All good with Toyota’s Prius software, says the NHTSA!

2010 Toyota Prius Hybrid

US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood,

The jury is back. The verdict is in. There is no electronic-based cause for unintended high-speed acceleration in Toyotas. Period.

Toyota, which is facing scores of lawsuits, and plenty of damage control marketing costing it close to $2 Billion is now absolved of the sticky accelerator issue caused due to a software glitch. While ruling that Toyota’s software isn’t the culprit, Federal Investigators along with scientists from NASA asserted that the only other plausible cause of unintended acceleration could be faulty floor mats and sticky accelerator pedals causing the accelerator pedals to get stuck. So, now while electronics have been ruled out from causing the unintended acceleration, mechanical faults still remain.

Who else is to be blamed? The driver, say NHTSA! The whole incident of sticky gas pedals finally seem to be pointing to one major cause in most incidents: Driver error. Apparently, drivers have been pressing the wrong pedal and this has been the reason why most the unintended accelerations and the resulting car crashes happened. Now, this seems rather interesting and much too simplistic as we still have trouble believing that all was good even as Toyota remapped thousands of Prius’ with new software and also installed redesigned floor mats.

Toyota even admitted that it knew of braking problems beforehand and said that it did not do anything to allay it until things got as worse as it eventually did. Thus, Toyota hasn’t yet been given a clean chit on the mechanical issues causing unintended acceleration and hence those charges would still persist. We’ll be watching closely to see how all of this pans out in the coming days even as the NHTSA findings will be cross examined by the US Judiciary as it will hear hundreds of class action law suits against Toyota. Keep an eye out on this space.

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