Toyota Skeptical of Data From Its Own Black Boxes

Toyota Skeptical of Data From Its Own Black Boxes

By Bill Visnic August 20, 2010

When refuting recent claims of drivers citing unintended acceleration in its vehicles, Toyota Motor Corp. often has pointed to evidence gathered by onboard event data recorders, the so-called "black boxes" that became one point of discussion in the Congressional unintended-acceleration investigation earlier this year.

After the Congressional inquiry, Toyota pointed to data recovered from black boxes to repudiate unintended acceleration claims in at least two well-publicized accidents and the company said it was moving to equip more of its vehicles with the devices that typically record a number of vehicle operating parameters for several seconds prior to an accident.

But the Washington Post reports today that in the past, Toyota has itself questioned the validity of information provided by its EDRs.

The company has tried to block EDR information from being used by plaintiffs in certain civil cases in recent years, the paper reported, in one case a court filing calling EDR information "far from reliable."

EDRs - For Right Or Wrong

Most recently, a preliminary study conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration -a which is underway with a Congress-mandated examination of the possible causes for and reasons why Toyota-made vehicles became disproportionately represented in NHTSA reports of unintended acceleration - leaned heavily on data from black boxes that indicated that in more than half of recently reported unintended-acceleration incidents, drivers were not applying the brakes.

"The Toyota EDRs are so unreliable that even Toyota has challenged their reliability in court," said Clarence Ditlow, director of the Center for Auto Safety, told the Washington Post. "Given the demonstrated errors, NHTSA can't rely upon them in its investigation."

The NHTSA has enlisted the aid of the National Academy of Sciences and NASA in a multidisciplinary examination of the unintended-acceleration phenomena and is charged with determining the roots causes and possible remedies. The NAS had a public meeting in June to outline its early efforts at defining the problem and analyzing available data, much of which comes from the NHTSA database.

Although the NAS scientific panel said the efforts were just beginning, some who testified indicated human error does appear to be one consistent factor. Examination of available data also indicated that most unintended-acceleration events occur at low speeds, which could be an indicator of the "pedal misapplication" that many sources believe to be a likely cause of many, if not all, unintended-acceleration incidents.

 

Photos:

1. Toyota Prius (courtesy Toyota Motor Corp.)

2. Diagnostic Sensing Module made by General Motors Co. houses Event Data Recorder (courtesy GM)
 

Bill Visnic:  is an AutoObserver Senior Editor. Follow @AutoObserver on Twitter