of free maintenance to help rebuild customer loyalty.
During congressional hearings, Toyota executives said all new models sold in the United States will have the override system by 2011 and many recalled vehicles will be retrofitted with the brake override as a precaution. Toyota said it has fixed about 1 million recalled vehicles.
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Post by TonyV on Mar 3, 2010 21:12:43 GMT -5
Posted: 3:33 p.m. March 3, 2010
Officials: Drivers report trouble with fixed Toyotas
By Justin Hyde
Free Press Washington Staff
!WASHINGTON – About ten Toyota owners have complained to U.S. auto safety regulators that their vehicles suffered some kind of sudden acceleration after being repaired under Toyota’s two recalls for the problem.
The complaints highlighted by safety advocate Sean Kane drew a quick response today from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which said it would investigate.
"NHTSA has already started contacting consumers about these complaints to get to the bottom of the problem and to make sure Toyota is doing everything possible to make its vehicles safe,” NHTSA Administrator David Strickland said in a statement. “If Toyota owners are still experiencing sudden acceleration incidents after taking their cars to the dealership, we want to know about it. "
The complaints are a fraction of the 3,400 that the agency has received about Toyotas and sudden acceleration since 2004, including nearly 1,400 that have flooded to the agency in recent weeks. NHTSA says those complaints tie the problem to 52 deaths, although the agency has verified links to only five deaths.
One complaint from the owner of a 2010 Camry says after her visit to a dealership to have its gas pedal replaced and a brake-override system installed, the car surged on her in a parking lot, and was climbing up a snow bank while she had both feet on the brake pedal.
“The whole event took 5-6 seconds before the car suddenly stopped,” the owner said. “The fix done by Toyota is not the fix for the acceleration problem.”
Toyota has recalled 5.6 million vehicles in the United States to replace a gas pedal that could stick open or remove floor mats and in some cases add software that cuts off acceleration if the car senses both the brake and accelerator pressed.
Toyota executives told a Senate hearing on Tuesday that the recalls fix all known causes of sudden acceleration they were aware of in Toyota vehicles, and that the company's electronics systems had never been found to have failed in a way that could trigger sudden acceleration.
Contact Justin Hyde: 202-906-8204 or jhyde@freepress.com
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Post by ScottR@KTP on Mar 3, 2010 22:40:16 GMT -5
Acceleration Incidents Cited on Repaired Toyotas
By NICK BUNKLEY
Published: March 3, 2010
Federal regulators said Wednesday that they had received 10 reports of Toyota vehicles accelerating unexpectedly after they were repaired at dealerships.
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Related
Toyota Sued Over a Fatal California Lexus Crash (March 4, 2010)
U.S. Considers Brake Override System (March 3, 2010)
After Recalls, Toyota Offers Incentives to Win Back Wary Customers (March 3, 2010)
Times Topics: Toyota Motor Corporation
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The complaints have not been verified, but they add to questions about whether Toyota’s big recalls will resolve its problems with unexpected acceleration. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it had begun to contact and interview the consumers who filed the reports.
“If Toyota owners are still experiencing sudden acceleration incidents after taking their cars to the dealership, we want to know about it,” the agency’s administrator, David Strickland, said in a statement.
Toyota said its United States dealerships had repaired more than a million vehicles since early February out of six million vehicles that have been recalled to fix problems with the accelerator pedal. More than two million vehicles in other countries have also been recalled.
In some cases, Toyota says the accelerator pedal can become hard to depress or stuck partly depressed, and in others the pedal could become trapped under the floor mat, causing the vehicle to speed out of the driver’s control.
“We are confident that Toyota vehicles are safe, and we’re doing everything we can to ensure that our customers are satisfied with the rigorously tested recall remedies,” Brian R. Lyons, a Toyota spokesman, said in an e-mail message. “We are taking steps to quickly investigate these complaints.”
Several of the new complaints about problems in cars that have been repaired involve Camry sedans. The owner of a 2009 Camry said that on Feb. 25, two days after the car received the recall repair, it suddenly sped up and went into a ditch. The owner of a 2010 Camry repaired Feb. 12 wrote that the car accelerated into a snow bank five days later. Both drivers said they had tried to brake, but were unable to stop the car before going off the road.
As of this week, regulators said they had received reports of 52 fatalities and 38 injuries in incidents said to have been caused by unexpected acceleration of a Toyota. Three-quarters of the incidents were reported in the last four months, since Toyota began recalling vehicles for possible pedal entrapment.
Toyota executives testified this week to a Senate panel investigating the recalls that they were confident, as they had said since the recalls began, that the problem was caused by either the pedal or floor mats and not by the vehicles’ electronic throttle control systems.
“I want to be absolutely clear: As a result of our extensive testing, we do not believe sudden unintended acceleration because of a defect in our E.T.C.S. has ever happened,” Takeshi Uchiyamada, an executive vice president for Toyota, said. But Mr. Uchiyamada said Toyota would “continue to search for any event in which such a failure could occur.”
The complaints about repaired cars were reported Wednesday by The Los Angeles Times, which was alerted to them by Safety Research and Strategies, a Massachusetts consulting firm that has been compiling reports of unexpected acceleration in Toyotas.
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