It looks like Toyota’s recall problems and attacks on its reputation for quality and safety might be on the verge of becoming worse.
According to an article by Peter Whoriskey, published in the February 4 issue of the Washington Post, back in 2007, investigators discovered that “at least three of every 100 Lexus ES 350 owners in Ohio reported experiencing unintended acceleration.”
According to the Washington Post’s article, James C. Fell, former chief of research for traffic safety programs for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, went on to say:
“Anything over 1 percent would raise a red flag, particularly for the manufacturer.”
Considering the reported incidences of “unintended acceleration” was at least 3 percent, or three times the red flag threshold, it’s starting to look as if more should have been done earlier.
Granted, I’m sure the population size of Lexus ES 350 owners in Ohio is pretty small, especially if you’re going to use it as the basis for a mass recall.
If this were the only sample population, it’s easy to see why the investigation might not have received the attention it truly deserved from Toyota’s engineering team and federal safety regulators, and why the problem with sticking gas pedals might have been misdiagnosed.
The Washington Post’s article states:
“After the engineering review, Toyota and the regulators decided that the cause was that the accelerator had been stuck in the grooves of the all-weather floor mats some owners had put in. It was shown that the floor mats could trap the accelerator, so the company declared a recall of approximately 55,000 such floor mats and the case was closed.”
I’m no engineer, but that seems like quite an odd misdiagnosis. After all, wouldn’t it take just a few stuck accelerators in vehicles that didn’t have the grooved floor mats to demonstrate the the problem likely didn’t stem from the mats, but from some sort of design or engineering flaw?
Then again, it’s entirely possible I’m looking at this too simplistically.
Either way, it now appears Toyota could have saved itself a lot of trouble and lost market-share had it been more aggressive in trying to pinpoint the true cause of sticking accelerators when the problem first surfaced two and a half years ago.