The Department of Transportation (DOT) is working with the National Academy of Sciences to broadly examine causes of unintended acceleration and electronic vehicle controls across the auto industry.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), a division of the DOT, will also work with NASA engineers to examine and test for electromagnetic interference and software bugs in Toyotas that could lead to unintended acceleration. In Congressional hearings, NHTSA came in for repeated criticism for not having enough software or electronic engineers on its staff to investigate defects related to electronics.
Finally, LaHood has asked DOT's Inspector General to review whether NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) has sufficient resources to investigate and identify problems in today's electronically controlled cars.
The last comprehensive review of sudden acceleration that NHTSA conducted was in 1989, after a spate of reports related to Audi products, which almost caused that company to leave the U.S. market. NHTSA findings pointed to the causes of unintended acceleration being the driver and the cruise control. It also concluded that a car's brakes could always overpower the engine to effectively stop the car. However, that study has been widely criticized as not relevant to today's cars with widespread electronic controls. And in our own testing Consumer Reports found instances where the brakes could not stop some powerful modern cars from highway speeds.
Separately, Toyota announced that it had convened the first meeting of a new committee, promised at the Congressional hearings, to investigate the causes of its recent quality problems. The Special Committee for Global Quality is chaired by Akio Toyoda, president of Toyota Motor Corporation. As Toyoda promised Congress, the committee will give regional executives outside Japan more power to initiate recalls and examine quality problems.
In our own research, we have found that unintended acceleration can be caused by many factors, including floor mats, driver error, pedals arranged in a way that encourages driver error, as well as vehicle faults. The best strategy for drivers is to know how to stop a car if it ever happens to them: shift the transmission to neutral and step firmly on the brakes and don't let up.
Be sure to follow Consumer Reports Cars blog (RSS) and Twitter (@CRcars) to keep up with the latest information and advice, also see our unintended acceleration guide.
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