Faulty Acceleration Problems - Who Is To Blame: Toyota, NHTSA Or Congress?

As most of you probably know by now, Toyota is in the middle of a massive recall of its autos around the world to fix faulty break and unexpected acceleration problems on all of its brands (Scion, Toyota, Lexus). There is really no doubt that a problem exists since even Toyota executives have admitted to a problem (plus the fact that they are fixing an untold number of cars for no cost to the owner kind of settles the point that something is wrong.) At a Congressional hearing today, a Lexus owner told about her harrowing experience when her Lexus accelerated to almost 100 MPH and for several minutes she could not slow down or stop the car. Somehow she eventually regained control before a crash and serious injury occurred. Something is definitely wrong.

So at least Toyota is to blame for the problems? But does the blame stop there? Consider some information from an article in the March 1, 2010 issue of Business Week concerning problems with Toyota vehicles:

• In 2004, the National Highway Traffic Safety Adinstration (NHTSA) opened an investigation into complaints that 2002 and 2003 Toyotas had unanticipated acceleration problems. Some of these complaints arose as a result of crashes due to acceleration problems. The investigation was started in March but closed by July with no action taken.
• In late 2005, more complaints of unintended acceleration problems caused another NHTSA investigation to be opened. It was shut down just a few months later in January, 2006 with no action taken.
• In August, 2006, another investigation was started when more complaints were received about Toyotas from the 2002 through 2006 model years having acceleration problems. That investigation ended in April, 2007 with no action taken.
• In 2008, still another NHTSA investigation was opened when there were over 475 complaints of Toyota Tacoma pick up trucks having acceleration problems. Eight months later the investigation was closed down with no action taken.

A few observations:

• Since everyone today, including Toyota executives admit there is a problem, how come the NHTSA launched eight (the four listed above and four others not listed) formal investigations in just an eight year span and came up with nothing?
• The problems appear to have covered at least eight model years, various car models and the Tacoma truck. Did not anyone at NHTSA think there might be a systemic trend here, multiple years, multiple models, same company?
• The Business Week article listed in detail the four formal investigations above since they were each handled on the Toyota side by by two Toyota executives that used to work at the NHTSA and who look to have been the main interface between Toyota and the NHTSA investigators. According to a quote in the article by Joan Claybrook, an auto safety advocate and former NHTSA administrator, "Toyota bamboozled NHTSA or NHTSA was bamboozled by itself. I think there is going to be a lot of heat on NHTSA over this." The "this" she refers to is the possibility that Toyota got the kid gloves treatment because of the past connections and possible influence that the two ex-NHTSA Toyota executives handling the investigations had with friends still at the NHTSA. Can you say conflict of interest?

In any case, it is apparent, at least to me, that the NHTSA is also very much at fault in addition to Toyota. They had hundreds of cases of faulty acceleration problems at their disposal, they opened up eight investigations but found not problems and took no actions, and they may have listened to ex-NHTSA employees who wrote reports to the NHTSA stating nothing was wrong ("No evidence of a system or component failure was found and the vehicles were operating as designed." Quote from Toyota in 2005) The agency is at the very least mismanaged, incompetent, or too industry friendly.

Behavior like this in the real world, outside of government, would get people fired from their jobs. There have been no reports that anyone from NHTSA has been fired for completely missing this albatross. This is the quality we get for paying our tax dollars.

And finally, may favorite party in many of these escapades, Congress and the political class. As mentioned in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," have you noticed how in just about every pick screw up involving the government (in this case the NHTSA), Congress only gets involved after the disaster happens:

• Congress holds hearings on FEMA incompetence AFTER Hurricane Katrina devastates New Orleans. New Orleans is still a wreck in many respects.
• Congress holds hearings AFTER the subprime mortgage meltdown. Too little, way too late to do anything.
• Congress holds hearings AFTER Bernie Madoff rips off investors for billions of dollars. Too little, way too late to do anything.
• Congress holds hearings AFTER it is found that military hospitals handling Iraq war wounded are a disgrace. The biggest military hospital, Walter Reed, is less than ten miles from the Capital Building but no politician bothers to take a visit to see how things are going.
• Congress holds hearings AFTER the 9-11 attacks. They cannot address the problem and require an outside commission to come up with security recommendations.
• Congress holds hearings AFTER it is found that toys from China may have been produced using lead paints which is a dangerous toxin if American kids put the toys in their mouth. A year later, although the lead has been largely removed from imported toys, overseas toy makers are now using cadmium instead of lead in their production processes, an element that is just as dangerous (see a previous post for details found in an Associated Press report on cadmium laced toys).
• Congress holds hearings AFTER eight years of reported acceleration problems with multiple Toyota models over multiple model years.

Its only AFTER a crisis that the political class wakes up and starts posturing (but hardly doing anything effective) even though the problem has smacked them in the face. Rarely are they proactive in avoiding any disasters. Thus, Step 34 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" becomes critical in the future if we are to avoid future disasters of any kind:

Hold Congress and Senate committees and subcommittees accountable for their respective areas of responsibility, and remove committee members from committee posts if they do not meet minimal performance criteria.

If any politician sitting on the committees that are now investigating the Toyota problems have been sitting on those committees for any amount of time, they should all be removed since they, along with the NHTSA, were not competent enough to not see the acceleration problems over the PAST EIGHT YEARS. Thus, they should be relieved of their committee posts and replaced with others that may be more diligent in their responsibilities. There must be accountability at the Congressional level also, that is what we pay our taxes for, competence. Anything short of that is unacceptable and should have consequences.

Visit our website at www.loathemygovernment.com to order an autographed copy of the book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government -Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom and Destroying The American Political Class" and to sign up for the cause. The book is also available online at Amazon and Barnes And Noble.