Washington, DCTransportation officials with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and NASA engineers released their findings from a 10-month joint study on safety problems with Toyota vehicles, and report that there are no electronic flaws associated with sudden unintentional acceleration or SUA in Toyotas.
The announcement came Tuesday morning, with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood stating that the investigators could not find any electronic-based cause for SUA in Toyotas. Preliminary results from NHTSA and NASA study released in August 2010 "failed to find any electronic flaws based on a review of event data recorders, or vehicle black boxes," CBS News reports. Instead, the study indicates that pedal and floormat problems appear to be the only known cause of SUA.
Since 2009, the world's leading automaker has recalled over 12 million vehicles globally, due to various safety issues, SUA being a leading cause of recalls. Roughly 3000 incidences of SUA were reported to the NHTSA during the past 10 years, all involving Toyota vehicles. The problem first came to light when Mark Saylor and three of his family members were killed in a high-speed crash involving a Lexus in August 2009. Some 100 fatalities have been linked to accelerations problems in Toyota vehicles, although the NHTSA has confirmed only five of those.