Page 127 - Toyota Under Fire

TOYOT A UNDER FIRE

position.* Field engineers recovered the pedals and sent them back
to Japan for analysis. Replicating the problem in the lab proved
difficult and required months of testing. It wasn’t until April 2009
that the testing was able to consistently recreate the problem in
the lab. The reason the problem was so hard to replicate was
that the stickiness seemingly happened only in high-heat or high-
humidity conditions. In such conditions, the synthetic material
CTS had used as a damper in the pedal could become sticky. The
first European reports all came from right-hand-drive vehicles
from the United Kingdom or Ireland. In these vehicles, the driver
side heat duct was directed at the accelerator pedal—which the
testing engineers from TMC and CTS believed caused high heat
and condensation in humid conditions.
With the problem now apparently understood and docu-
mented, Toyota engineers got to work on assessing the impact of
the stickiness. The primary concern was determining if the sticky
pedals affected the ability of drivers to stop their vehicles. This
question is the hidden factor around which much of the subse-
quent controversy revolved: If the sticky pedals kept drivers from
stopping or materially increased the amount of time required to
bring a car to a halt, then the sticky pedals were clearly a safety
defect and required immediate corrective action. If, on the other
hand, braking performance was unaffected by the sticky pedals,
then, the engineers felt, the pedals were not a safety defect but a
customer-satisfaction and component-reliability issue.
As we noted above, testing by independent analysts showed
that a Camry with a wide-open throttle could be brought to a
stop in less distance than similar vehicles without an open throttle

* The details of the sticky pedal investigation are based on reports Toyota has
filed with the NHTSA as well as interviews with Toyota personnel.

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