Hearing Of The Subcommittee On Oversight And Investigations Of The House Committee On Energy And Commerce - Response By Toyota And NHTSA To Incidents Of Sudden Unintended Acceleration

Statement

Ten years ago, this Committee investigated the Firestone tire recalls, which caused the
deaths of dozens of people and exposed vulnerabilities in the govermnent's oversight and
recall authority. In response, Congress quickly passed the TREAD Act which was
intended to provide enhanced authority for the National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration (NHTSA) to gather and analyze data from automobile manufacturers and
provide an early warning system for catastrophic defects.

Now, a decade later, we face a serious auto safety problem that calls into question
whether the TREAD Act is achieving the purposes we intended.

Today's hearing will examine whether Toyota Motor Corporation and NHTSA acted in a
timely fashion to address countless complaints of sudden unintended acceleration in
Toyota vehicles. Sudden unintended acceleration describes a broad range of events in
which a vehicle accelerates rapidly and the driver is unable to immediately slow or stop
the vehicle.

Over the past several months Toyota Motor Corporation has issued two major recalls for
defects associated with accelerator problems in 8 popular models. The first recall,
armounced in October 2009, addressed floor mats that can jam against the gas pedal
causing it to be entrapped in a full-throttle position. Toyota eventually opened this floor
mat recall to 4.26 million vehicles. And just last month, Toyota armounced another recall
for gas pedals that can stick or return slowly. Toyota's leadership has been ambiguous
about whether these two recalls fully account for and address the problem of sudden
unintended acceleration.

Thousands of Toyota owners whose cars were not subject to either recall have reported to
the company that their vehicle suddenly surged or accelerated to high speeds. A staff
analysis of documents Toyota provided to the committee shows that roughly 70% of the
sudden unintended acceleration events recorded in Toyota's own customer call database
involved vehicles that are NOT covered by the floor mat entrapment and "sticky pedal"
recalls. The "fixes" Toyota has advertised for this problem do not provide much
assurance to those drivers.

Our investigation has shown that Toyota repeatedly dismissed the possibility that
electronic failures could be responsible for incidents of sudden unintended acceleration.
At the same time, Toyota provided software upgrades to certain vehicles to ensure that in
instances where the gas and brakes are both depressed, the brakes will override the gas.
It seems like this software upgrade provides important safety protection, but we are left to
ask what Toyota will do for the owners of its cars that carmot receive the safety upgrade.

Equally troubling is that officials at NHTSA appear to have bought into Toyota's
explanation of these events. In closing investigations and in briefings of Committee staff,
NHTSA has repeated Toyota's insistence that sudden unintended acceleration is caused
by human error or limited mechanical problems, rather than problems in the electronics
systems. NHTSA made this determination without having electrical or software
engineers review the problem. One of our witnesses today will tell us how a NHTSA
investigator sent to inspect her vehicle "seemed to arrive with the pre-conceived idea to
sell to us that it was a floor mat problem." This begs the question of whether NHTSA is
too cozy with the industry they oversee or whether they are simply stuck in a mechanical
mindset rather than evolving to keep up with the new generation of electronics and
computer run components.

In an attempt to quell concerns about sudden unintended acceleration, Toyota's attorneys
commissioned a study titled Testing and Analysis ofToyota and Lexus Vehicles and
Components for Concerns Related to Unintended Acceleration by a company called
Exponent. Toyota has presented this preliminary report to prove that the electronic
systems cannot cause sudden unintended acceleration.

However, this Committee requested independent expert assessments of the Exponent
study, and these experts identified numerous shortcomings, including:

* the review did not follow sound scientific method
* major categories of testing such as electro magnetic interference and radio
frequency interference were not addressed
* only 1 of the 7 vehicles used in the study was on the recall list
* the study did not examine a single vehicle that had experienced sudden
unintended acceleration

It is clear that the flawed Exponent study is nowhere neal' adequate or a valid scientific
review. Toyota owes it to their customers, the American people and the government
regulators to complete a comprehensive and scientifically sound review of their
electronics system.

One individual who has taken a close look at Toyota's electronic gas pedals is Dr. David
Gilbert at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois. Dr. Gilbert will release his
interim report showing how he was able to short circuit the electronic gas pedal and
mimic an unintended acceleration incident without triggering any diagnostic trouble
codes in the vehicle's computer. Dr. Gilbert's report is the first study of its kind and we
are fortunate to have him and Mr. Sean Kane here today to explain it.

In summary, what we have found is quite troubling. Toyota all but ignored pleas from
consumers to examine sudden unintended acceleration events. They boast in a briefing of
saving Toyota $100 million by negotiating a limited recall. They claim that they first
became aware of sticking pedals in late October of 2009 when in fact they had received
numerous complaints many months and years earlier. They misled the American public
by saying that they and other independent sources had thoroughly analyzed the electronics systems and eliminated electronics as a possible cause of sudden unintended
acceleration when in fact, the only such review was a flawed study conducted by a
company retained by Toyota's lawyers.

Toyota - and NHTSA for that matter - have a lot of explaining to do to the American
people, to Toyota owners and Toyota dealers. I look forward to an informational and
productive hearing.

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