If you are like me, you have been following the Toyota product recall pretty closely. There have been allegations of injuries and wrongful deaths resulting from unintentional acceleration, lawsuits, allegations that government officials did little to stop this mess, and even allegations that Toyota lured away NHTSA senior employees only to use them to shut down investigations in the problem by the agency.
Well, all of this can get pretty confusing. So, thanks to Time Magazine here is a time-line that may help put things in perspective. The time-line is based on NHTSA’s (the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) database and Times investigations. NHTSA is the government agency in charge of safety for our roads and highways.
September 1986: NHTSA, due to “speed control” issues institutes the first recall of Toyota vehicles and a second investigation is ordered that same year.
April 2003: Toyota has a problem with “unwanted acceleration” incident during testing of the Sienna. Toyota determines that it was an “isolated incident.”
March-July 2004: NHTSA begins the first of four investigations in the alleged speed-control problems. The first three involve the Camry, Solara and Lexus ES models. The first investigation is opened only after a Toyota owner petitions the NHTSA. And the investigations will be closed with a defect trend detected.
August 2005–January 2006: An owner of a Toyota Camry, Jordan Ziprin reports “inappropriate and uncontrollable vehicle accelerations.” And NHTSA opens another investigation. NHTSA sends out a questionnaire to owners and gets back hundreds of people reporting problems with acceleration and braking. NHTSA decides that the complaints, however, are to broad and does nothing.
September 2006–April 2007: Multiple “engine surging” incidents are reported by another Camry owner. And NHTSA conducts yet another investigation. But NHTSA doesn’t find anything wrong with the owners car and denies his petition for further investigation.
March 2007: NHTSA starts another investigation of acceleration problems. This time regarding Lexus vehicles. In the agency’s preliminary evaluation, it indicates that floor mats may be responsible.
July 2007: An injury victims is killed when the a Camry accelerates out of control hitting his vehicle at approximately 120 m.p.h. Toyota eventually settles out of court with injury victim’s family for an undisclosed amount.
August 2007: NHTSA upgrades the investigation to an “engineering analysis.”
January 2008–August 2008: A Toyota Tacoma owner petitions NHTSA asking the agency to investigate sudden acceleration in his vehicle. His request is denied.
April 2008–January 2009: NHTSA investigates the Sienna again. This involves the same problems that had been dismissed in 2003 and the problem is blamed on the floor mats.
April 2009: NHTSA is petitioned by an owner of a Lexus ES to investigate throttle control issues.
August 2009: A California off-duty highway patrolman and his family are killed. They rented a Lexus ES350 and ultimately loose control of the vehicle due to uncontrollable acceleration. The whole incident is caught on 911 tape.
October 2009: A recall of 3.8 million vehicles by Toyota is undertaken on the basis that the vehicles may have faulty floor mats.
November 2009: Toyota publicly apologizes to the NHTSA.
December 2009: NHTSA officials go to Japan due to the recall. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood’s office states in a press release that it “…expects improvement in [Toyota's] responsiveness in the future.”
Jan. 16, 2010: Toyota changes the cause of the recall and tells NHTSA that the pedals may be defective.
Jan. 19, 2010: NHTSA meets with Toyota in Washington.
Jan. 21, 2010: 2.3 million more Toyota vehicles are recalled due to “sticking pedals.”
Jan. 26, 2010: Toyota stops selling eight models in the United States.
Jan. 27, 2010: Another 1.1 million cars are recalled because of pedal problems by Toyota.
Feb. 3, 2010: Toyota indicates that there may be product defect issues with its Prius model. So far, there have been 4, 458 complaints filed on NHTSA’s website regarding the 2010 Toyota Prius.
Feb. 4, 2010: Toyota states the the problems with the Pirus braking system are due to antilock issues.
Feb. 9, 2010: Toyota announces recalls for the Prius models – 437,000 hybrid cars worldwide.
Feb. 10, 2010: Toyota company executives are set to testify before a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing. But Toyota’s CEO has announced that he may have to postpone coming to Washington to testify.
