US report says Toyota not to blame in unintended acceleration case

According to unnamed sources interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, US Department of Transportation and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) investigators have determined that several incidents of sudden acceleration reported by Toyota drivers last year were caused by the drivers themselves and that the accidents were not the fault of the car.

Information collected from car data recorders show that many of the vehicles involved in accidents reported to have been caused by "sticky" accelerator pedals or obstruction from floor mats had in fact crashed without the brake pedal being depressed, countering the claims of many of the vehicle’s owners.

The data, collected as part of an on-going investigation, led analysts to determine that drivers had mistaken the accelerator pedal for the brake pedal during their panic at an imminent collision. It is not known how many data recorders the NHTSA has read so far, the agency only focusing on those recorders collected from cars involved in recent accidents.

To date, 75 fatal accidents involving Toyota and Lexus vehicles have resulted in a total of 93 deaths. The NHTSA has received more than 3000 complaints of unintended acceleration since news of the cases was made public with more than 100 law suits filed against Toyota (in the US) with relation to unintended acceleration complaints. The issue has so far led to more than eight million Toyota and Lexus vehicles being recalled worldwide.

Officially, the findings have not yet been released by either agency with spokespeople at each organisation yet to comment on the WSJ report. Toyota has not been involved in interpreting any of the data related to the issue itself for either safety authority instead carrying out its own independent tests.

Toyota has not blamed any driver for accidents involving so-called unintended acceleration.

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