`Toyota Technicians' Confirmed Sudden Acceleration, Lawyers Say in Filings

[Omaha Steve]

Source: Bloomberg

By Karen Gullo

“Toyota technicians” confirmed that vehicles were unexpectedly accelerating and the company bought back the vehicles, had customers sign confidentiality agreements and didn’t disclose the problems to regulators, plaintiffs’ lawyers said in court documents.

In testimony about acceleration defects before Congress, Toyota Motor Corp. didn’t disclose that the technicians had replicated instances of sudden unintended acceleration not caused by pedals or mats, according to documents filed yesterday in federal court in Santa Ana, California. The company also didn’t report the customer agreements to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the plaintiffs’ lawyers said.

Steven Curtis, a spokesman for Toyota’s U.S. sales arm in Torrance, California, said today in an e-mail that no technicians for the company or field specialists confirmed unintended acceleration in vehicles. He said the plaintiffs’ lawyers are referring to service technicians employed by dealerships, which are independent businesses.

As for Toyota Motor Corp. and its representatives, such as field technical specialists or engineers, “We have not replicated the customers’ acceleration concerns nor found any issues or conditions in these vehicles while driving or analyzing them for thousands of miles,” Curtis said.



Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-28/toyota-technicians-knew-of-sudden-acceleration-documents-say.html

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And Reuters says another recall of 1.6 million is on the way.

Reuters October 28, 2010


Toyota Motor Corp. will recall and repair more than 1.6 million cars globally, the world's biggest automaker said on Thursday, the latest in a string of quality problems affecting the industry.


Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/cars/Some+major+global+recalls+auto+industry/3739501/story.html#ixzz13hC9RxfD

[Bozita]

1. This ought to fit nicely with those new teevee ads emphasizing Toyota safety.

[virgogal]

2. I received a recall notice last week on my 2006 Corolla. It was

my first Toyota.

Quite disheartening.

[xocet]

3. Well...

[iverglas]

4. I can't speak to Toyotas

typo fixed

-- the 1979 van I had never did this -- but my 1994 Mazda van did.

The first time I was on a wide city street with very little traffic, doing about 40 mph (60 km/h, the limit). I was able to turn a corner onto a side street sharply while braking (braking had virtually no effect on the acceleration), and throw the (automatic) gearshift into something other than where it was -- when you've been driving an automatic for a while, you don't get much practice gearing down. I turned it off, sat a bit, turned it back on again, and everything was fine. I decided it was some kind of random occurrence ... maybe the pedal really had been stuck (even though I'd pumped it) ... and kept driving the vehicle.

It happened next as I was merging from an on-ramp into three lanes of heavy rush hour traffic on a divided inner-city expressway in the rain. It was terrifying; I did the gear thing again, and was probably lucky I had kind of bald tires. As the car hurtled toward the concrete barrier on my right, it spun a perfect 180 degrees, and came to rest facing the opposite way, two inches from that barrier on the driver's side; fortunately, there had been no one immediately behind me. I briefly collected my wits, drove back down the on-ramp in the wrong direction, drove four more blocks to home and called to cancel my doctor's appointment.

The local mechanics had no idea what this was, so I provided what I had found by googling "uncontrolled acceleration" (you'd have to filter out toyota now I guess): a dirty throttle plate. They cleaned that up, I crossed my fingers, and it didn't happen again.

But the fun part was reading the internet forums where people had asked about this occurrence -- in a whole range of makes and models of cars, including pickups, and including while in reverse.

Many of the people asking were women. (Just more likely to ask for advice?) And all of the people answering were men. And to a man, their answers were: you put your foot on the gas instead of the brake, you fool, you just can't admit it.

At least with Toyotas doing this now, and being recognized as having done it, anyone who experiences what I did in future might get taken seriously.