Remember the uproar over the unintended acceleration of Toyota vehicles last year? Well now the US Department of Transportation has released the results of its ten-month study into the issue.
The study was launched by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) last spring at the request of Congress but the NASA engineers found no electronic flaws in Toyota vehicles that would be capable of producing the large throttle openings that would be needed for dangerous high speed acceleration accidents.
Instead the only known causes identified were those outlined by the NHTSA a year ago – namely the sticking accelerator pedals and a design flaw that allowed the pedals to become trapped by floor mats.
The NASA engineers had evaluated the electronic circuitry in Toyota vehicles and analysed more than 280,000 lines of software code for potential flaws. They bombarded the vehicles with electromagnetic radiation to investigate whether it could cause malfunctions that could result in unintended acceleration. However, they found no evidence that a malfunction in electronics caused large unintended accelerations.
However, while no electronic cause was identified, NHTSA is considering several new actions including proposing rules to require brake override systems to standardise the operations of keyless ignition systems and require the installation of event data recorders; to begin research on the reliability of electronic control systems; and to research the placement and design of accelerator and brake pedals.
