Page 139 - Toyota Under Fire

TOYOT A UNDER FIRE

depressed position.” This is a far cry from the wide-open throttle
acceleration claims that the Times repeatedly highlighted in its
reporting. At no point in the article do the Times reporters pro-
vide a statement or quote from a Toyota employee that attributes
sudden acceleration complaints to the sticking accelerator ped-
als. What the reporters do focus on, however, is a statement from
CTS in which it denied that its pedals could cause sudden accel-
eration: “CTS acknowledged that a tiny number of pedals had a
rare condition that could cause a slow return to idle position, but
it denied that this condition could cause unintended acceleration
and said that it knew of no accidents or injuries caused by the is-
sue.” This statement is exactly in accord with Toyota’s position—
this was a rare issue that was not associated with any accidents
and was not related to sudden acceleration. Somehow, though,
the reporters construed the statement as contradicting Toyota
when it was only contradicting the Times’s narrative.
Far from blaming CTS, Toyota has had a communications
policy of never blaming suppliers for any quality defects. The
pedal in question was designed by CTS to Toyota’s specifications.
And as Robert Young, vice president of the purchasing group at
TEMA (which handles suppliers), notes, “We put it in our ve-
hicle. It’s our responsibility. End of story.” In stark contrast to the
finger-pointing between BP, Halliburton, and other companies
involved in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Toyota has always as-
sumed full responsibility for the sticky pedals. A safety or quality
defect that makes it into production is a failure of the system, not
of a particular part or supplier.
The mismatch between Toyota’s perspective and the popular
narrative also served to further blacken the company’s relation-
ship with the NHTSA. Understandably, some people within the
NHTSA felt that the abrupt announcement of a defect—though

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