More than floor mats: NHTSA report gives more details on Lexus crash

It may not be just floor mats that lead to sudden unintended acceleration in Toyota and Lexus models, which were factors in killed California Highway Patrolman Mark Saylor and his family this summer.
 
More information has come to light regarding Toyota Motor Company’s 3.8-million vehicle recall for sudden unintended acceleration. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has released a report about its inspection of the vehicle that suggests factors beyond the floor mats as potential culprits or complicating factors (NHTSA report pdf).

Highlights include:

According to the NHTSA report, the mats in the Lexus ES 350 that Saylor was driving were made for a Lexus RX 400h SUV, not the ES 350 sedan.

The gas pedal was fused to the mat in the fire that ensued after the crash. The gas pedal used a single hinge on the upper end, and it did not have a center pivot that might have made it easier to get the pedal out from under a floor mat. (To be fair, most accelerator pedals lack a center pivot – of 44 cars we surveyed in our parking lot, only the Kia Optima had a center hinge pivot.)
 
The Lexus that Saylor was driving had a keyless ignition, which uses a start/stop button to start and stop the engine. There is no traditional key to turn if you need to shut the engine off in an emergency. In the case of the ES 350, the button needs to be held for three seconds before it will turn off the engine if the car is in gear. Toyota says it considered this a safety feature to prevent the engine from turning off if the button were pressed accidentally. However, the report points out that Saylor was traveling at an estimated 100 mph—that’s the equivalent of traveling one and a half football field in three seconds.
 
The ES had a data recorder but its information has not yet been reviewed.  

Brian Lyons, Toyota’s manager of safety and quality communications, says the company is looking at features to mitigate problems with stuck accelerators following the accident. “Our focus is on avoidance of the problem, rather than measures to mitigate it” in case the throttle becomes stuck, he says.
 
Bottom line:
As the investigation continues, we expect further insights to emerge from both federal departments and Toyota, especially once the event data recorder has been examined. In the meantime, Consumer Reports will continue to explore related issues, as we have done previously with our blog posts on floor mats and unintended acceleration survival strategies.

For now, our advice remains that moving the gear selector to neutral is the best option.
 
—Eric Evarts

Updated 11/3/09

Comments

[David Brodbeck]

It seems to me it would be trivial, on modern fuel-injected cars, to have the engine control system cut the fuel if there's a prolonged brake application with the throttle depressed. Any car with cruise control already has the necessary sensors.

[david]

We don't really need more electronic gadgets or intervention system on cars. The solution is very simple, as CR outlined above. Just move the shifter into neutral position.

Good luck thought to those people on certain luxury cars. You're going to need it figuring out what neutral is.

[Dave]

In the NHTSA report, why is #5 blacked out? What pertinent information is redacted from the report? Inquiring mind wants to know.

Another idea similar to the the first post, why not have the gear automatically shift to neutral during hard braking? Of course this is more technology that's likely to fail but I would prefer more safety that may or may not help me.

[CyCarConsulting]

There is no way at high speeds that you can navigate through the shift gate to find neutral without looking down at it. Bang your dead.

[Ken]

Why do I not see any recommendation to shift into 1st gear instead of neutral to slow down the car? 1st gear will help slow down the car with its own engine, yet neutral gear will not. Presumably these cars are accelerating at speeds up to a hundred miles per hour. To put on the emergency break at that speed will burn out the break instead. If the engine is still on, the power break should be still be working. Why not try the power break after shifting into 1st gear? Then go into neutral and use the emergency break only after the car slows down substantially. Need some answers from the auto experts to confirm my view.

[Jake Fisher]

Ken - good question. Most new automatic transmissions won't allow you to shift into first if you were going at highways speeds at full throttle. And even if you could, it could be very hard to get a car to completely stop in first gear at full throttle. Either way, in our tests we found that it wasn't difficult to stop the car once the engine was shifted into N.

[Carol Paterson]

Many thanks to Consumer Reports and Jake Fisher for the excellent, potentially life-saving video. I have a 2009 Prius. I'm a little nervous about practicing going from drive to neutral. The car's shifting diagram shows neutral to be directly left of the gear shift’s resting position, but in reality, if you’re in drive you need to go left and almost imperceptibly up. What I find unsettling is that ‘reverse’ is right above neutral. In the Prius, the gear doesn't "click" inot place. I think it would be pretty easy to overshoot and damage the engine by going into reverse.

On the other hand, the Prius has a‘B’ gear that is supposed to be for engine braking and which is quite separate from the other gears. Have you tested to see whether putting the car in this gear would slow it down?

[J. Stanton McGroarty]

The neutral gear solution is a good one. A kill button (like motorcycles' systems) or shutting off the ignition also shuts off power steering and most power brakes and anti-lock systems. It would be good for drivers to practice finding neutral quickly, especially on hybrid drive cars that don't have tradiitonal shift levers.

Also use the floor hooks that keep your mats from creeping forward. If you have to use $15 mats, put holes in them, preferably with grommets, that match the hooks.

[RDB]

I'd like it if somebody else would experiment in their Prius with shifts to "N" (neutral) before I practice in mine. Has CR (or anybody else) tried it out in a Prius or other hybrid?

According to the 2009 owner's manual (p. 141) the transmission will automatically be set to "N" if Park or "R" is selected when the vehicle is in forward motion. Also, it says (on p, 140) that "B" may not be very effective at high speed.

But the Prius accelerator and shifter are electronic so who knows what it would decide to do if shifted to N, B, R or Park while under heavy acceleration due to computer malfunction (not stuck floor mats).

The advice to not pump the brakes makes sense and goes against what most of us would do. Thanks for that.