Before Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood even took the stand before the House Energy Committee, the Washington Post [via TheCarConnection] reported that:
NHTSA officials told investigators that the agency doesn’t employ any electrical engineers or software engineers.
Down on the Potomac, zingers like that go over like an ounce of catnip in a phone booth full of rowdy toms. And sure enough, the question came up at LaHood’s testimony. In fact, it came up twice. And it was the closest thing to a real “gotcha” moment in a long day of testimony.
Toyota’s Jim Lentz (who, I’m obligated to share, bears a striking resemblance to the dad from “Teen Wolf”) spent nearly two and a half hours before a committee that by then was investigating what expert witnesses described as an unknown, untraceable electronics error of nearly limitless reach. With this white whale taking the foreground of the committee’s imagination, the committee sharpened its harpoons, licked its lips and sailed out upon uncertain seas in search of its elusive quarry. (Read More…)
It’s been nearly a year since the automotive industry has been treated to a must-watch DC hearing. The last time around, when the executives of America’s automakers went begging to congress for multi-billion dollar bailouts, hearings were heated and combative. Though liberally sprinkled with irony and comedic ignorance, those hearings were, at their heart, a traditional partisan stand-off. But bailouts are also a relatively cut-and-dried topic: you either support them for solid political reasons, or you oppose them for equally solid, equally political reasons. But faced with a national bogeyman of legendary mystery, the lurking terror of unintended acceleration, congress’s task was more complicated than the bailout’s do-we-or-don’t-we dilemma. Tasked with uncovering the truth behind a complex technical problem, is it any wonder that yesterday’s hearings before the House Energy Committee took a turn for the strangely hilarious? [Editor’s note: full prepared statements from all witnesses are available in PDF format here full video of all of yesterday’s testimony is available at CSPAN]
Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda will give the following prepared statement in his testimony before the House Oversight Committee tomorrow [via WOKV].
Thank you Chairman Towns.
I am Akio Toyoda of Toyota Motor Corporation. I would first like to state that I love cars as much as anyone, and I love Toyota as much as anyone. I take the utmost pleasure in offering vehicles that our customers love, and I know that Toyota’s 200,000 team members, dealers, and suppliers across America feel the same way. However, in the past few months, our customers have started to feel uncertain about the safety of Toyota’s vehicles, and I take full responsibility for that. Today, I would like to explain to the American people, as well as our customers in the U.S. and around the world, how seriously Toyota takes the quality and safety of its vehicles. I would like to express my appreciation to Chairman Towns and Ranking Member Issa, as well as the members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, for giving me this opportunity to express my thoughts today.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee kicks off the week’s Toyota-related festivities on Capitol Hill today, with the first round of hearings scheduled for 11 am Eastern. Testifying will be Toyota Motor America’s Jim Lentz, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, Southern Illinois professor and ABC’s ghost hunter David Gilbert, Safety Research and Strategy’s Sean Kane, as well Eddie and Rhonda Smith, who reportedly experienced uncontrollable sudden acceleration in a Lexus ES350. The E&C Committee has a live webcast available here, or you can watch on C-Span 3. The Detroit News’s David Shepardson is live-tweeting from the press events on the Hill leading up to the hearing.
Tomorrow is the main event, when CEO Akio Toyoda appears before the House Oversight Committee along with TMA President Yoshimi Inaba.
A Miami-Dade County Circuit Court judge has ruled that red light cameras may not be legally used to issue traffic citations in the state of Florida. Judge Gerald Bagley yesterday dismissed charges against motorist Richard Masone who had received a red light camera ticket in the mail from American Traffic Solutions (ATS). The company operates the program on behalf of the city of Aventura.
Ever since Toyota’s recent problems hit “frenzy” level on our mainstream media monitoring system, speculation has been rampant that some mysterious electronic problem was at the root of the unintended acceleration scandal. We’ve been wary of jumping on the “ghost-in-the-machine” bandwagon, for a number of reasons, chief among which is the fact that it seems to be the product of an inability to explain specific instances of unintended acceleration, rather than hard evidence. Given that unintended acceleration occurs at the intersection of man and machine, good old-fashioned human error is an easier assumption than mystery software errors. Given the worrying results of our Toyota gas pedal analysis, we’ve been content to explain the situation on a combination of pedals, mats and human error. But now ABC News may just have the first positive evidence of an electronic problem that could explain the mystery behind Toyota’s unintended acceleration problem. Dave Gilbert of Southern Illinois University has found that it’s possible to cause unintended acceleration without it triggering an error code that might give some kind of clue as to its cause. Combined with our finding that Toyota actively conceals data from its black box data recorders (out of line with standard industry practice), this could be some of the first positive evidence that there’s more to the “ghost in the machine” theory than mere panic-driven speculation.
Redflex Traffic Systems of Australia succeeded last week in blocking efforts to end red light camera ticketing in Loma Linda, California. While several members of the city council expressed a desire to uproot the automated ticketing machines, Redflex insisted that could not be done unless the city paid $534,558 in early termination penalties. The council declined to take any action at its February meeting. (Read More…)
We at TTAC pride ourselves as “equal snarkiness journalists”. We don’t care if you’re GM, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Fiat or anyone else. You try to pull the wool over our eyes, we’ll strike back with the truth you’re trying to hide. Likewise, not only are we journalists, we are also humans and as such we have our own brands and marques which we are partial to. Anyone who’s ever read my posts and articles (and not just to comment on my regional grammar and spelling) will know that I like, very much, Toyota and Jaguar cars. But that matters not a jot today. I am a blogger and an impartial one at that, so when I say this next article pains to me write, trust me, it PAINS me!
Ah, political spectacle. When Detroit’s CEOs took the stand at congressional hearings over a year ago, the main browbeating bullet point wasn’t the decades of mismanagement and greed, but the fact that Messrs. Wagoner, Mullaly and Nardelli had taken separate corporate jets to the festivities. The lesson: convenient focal points for anger always trump the complexity of a substantive dressing-down. And as congress gears up to grill Toyota’s CEO, the Japanese automaker has given congress just the thing to sharpen its collective knife against: an honest opinion. One document [via PoliticoPDF here] briefing Toyota USA boss Yoshi Inaba for the hearings, reveals that Toyota believe the current administration is “activist” and that “not industry-friendly.” True or false, this document sets up an adversarial relationship between Toyota and the majority party going into the hearings. Which would be bad enough if Toyota hadn’t also handed over evidence, already leaked by the Oversight committee, indicating that it balances recall costs against risks and lobbies the government in its own interest. On its own, this evidence might be merely embarrassing, but having slighted the Democrats, news that Toyota treats recalls like a business has become prima facie evidence in the (increasingly political) case against the Japanese automaker.
At the Wednesday press conference in Tokyo, Toyota slipped in the remark that they “will more actively use on-board event data recorders, which can, in the event of a malfunction, provide information necessary for conducting such activities as technological investigations and repairs.”
This remark was widely overlooked. It should not have been.
“The safety problems that have engulfed Toyota Motor Corp. are focusing renewed attention on one of the most controversial components in an automobile: the black box. The box, officially called an “event data recorder,” is a small, square, virtually indestructible container akin to those found on commercial airplanes. Tucked inside the dash or under the front seats of most newer vehicles, it records vehicle and engine speeds as well as brake, accelerator and throttle positions and other data that can help determine the causes of accidents.”
If there would have been such a black box in the Toyotas that had crashed, it would have been easy to read out whether the foot was on the gas or on the brake. Guess what: Toyota has this box. It had been in many of the crashed vehicles, says the Wall Street Journal: (Read More…)
There is widespread public concern regarding reports of sudden unintended acceleration in Toyota motor vehicles. There appears to be growing public confusion regarding which vehicles may be affected and how people should respond. In short, the public is unsure as to what exactly the problem is, whether it is safe to drive their cars, or what they should do about it. To help clarify this situation, I am inviting you to testify…
House Oversight Committee Chair Edolphus Towns invites Akio Toyoda down to DC for an evening of under-oath testimony and light refreshments. According to the NY Times, Toyoda has said he “would consider” dancing the Potomac two-step “if he receives a formal invitation, which none of the committees have issued.” Consider yourself officially invited, Mr Toyoda. We’ll start making the popcorn.
Avondale, Arizona last week decided to terminate its contract with American Traffic Solutions (ATS) for the operation of red light cameras and speed cameras. The city council made its decision primarily on financial grounds after the program failed to deliver on its promise of enhanced safety and substantial profit. With Avondale facing a $3.8 million budget deficit, officials decided the cameras had to go.
The Arizona Senate Public Safety and Human Services Committee approved legislation last Wednesday that would substantially expand the size and scope of the photo enforcement program in the state. Lawmakers voted 6-1 to approve legislation allowing the use of automated ticketing machines for a number of new types of violations. Committee Chairman Linda Gray (R-Phoenix) sponsored the legislation after becoming an enthusiastic supporter of cameras.
With Congress already investigating a possible Toyota unintended acceleration cover-up, the NHTSA has decided that it should probably be getting a piece of the action, and has invoked its statutory power to request documents relating to when Toyota learned of the defects involved in its recent gas pedal recall and how it reacted to them. Federal law requires that manufacturers notify the NHTSA within five days of discovering a safety defect, reports the Wall Street Journal [sub]. The WSJ [sub] also notes that Toyota is offering to disclose new details about its crisis response task force (which reportedly includes “outside quality experts”), as the world’s largest automaker struggles to respond to a rash of recalls that has affected over 8m vehicles worldwide and will cost the company at least $2b. CEO Akio Toyoda will hold his third recall-related press conference in two weeks on Wednesday evening to disclose these details and more on the company’s plans to boost testing and transparency. According to yet another WSJ [sub] report, those measures are said to include less reliance on computer modeling in vehicle design, improved consumer feedback capabilities and more stringent testing of supplier-designed parts.
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