Acceleration Problems Still Plague Toyota Cars
Just as the memory of Toyota's unintended acceleration cases began to fade, at least in the minds of the media and a few million thus far unaffected Toyota owners, in comes Robert Ruginis to dredge it all up again. Ruginis, a Bristol, Rhode Island-based embedded systems engineer, filed a petition letter on Thursday, September 11, to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) about multiple low-speed surge events involving his wife's 2010 Toyota Corolla. The Ruginis case poses for Toyota the danger that the public and government regulators will remember that the Japanese automotive giant has never really addressed the root cause of unintended acceleration in its vehicles.
Kathleen Ruginis's statements have been very clear and consistent. They are verified by a passenger in the car at the time of the crash. A readout of the vehicle's Event Data Recorder (EDR) "is consistent to a 'T' to Kathleen's statements. The EDR readout shows that at the moment the airbag module made the decision whether to deploy (about the time of the impact), voltage going to the accelerator pedal was 0.78 (at idle), the brake was engaged, yet both the speed of the vehicle and engine RPM doubled in less than two seconds.
Sean Kane, of Safety Research & Strategies, found 164 complaints from NHTSA's files that appear to relate to similar problems in Toyotas. Toyota is falling back on a familiar alibi: driver error.
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1323903
[cross-submitting from my own soylentNews stories]
Kathleen Ruginis's statements have been very clear and consistent. They are verified by a passenger in the car at the time of the crash. A readout of the vehicle's Event Data Recorder (EDR) "is consistent to a 'T' to Kathleen's statements. The EDR readout shows that at the moment the airbag module made the decision whether to deploy (about the time of the impact), voltage going to the accelerator pedal was 0.78 (at idle), the brake was engaged, yet both the speed of the vehicle and engine RPM doubled in less than two seconds.
Sean Kane, of Safety Research & Strategies, found 164 complaints from NHTSA's files that appear to relate to similar problems in Toyotas. Toyota is falling back on a familiar alibi: driver error.
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1323903
[cross-submitting from my own soylentNews stories]