NHTSA to Toyota: Stop Lying About Floormatgate
Published: November 5th, 2009
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The Brits have an expression for this situation: “When you’re in a hole, the first thing you do is stop digging.”
The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued a statement today correcting inaccurate and misleading information put out by Toyota concerning a safety recall involving 3.8 million Toyota and Lexus vehicles:
A press release put out by Toyota earlier this week about their recall of 3.8 million Toyota and Lexus vehicles inaccurately stated NHTSA had reached a conclusion “that no defect exists in vehicles in which the driver’s floor mat is compatible with the vehicle and properly secured.” NHTSA has told Toyota and consumers that removing the recalled floor mats is the most immediate way to address the safety risk and avoid the possibility of the accelerator becoming stuck. But it is simply an interim measure. This remedy does not correct the underlying defect in the vehicles involving the potential for entrapment of the accelerator by floor mats, which is related to accelerator and floor pan design. Safety is the number one priority for NHTSA and this is why officials are working with Toyota to find the right way to fix this very dangerous problem. This matter is not closed until Toyota has effectively addressed the defect by providing a suitable vehicle based solution.
More by Robert Farago
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Toyota produced and honorably sold the Toyota RAV4-EV, the only NiMH plug-in car ever sold to the public by oil-auto companies. But Toyota should have stuck to reliable all-electric EVs. Fly-by-wire means that your accelerator pedal doesn't have a mechanical linkage to the carb, like old-time cars; instead, it communicates by electronic signal, generated by the "pedal" switch and interpreted by the receiving program (presumably on the fuel-injection system). These FBW systems can be VERY complicated; and there is NO reason to move to them from mechanical linkages. They use it on unstable aircraft (where the aerodynamic constant is behind the center of gravity) because mechanical linkages are too slow; but they build it doubly-doubly redundant, with robust systems that "can't" fail. THERE IS NO REASON TO USE THIS ON CARS, and it provides one extremely delicate new way for cars to fail. In the many lines of real-time code, there may be an obscure bug, that only surfaces once every 10,000 cars or so, depending on some other signal from some other system, some condition that only arises very rarely. I DON'T SAY THAT'S THE PROBLEM, but it's one problem that doesn't exist with mechanical linkages, and there was no reason to move to FBW with reliable mechanical systems already proven and safe. The other thing is getting rid of "key less ignition"; I can't believe they expect you seriously to hold your finger on a button for 3 seconds to stop the thing, if it's going into runaway mode. Keys are there for a reason! Simple switches are reliable! Floor mats are always a problem, if you're a goof; but unlikely to explain all these issues. I've had problems with the floor mats curling, but not just on Toyotas! So that's not the issue, and Toyota should drop that excuse.