Accident & Injury Law in Texas

Archive for the ‘Cars’ Category

Government investigators and Toyota Motor Corporation have reportedly found that driver error, not sudden unintended acceleration, may have caused dozens, of accidents involving Toyota vehicles.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that a federal analysis of data from dozens of crashes blamed on sudden acceleration suggested that some drivers who lost control of their vehicles were mistakenly flooring the accelerator when they intended to hit the brakes.

Thousands of cases of unintended acceleration are being investigated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in conjunction with NASA.

Toyota Motor Corporation spokesman Mike Michels said “virtually all” of 2,000 cases of reported unintended acceleration the automaker has reviewed resulted from drivers stepping on the gas pedal instead of the brake.

NHTSA has received 3,000 reports of sudden acceleration in Toyota and Lexus automobiles, and Toyota has recalled 8.5 million vehicles worldwide to alter gas pedals that might stick or remove floor mats that in some cases have trapped gas pedals and made if impossible for drivers, to stop.

Toyota said that its investigations into the accidents have determined “a number of explanations or causes,” but insisted that “in no case have we found electronic throttle controls to be a cause.”

With advocates for pedestrians and the blind warning that hybrid and electric cars could catch walkers unaware, the designers of the Nissan Leaf have added sound effects to the otherwise nearly silent vehicle.

After exploring a hundred sounds that ranged from chimes to motorlike to futuristic, the company settled on a soft whine that fluctuates in intensity with the car’s speed. When backing up, the car makes a clanging sound.
Nissan says it cooperated with advocates for the blind, a Hollywood sound design company and acoustic psychologists in creating its system of audible alerts.

“While silence is golden, it does present practical challenges,” a Nissan statement said. The Leaf is scheduled to go on sale in parts of the United States in December.

Nissan added the artificial noise as lawmakers and regulators study whether auto manufacturers should be required to install warning sounds in their hybrid or electric vehicles to alert pedestrians.

With more than 1.6 million hybrid vehicles on the road, and the number of electric cars expected to rise with the introduction of vehicles such as the Leaf, a number of safety advocates have warned of the dangers to pedestrians.

According to a study by the National High way Traffic Safety Administration last year, hybrid vehicles are twice as likely as conventional cars to be involved in a pedestrian crash in some low-speed situations.

Others have argued that adding sounds to cars works against decades of effort in which automakers strove to make vehicles that run quietly. Some electric car companies complained that silence is one of the main virtues of the battery-run cars.

Nissan’s sound system is the first created by a major manufacturer. The company says it is controlled through a computer and synthesizer in the dash panel. The sound is delivered through a speaker in the engine compartment. Though a switch inside the vehicle can turn off the sounds temporarily, the system automatically resets to “on” at the next ignition cycle.

At speeds greater than 20 mph, any car, electric or not, makes significant noise because of the tires interacting with the pavement, engineers say. The noises for the Nissan operate only at lower speeds.

General Motors Co. is recalling 1.53 million cars and trucks worldwide because fires can be ignited by components used for heating windshield washer fluid.

The company said Tuesday that it will disable the heating mechanism in the washers of Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC, Hummer and Saturn brands from model years 2006 to 2009 and pay owners $100 for each vehicle because the feature won’t be available and the maker of the units is out of business.

Since Toyota Motor Corp. recalled more than 8 million vehicles worldwide this year for defects that may cause unintended acceleration, U.S. regulators have stepped up scrutiny of auto safety, and Congress is considering measures to tighten regulation of the industry.

GM’s heated windshield washer, which the company said was supplied by Micro-Heat Inc., was recalled in 2008 for repairs. The automaker received five reports of fires in the components in the past year, prompting Tuesday’s action, the company said.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had investigated a windshield wiper flaw before GM issued the 2008 recall.

The regulator in 2004 fined GM $1 million, at the time its largest civil penalty, to settle charges the company failed to conduct a timely recall of about 600,000 vehicles for wipers that stopped working or failed to turn on when needed.

Micro-Heat, which filed for bankruptcy in 2008 after GM stopped offering its Hotshot wiper-fluid heater, was based in Farmington Hills, Mich.

GM said in 2008 that Micro-Heat should bear the $19.2 million cost of recalling 944,000 cars and trucks for the earlier recall, according to court papers in the bankruptcy filing.

The recall includes 1,365,070 vehicles in the U.S., 98,794 in Canada, 26,228 in Mexico and 38,093 exported to other countries, GM said. Vehicles included in the U.S. recall are the Buick Enclave and Lucerne; Cadillac CTS, DTS, Escalade, Escalade ESV and Escalade Err; Chevrolet Avalanche, Silverado 3590, Suburban, Tahoe and Traverse; GMC Acadia, Sierra, Yukon and Yukon XL; Hummer H2; and Saturn Outlook.

Federal safety regulators are investigating a few reports of gas pedals becoming trapped by floor mats in 2010 Ford Fusions and Mercury Milans.

Officials with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Tuesday that the agency opened a preliminary investigation last Friday after receiving three such complaints involving unsecured all-weather floor mats. There are no reports of crashes or injuries. Safety officials said the investigation covers about 250,000 Fusions and Milans.

A Ford spokesman, Said Deep, said the problem was attributable to drivers stacking all-weather mats on top of floor mats that come with the vehicle. Ford’s all-weather mats have warnings advising customers not to stack them and to secure them properly to the floor, Deep said.

Toyota Motor Corp. said it will recall a line of luxury Lexus sedans in the United States and Japan to fix a computerized steering problem.

‘The recalls will affect 4,500 Lexus LS vehicles in Japan and the 3,800 LS models that Toyota has sold in the United States. The line is Toyota’s top-priced luxury sedan brand and includes the LS 600h hybrid.

The world’s largest automaker, battered by a series of high-profile safety recalls in recent months, said consumers have complained of steering wheels that came off-center during certain driving maneuvers, out of alignment with the direction of the car’s wheels.

Nissan Motor Co. is planning to recall 48,700 trucks and SUVs for problems with a suspension part that could lead to a rough ride.

Spokesman Colin Price says the company is working on details with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and expects the recall to begin this week.

It will cover some, but not all, 2010 Nissan Armadas, Frontiers, Titans, Pathfinders and Xterras and Infiniti QX56 models.

The Armada, Titan and Infiniti QX56 are produced at the company’s Canton, Miss., plant. The Frontier, Pathfinder and Xterra are produced at its Smyrna, Tenn., plant.

No accidents related to the problem have been reported, the company said.

New research into front air bags in automobiles is raising troubling questions about their effectiveness for drivers wearing seat belts.

The research suggests that when compared with the versions they replaced, the newest air bags, required in all vehicles beginning in 2008 and in some as early as 2004, might not do as good a job of protecting belted drivers.

About 80 percent of all drivers wear seat belts, according to federal estimates, but government standards for air bags are intended to maximize protection for unbelted drivers.

The researchers found that belted drivers had a 21 percent greater chance of dying in cars equipped with the latest model of air bags than those in vehicles with the previous model. The risk for unbelted drivers was unchanged.

“The fact is that we’re not getting optimal protection for belted drivers,” said David Zuby, senior vice president for vehicle research at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which did the study. “The study does not suggest that people should turn off their air bags, nor does it suggest that people should unbuckle their seat belts. It says that government regulations and air bag designers could do a better job of protecting belted drivers.”

Toyota Motor Corp. waited nearly a year in 2005 to recall trucks and SUVs in the United States with defective steering rods, despite issuing a similar recall in Japan and receiving dozens of reports from U.S. motorists about rods that snapped without warning, an Associated Press investigation has found.

The lengthy gap between the Japanese and U.S. recalls — strikingly similar to Toyota’s handling of the recent recall for sudden acceleration problems — triggered a new investigation Monday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which could fine the automaker up to $16.4 million. That was also the amount Toyota paid last month in the acceleration ease.

“Our team is working to obtain documents and information from Toyota to find out whether the manufacturer notified NHTSA within five business days of discovering a safety defect in U.S. vehicles,” David Strickland, the highway safety agency’s administrator, said in a statement.

Federal regulators “are taking this seriously and reviewing the facts to determine whether a timeliness investigation is warranted,” agency spokeswoman Karen Aldana said about the 2005 recall. An automaker is required to notify the NHTSA about a defect within five days of determining one exists.

The NHTSA has now linked 16 crashes, three deaths and seven injuries to the steering rod defect.

The AP reviewed hundred of pages of court documents, including many of Toyota’s internal communications from the period when the steering problems first emerged. The AP, also analyzed govern ment files and complaints from drivers.
After the 2004 Japanese recall, Toyota claimed initially that it had scant evidence of a steering rod problem among U.S. trucks and SUVs. But the AP found that the automaker had received at least 52 reports from U.S. drivers about the defect before vehicles were recalled in Japan.

Toyota told the AP that it has now confirmed seven total cases in the U.S. of steering problems in the T100 small pickup and no reports of accidents or injuries Company spokesman Brian Lyons said Monday that the automaker received an information request from highway safety agency and intended to cooperate with the agency’s inquiry.

Toyota claimed in a 2004 letter to the agency obtained by the AP that driving conditions in Japan were so different from those on U.S. roads that a recall was not necessary for 4 Runner SUVs and T100 pickups, known in Japan as the Hilux and Hilux Surf. That was despite the vehicles having nearly identical steering components, according to company documents.

In the October 2004 letter, the company told the agency there were differences between left- and right-hand drive vehicles and that Toyota “believes that the unique operating conditions in Japan, such as frequent standing full lock turns, such as for narrow parking spaces and close quarters maneuvering, greatly affects the occurrence of this problem.”

In addition, Toyota insisted to U.S. regulators the company had only scattered reports by 2004 from US. drivers about the steering problems. However, company documents that surfaced in a 2009 lawsuit show Toyota received 35 complaints through its customer service department

The company later acknowledged in court documents that it received at least some letters from U.S. customers whose steering rods had broken.

Yet it was not until September 2005 11 months after the Japanese recall began
that Toyota issued a recall in the U.S. for nearly 1 million 4Runners and Toyota trucks from model years 1989 to 1995, and T100s from model years 1993 to 1998, to, repair steering rods.

Last month, Toyota agreed to pay a $16.4 million fine for delaying its recalls of millions of vehicles to replace floor mats that , can trap accelerator pedals and accelerator pedals that can stick. The attorney for an Idaho family suing Toyota over the steering issue now says there are strong parallels between the 2005 steering recall and the accelerator situation.

Toyota has for years blocked access to data stored in devices similar to airline “black boxes” that could explain crashes blamed on sudden unintended acceleration, according to an Associated Press review of lawsuits nationwide and interviews with auto crash experts.

The AP investigation found that Toyota has been inconsistent — and sometimes contradictory — in revealing what the devices record and don’t record, including critical data about whether the, brake or accelerator pedals were depressed at the time of a crash.

By contrast, most other automakers routinely allow more open access to information from their event data recorders.

The Associated Press also found that Toyota:

• Has frequently refused to provide key information sought by crash victims and survivors.
• Uses proprietary software in its recorders. Until this week, only a single laptop in the U.S. contained the software needed to read the data after a crash.
• Either settled or provided printouts with the key columns blank, when pressed to provide recorder information in some lawsuits.

Toyota’s “black box” information is emerging as a critical legal issue amid the recall of 8 million vehicles by the world’s largest automaker. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said this week that 52 people have died in crashes linked to accelerator problems, triggering an avalanche of lawsuits.

In addition, the number of post-repair complaints is rising. The government said Thursday that it has received more than 60 complaints from Toyota drivers who say their cars have sped up by themselves even after being fixed to correct the problem.

The highway safety agency said it is contacting every owner to learn more about the consumer reports. The complaints have not been independently verified.

When Toyota was asked by the Associated Press to explain what exactly its recorders collect, a company statement said Thursday that the devices record data from five seconds before until two seconds after an air bag is deployed in a crash.

The statement said information is captured about vehicle speed, the accelerator’s angle, gear shift position, whether the seat belt was used and the angle of the driver’s seat.

There was no initial mention of brakes a key point in the sudden acceleration problem. When the Associated Press went back to Toyota to ask specifically about brake information, Toyota responded that its recorders do record “data on the brake’s position and the antilock brake system.”

But that does not square with information that attorneys obtained in a deadly crash last year in Southlake, which is in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and in a 2004 wreck in Indiana that killed an elderly woman.

In the Texas crash, where four people died when their 2008 Avalon ripped through a fence, hit a tree and flipped into an icy pond, a recorder readout obtained by police listed as “off” any information on acceleration or braking.

In the Indiana crash, 77-year-old Juanita Grossman told relatives before she died that she was practically standing with both feet on the brake pedal but could not-stop her 2003 Camry from slamming info a building. Records confirm that emergency personnel found Grossman with both feet on the brake pedal.

A Toyota representative told the family’s attorneys there was “no sensor that would have preserved information regarding the accelerator and brake positions at the time of impact,” according to a summary of the case provided by Safety Research & Strategies Inc., a Rehoboth, Mass. based company that does vehicle safety research for attorneys, engineers, government and others.

One attorney in the Texas case contends in court documents that Toyota may have de literately stopped allowing its recorders to collect critical information so the Japanese automaker would not be forced to reveal it in court cases.

“This goes directly to defendants’ notice of the problem and willingness to cover up the, problem,” said E. Todd Tracy, who had been suing automakers for 20 years.

Randy Roberts, an attorney for the driver in that case, said he was surprised at how little information the Avalon’s recorder contained.

“When I found out the Toyota black box was so uninformative, I was shocked,” Roberts said.

Toyota refused to comment on Tracy’s allegations because it is an ongoing legal matter but said the company does share recorder information with government regulators.

“Because the EDR system is an experimental device and is neither intended, nor reliable, for accident reconstruction, Toyota’s policy is to download data only at the direction of law enforcement, NHTSA or a court order,” the Toyota statement said.

In many cases, attorneys and crash experts say recorder data could help explain what happened in the moments before a crash by detailing the positions of the gas and brake pedals as well as the engine’s revolutions per minute.

Yet, some crash experts say Toyota shouldn’t bear too much criticism for failing to capture large amounts or specific kinds of data, because recorder systems were initially built for air bag deployment and not to reconstruct wrecks. They also vary widely from vehicle model to model, Haight said.

A day after Toyota Motor Corp. announced an indefinite suspension of U.S. sales on an unprecedented scale to fix faulty gas pedals, the automaker said late Wednesday that it will recall an additional 1.1 million vehicles in the United States over floor mat problems. Toyota said Thursday’s recall would affect five models: 2008-10 Highlander, 2009-10 Corolla, 2009-10 Venza, 2009-10 Matrix and 2009-10 Pontiac Vibe.

Toyota said late Tuesday that it would halt sales of some of its top-selling models to fix gas pedals that could stick and cause unintended acceleration. Last week, Toyota issued a recall for the same eight models, affecting 2.3 million vehicles.

The suspect accelerator parts are made by a U.S. supplier, but similar parts are also found in its European-made vehicles, an official with the Japanese automaker said Wednesday. Toyota said it hasn’t decided what to do there.

Tuesday’s announcement follows a larger U.S. recall last year of 4.2 million vehicles because of problems with gas pedals becoming trapped under floor mats, causing sudden acceleration.

That problem was the cause of several crashes, including some fatalities.

Toyota has said it was not aware of any accidents or injuries due to the pedal problems associated with last week’s recall. About 1.7 million vehicles fall under both recalls.

Toyota is also suspending production at six North American car-assembly plants beginning next week and gave no date on when production could restart.

The sales and production, halt involves several best-selling U.S. models, including the Camry and Corolla sedans, the Tundra truck and the RAV4 crossover, a blend of an SUV and a car.

Toyota said the sales suspension wouldn’t affect Lexus or Scion vehicles and that the Prius, Tacoma, Sienna, Venza, Solara, Yaris, 4Runner, FJ Cruiser, Land Cruiser and select Camry models, including all Camry hybrids, would remain for sale. Those vehicles contain gas pedals produced by a different North American supplier than the one whose parts are involved in the current sales halt, Toyota has said.

The supplier is CTS Corp., based in Elkhart, Ind., and.he suspect part was manufactured at its plant in Ontario, according to a report Toyota gave the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration last week. CTS said Toyota told it  about fewer than a dozen cases in which drivers struggled with pedals.

David Strickland, the administrator of the federal traffic safety agency, said that the Transportation Department had been in regular communication with Toyota about the recall. Strickland said Toyota’s decision to stop selling the vehicles was “an aggressive one and one that is the legal and morally Correct thing to do.” Rental car firms Avis Budget Group and Enterprise Holdings said they were pulling thousands of Toyota models covered by last week’s recall until a fix is available.

Avis Budget said the decision to idle 20,000 Toyotas was a precaution. Enterprise Holdings, which controls the Enterprise, National and Alamo brands, said it would pull an unspecified number of Toyota models from its fleet.

Toyota expects to sell 2.2 million vehicles in North America in 2010, up 11 percent from 2009, according to sales targets released Tuesday. Toyota said it was planning global sales of 8.3 million vehicles this year, up 6 percent from 2009, but those numbers do not account for the U.S. sales stoppage.

Two years ago, Toyota beat out General Motors Co. to become the world’s largest automaker. Now just weeks into 2010, it is halting some sales in the U.S., its biggest market.