flipside909

Who ever wants can watch the hearings on Toyota live here:

http://www.c-span.org/Watch/C-SPAN3.aspx

Joeb427

iTrader: (1)

Thanks for the link.

venom21

Lahood: "Those cars on our website are not safe to drive. Take them to the dealer right away."

jimmyford1

Link to all of the Testimony at the hearing: http://energycommerce.house.gov/inde...ions&Itemid=73


__________________

February 23, 2010 Committee on Oversight and Investigations
Testimony by Rhonda and Eddie Smith
We would like to begin by thanking each of the Honorable Members of this committee for inviting us to
testify today regarding the much publicized “sudden unintended acceleration”(SUA) that has been, and
is currently being experienced by Toyota drivers not only in the United States, but all over the world.
SUA has been the cause of numerous deaths and will continue to be, unless addressed by this
committee, Toyota and NHTSA. We truly appreciate this opportunity to share our story now, since we
have attempted numerous times to bring this deadly problem to Toyota and NHTSA’s attention since
October, 2006.
My name is Eddie G. Smith and I reside in Sevierville, TN. I am a senior vice president with Citizens
National Bank in Sevierville, TN. This is my wife of 38 years, Rhonda Smith. She is a retired social worker
with the State of Tennessee. We have 2 children and 2 grandchildren.
We would like to share our experience with you concerning a SUA incident experienced by my wife on
October 12, 2006 in our new Lexus 350 ES. This car had 2728 miles on it when this occurred. The vehicle
has a keyless, push button ignition and requires a key fob to be present inside the car in order for it to
start. My wife was driving the car and called me on my cell phone at work during most this horrifying
experience. Rhonda wrote down this experience October 13, 2006, as we knew this was a potential
deadly malfunction that could possibly affect many other Toyota drivers. She is going to read her
experience to you, as written by her that day.
“ I am writing these words to try and convey some of my feelings of a near death experience, which
occurred on October 12, 2006 between approximately 10:50 and 11:00 a.m.
On this Thursday, I had planned on visiting my 85 year old father in Knoxville. I was driving my 2007
Lexus 350 ES from my home in Sevierville down Hwy 66 to I‐40 East. Upon entering I‐40 I accelerated
with everyone else, into the flow of traffic. At this point, I merged over into the second lane, NOT going
into passing gear.
It is at this time I lost all control of the acceleration of the vehicle. The car goes into passing gear and
the cruise light comes on. At this time, I am thinking that maybe the cruise is what has caused the car to
accelerate, as my foot is NOT on the gas pedal. I take off the cruise control. The car continues to
accelerate. The car is now up to 80 mph. The brakes do not slow the car at all. Now I am at 85‐90 mph.
I push the car into NEUTAL and it makes a revving noise. I push the emergency brake on… nothing helps.
I continue hitting and slamming the brakes. Now I am at 85‐90 mph. I look at the traffic ahead to see if I
can maneuver in and out of the upcoming cars and trucks, or if I am going to need to put the car into the
guardrail and into the trees.
The last time I looked at the speedometer it read 100 mph. At this time, I had the emergency brake on
while frantically shifting between ALL the gears (besides park) but mainly had it in REVERSE and with the
emergency brake on. I finally figured the car was going to go to its maximum speed and was praying to
God to please help me. After about 3 miles had passed, I thought it was my time to die, and I called my
husband (on bluetooth). I knew he couldn’t help me in this particular situation, but I just needed to hear
his voice. What an awful 911 call he received at work.
At almost exactly 6 miles God intervened. I had not tried anything different that I had frantically tried
before to slow the vehicle, yet the car began to slow down ever so slowly. It slowed enough for me to
pull to the left median, with the motor still revving up and down. At 35 mph it would not shut off.
Finally, at 33 mph I was able to turn the engine off. However, the radio remained on and I was not
about to touch ANY button on that car, or ever again.”
Rhonda C. Smith
Eddie arrived approximately 5‐10 minutes later at my location, still on the phone with me. After trying
to calm me down he inspected the vehicle to make sure it was turned off and secure. At this time he
made a visual inspection for anything out of the ordinary that might have caused this. There was
nothing unusual concerning the accelerator or anything that might have jammed it open. The car radio
and inside lights were still on, even though I had exited way away from the car and had turned it off.
He immediately called a wrecker, as I knew I was never going to drive that car again. After the wrecker
arrived, the wrecker driver was given the key fob and asked to tow it back to Sevierville. When he
hooked to the car and prepared to winch it onto the rollback, he asked my husband to put the car in
neutral so he could start his winch. The driver was standing 20‐25 feet away at the rollback controls.
Without thinking, my husband sat down in the car with no fob on him and was able to pull the car from
park to neutral. This should not have happened. As the car went into neutral, the car actually tried to
start by itself with the engine turning over several times. This shocked my husband and he immediately
exited the vehicle. At that time the wrecker driver walked back and they were dumbfounded as to how
the vehicle could try to start with no key fob inside the vehicle. We have a notarized statement from
Tommy Clayton, the driver with Baker’s Wrecker Service, stating this fact to be true. The vehicle was
then towed back to Sevierville and then to the dealership in Kingsport, TN. The dealership was told this
story and they advised they would thoroughly check it out. After several weeks we were advised they
could find nothing wrong with the car. We refused to accept this answer and attempted to contact
Toyota by phone to let them know that we felt they had an electronics issue that could lead to serious
injury and death. Toyota advised they would check on our situation and contact us. After a week to 10
days we had not received a call back. We called again and got the same story of “we will check on it and
contact you as soon as possible”. This happened the same way several times over the next few weeks
and we finally forced a written reply from them that stated, and I quote, “when properly maintained,
the brakes will always override the accelerator”. Once again we contacted our dealer and expressed our
disgust with Toyota’s handling of this and they advised us to contact NCDS (National Center for dispute
Settlement) and ask for an arbitration hearing. We were eventually set up by NCDS to have a hearing in
Gatlinburg, TN, on March 1, 2007. The representative for Lexus was Mr. Leonard St. Amand, their TN
District Field Technician. Mr. St. Amand, although in Kingsport at the time (a 1 hour drive), did not
bother to show up but chose to attend via speaker phone. This turned out to be a farce with Mr. St.
Amand stating he could not re‐create the incident and that we had more than likely caused this problem
by standing on the brakes while spinning the tires. Of course we were insulted and furious over being
called liars. Needless to say, NCDS denied our claim for a total refund of our money for this “possessed”
car, and for the record we did not owe any money on this vehicle.
During this time we had contacted NHTSA and after some prodding, we were contacted by Mr. Steve
Chan and Mr. D. Scott Yon, Safety Defects Engineers. This was about the middle of March, 2007.
(2)
Mr. Yon took over our claim and seemed to be very receptive of our concerns for this SUA (Sudden
Unintended Acceleration) causing serious injury and possibly death. We furnished pictures of the car
and documentation of what had transpired since October, 2006. On April 11, 2007, Mr. Yon flew to
Knoxville, TN, and drove to Sevierville to inspect our vehicle. The vehicle had been towed to a local
Sevierville car dealer’s lot and secured for Mr. Yon’s inspection. He seemed to arrive with the preconceived
idea to sell to us, that it was a floor mat problem. We continually insisted that it was not the
mats, but instead somewhere in the electronics. Mr. Yon, along with my husband, took the vehicle on a
short test drive. Mr. Yon performed several tests at a speed of 50 mph or less. These tests included
placing the car in neutral while accelerating, and trying to stop the vehicle with the accelerator engaged
and the foot brake fully applied. The transmission did disengage when put in neutral, but the car would
not come to a complete stop with the foot brake engaged. Upon returning to the car lot, Mr. Yon and
my husband placed the vehicle on a hydraulic lift and removed the wheels and tires. All of the brake
pads were totally burnt up and the rotors and drums were ruined. Eventually this was something we
had to pay to repair ourselves.
After insisting it was “probably” floor mats, Mr. Yon issued his final report and put the blame on the
floor mats. These floor mats were a heavy gauge rubber mat placed on top of the summer mats by the
dealer. It would have taken a magic trick for this mat to turn up enough or slide forward enough to
cause this SUA. The report was issued on May 2, 2007. In it Mr. Yon claimed to have performed a test
with the floor mat in our presence that would show cause for the floor mat to be blamed. This was
never demonstrated to us or shown to us that it could ever happen accidently. Once again we advised
NHTSA and Mr. Yon that this SUA problem was going to eventually cause the loss of life and serious
injury.
At this point we contacted numerous news agencies across the United States, only to have one local
station take an interest in our claim of Toyota and NHTSA ignoring this potential deadly problem.
Don Dare with WATE‐TV, Channel 6 News, Knoxville, TN called and did a full broadcast interview with
us, showing where Toyota and NHTSA claimed that SUA was caused by floor mats. He also showed that
we believed it to be somewhere in the electronics and not the floor mats. This was aired in the spring of
2007. WATE‐TV did another broadcast interview in February, 2010 showing the first interview along
with the current interview and showcasing the highway patrolman and his family’s horrible 911call
shortly before their deaths. The 2010 interview seemed to confirm our 2007 assertion that it was not
floor mats, but in the electronics. We did forward this 2010 video to Toyota and NHTSA and received no
response.
This was all done by the news station and us to hopefully warn the American public that there was a
tremendous and possibly deadly issue with Toyota vehicles, and that Toyota and NHTSA were aware of
SUA at least since 2006 but chose to blatantly ignore it.
Eventually in early 2008, due to the traumatizing effect this had taken on Eddie and me, we decided to
give up our mission to get Toyota and NHTSA to address this electronics problem in the hopes that they
had somehow corrected it. Unfortunately, it took almost 4 years, a mass of injuries and numerous lives
being lost for Toyota and NHTSA to confess their sins in this joint dismissal, or cover up, whichever the
case may be.
(3)
In summary, we would like to inform this committee and the American public that we feel we put forth
our best effort in 2006 and 2007 to inform Toyota Motor Company and NHTSA of the potential for SUA
to become a deadly issue.
Our hopes were that our efforts might help spare the unnecessary injury and loss of innocent lives.
However, we failed miserably, all due to Toyota and NHTSA’s uncaring attitude and total disregard for
human life.
One would think that Toyota, along with NHTSA’s help, would have stepped up and used some of their
massive profits to address this now major, deadly problem.
It is our hope that this testimony will in some way help the families of those killed and those that
sustained serious injuries from SUA. We also hope they will somehow benefit from the knowledge that
we provided critical information to Toyota and NHTSA showing that the problem was not floor mats but
in the electronics of their vehicles at least 3 ½ years ago.
Once again, we would like to thank this committee for taking the time to hear our story and hope that
somehow Toyota and NHTSA will be held accountable for choosing the path of not preventing the
unnecessary loss of life. We would also like to ask this committee to set a higher standard for NHTSA to
be held accountable for in the future.
Thank you,
Rhonda and Eddie Smith

jimmyford1

The Parasite Circuit
Politicians are up in arms about Toyota.

Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) said yesterday: "Toyota failed its customers."

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said the Toyota problem "may be the most serious safety issue that we have faced here at DOT [during my tenure.]"

That’s a good thing. The scare-of-the-day is always used by politicians to grab power. But to put the Toyota problem in perspective, before all the media hype, 19 fatal accidents were linked to faulty gas pedals and floor mats over the last decade. That's fewer than 2 each year. Compare that to America’s 40,000 annual fatal car crashes.

As David Champion, director of automobile testing for Consumer Reports, said to The Guardian:

"I find it a little odd that we're going to have a Congressional hearing to look at those two deaths out of 40,000... you have to look at death rates in safety terms rationally."

No one looks at safety “rationally” when the media and Big Government are stirred up.

But what about all the new problems cropping up in Toyota vehicles? I see newspaper headlines like these:

Toyota hit by new surge of reported fatalities in vehicles -- Washington Post
Toyota complaints surge at NHTSA -- The Detroit News
Toyota crash complaints rise in US -- Reuters

It’s possible that those new crashes were caused by Toyota safety defects, but I doubt it.

The LA Times reports that "all but one of the deaths reported to NHTSA by motorists in 2010 actually occurred in prior years - as far back as 1992 - suggesting that recent public attention to the issue spurred people to file complaints regarding past incidents."

Because Toyota is the evil business of the month, every accident caused by a drunk or careless driver can suddenly be attributed to safety defects in the vehicle. No human wants to admit “human error.” “Toyota error” is a much better story to tell dad. The parasite circus of trial lawyers invites bad drivers to blame gas pedals.

Try Googling "Toyota accelerator defect." When as wrote this, six out of the top ten hits are from law firms soliciting business:

As innocent drivers continue to report acceleration issues and more and more are becoming injured in accidents resulting from the auto product defects...

If you or a loved one has been injured in a New York Auto Accident as a result of what you believe to be an automotive defect, the New York defective auto part attorneys at Wingate, Russotti & Shapiro, L.L.P., would like to meet with you.

I’m sure they would. Truth wont matter much. Personal injury lawyers spewed junk science about breast implants and asbestos and got juries to award billions. The Toyota circus may be no different. Once the media-politician-lawyer cabal is inflamed, hysteria and greed eclipse rational analysis.

Is it worth the billions of dollars Toyota is spending to recall 8.5 million vehicles and halt production in factories across the country? I don’t know, but this quote from the Transportation Secretary LaHood doesn't give me much confidence: "the reason Toyota decided to do the recall and to stop manufacturing was because we asked them to."

LaHood is a Government Guy, as Andrew Ferguson cleverly puts it:

The government guy’s first step, always, is to raid the language of epidemiology and declare a problem—any problem, from anorexia to obesity—an epidemic.


... [That is] how government guys create work for themselves, manage to keep themselves busy, and put the rest of us on our guard.

Toyota's internal documents referred to the administration as "not industry friendly" and listed as a challenge the "Activist Administration & Congress.”

Such business bashing activists threaten our prosperity.



Read more: http://stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com...#ixzz0gT2YvYS9

CleanSC

These are non-issues. I do most of these things on a daily basis in my GTI with "smart" pedal. The ECU can be easily programmed to allow both advanced driving techniques and preventing an SUA event.

Not like a manual transmission car needs this safety measure anyway but that won't stop government mandating carkmakers from making their products more idiot-proof.

flipside909

http://www.freep.com/article/2010022...00224024/1318/

February 24, 2010

Jim Press: Toyoda can save Toyota from 'pirates'

BY JUSTIN HYDE AND TOM WALSH
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS

Jim Press, the former Chrysler executive who was the first American member of Toyota’s board of directors, said today that Toyota chief executive Akio Toyoda was the right executive to save his company from “financially oriented pirates.”

“The root cause of their problems is that the company was hijacked, some years ago, by anti-family, financially oriented pirates,” Press said in a rare statement.

“They didn't have the character necessary to maintain a customer first focus. Akio does.”

The comments are the first Press has made about the company where he spent 36 years before joining Chrysler in September 2007. He had been the highest-ranking American executive in Toyota until he left for Chrysler.

“Akio Toyoda is not only up for the job, but he is the only person who can save Toyota. He is very capable, and he embodies the virtues and character that built this great company.

“Toyota doesn't want me to speak out, but I can't stand it anymore and somebody has to tell it like it is.”

Toyoda, the grandson of the company’s founder, will tell the House Oversight Committee that the company grew too rapidly in recent years, straining its reputation for quality. He has pledged to establish new quality controls, and Toyota said Tuesday it would give U.S. executives more say in recalls.

“What the company needs now is for everyone in the company to get behind Akio and do everything possible to emerge from this mess as an even stronger company," Press said.

STIG

I am watching C-Span and these hearings are quite comical.

People asking questions that they have absolutely no idea about, but acting like they know what they are talking about.

Joeb427

iTrader: (1)

Just have all auto manufacturers install the throttle overide and stop the witch hunt and wasting all this time.
.

STIG

Ray Lahood is a gangsta. That's no doubt about it.

I have never seen these hearing before, and I am quite shocked to learn that these are the people making laws and ruling the country. No wonder we are going down.

STIG

between, TM is up almost 4% today.

RXSF

anyone watching?

THANK YOU REP JEFF FLAKE lol for calling out on NHTSA and DOT for picking on toyota.

btw, i dont trust that NHTSA chairman. Lahood. he is also drowning

4TehNguyen

iTrader: (1)

http://stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com...asite-circuit/

STIG

I am watching it because I have nothing better to do today.

Americans just need to learn how to drive better. They probably should bring in DMV chief and ask him why he is issuing all these people driving licenses when they don't know how to drive.

*Batman*

I wrote to my Congresswoman to make it clear that unless she takes a stand against Congress's persecution of Toyota I will not vote for her and will contribute resources to her opponents.

Bottom line message was that there are maybe a 100 complaints against Toyota out of over 9 million vehicles sold in 5 years. And I expect her and her colleagues in the majority party to focus on issues which help more than 100 money chasers. Issues like homelessness, education, healthcare, America's competitiveness, public debt, etc.

I am encouraging others to do the same.