New car control ignites old debate

By Jayne O'Donnell and David Kiley
USA Today

ROCKVILLE, Md. — Carol Mathews, 60, has been driving since she was 12 years old on a South Dakota farm. So when her 2002 Lexus ES 300 ran into a tree as she pulled into a restaurant parking space last fall, she was pretty sure she wasn't the problem. She says it was the third time the car lurched forward without her help.

Was it the car or the driver?

The question lingers 15 years after federal auto-safety officials said so-called unintended or sudden acceleration was caused when drivers stepped on the gas instead of the brake.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's 1989 report was in response to well-publicized complaints that models sold by Audi and other automakers would take off on their own from a standstill, travel several feet and usually crash.

But lack of ironclad proof that the cause of unintended acceleration lies either with a car defect or driver error has made the issue a recurring nightmare for automakers and regulators. Each new spate of incidents can cause renewed jitters among drivers.

Now, NHTSA has opened an investigation into whether a new technology is making unintended acceleration more frequent — or just giving errant drivers and plaintiffs' lawyers something new to blame for crashes.

The technology, electronic throttle control, uses sensors to tell a car's computer how much to open the throttle, which lets in air, and how much fuel to inject into the engine to control speed. Automakers like the technology, which replaces a mechanical cable, for reliability and cost savings, and because it helps fuel economy and improves performance. But it works with other new and often bug-ridden electronics that plaintiffs' lawyers say are leading to unintended acceleration.

Specifically, NHTSA is investigating the electronic throttle control system in more than 1 million 2002-03 Toyota Camrys, Solaras and Lexus ES 300s. It has narrowed the probe to 11 complaints of engine surge, five that involved crashes. More than two dozen other complaints were dropped from the investigation.

But the Toyota case is only one of several recent unintended acceleration developments. Others:

• At least 16 drivers have told NHTSA that their 1998-99 Audi A6 sedans pick up speed without help while already moving, mostly in subzero temperatures. Drivers said the only way to stop the car was to turn the ignition off. The agency is investigating.
• Subaru recalled 128,000 vehicles because of a possible defect in the cruise-control system that could leave throttles sticking wide open rather than returning to idle when the driver removed his foot.
• For more than a decade, decisions usually favored car companies and blamed drivers in unintended acceleration cases, but some recent trials and court decisions reversed that. Ford Motor and General Motors each recently lost a high-profile case.

Throttle control targeted

Automakers and regulators say that cruise control, like any component, can malfunction, but they dismiss the lawyers' theory that it is linked to cars taking off on their own from a stop. They say all the incarnations of cruise control have given often-elderly drivers a complicated new technology to blame for their own mistakes.

Now, many expect electronic throttle control will be the new lawsuit target.

Toyota spokesman Mike Michels says the automaker takes the complaints seriously but believes it's significant that NHTSA has already reduced the number it is investigating to 11. "That's a pretty small number, and we do not think that there is any event that could take place that couldn't be overcome by applying the brake," Michels says.

Electronic throttle control units show trouble codes on the car's computer and illuminate the check-engine light on the dash if there are malfunctions. Michels says Toyota technicians found no trouble codes with Carol Mathews' car.

But automakers have suffered recent losses in cruise-control cases:

• A Missouri jury last year ordered GM to pay Constance Peters and her husband $80 million for the crash of her 1993 Oldsmobile Cutlass, which accelerated 120 feet and into a tree while she was backing up. They blamed faulty cruise control. GM is appealing.
• The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York in 2002 reinstated a $1.1 million judgment against Ford in the crash of a 1991 Ford Aerostar. Jurors had found that the crash was caused partly by a "negligently designed" cruise-control system.

Age as an issue?

In its 1989 report, NHTSA noted that drivers over 60 were as much as six times as likely as younger drivers to be involved in an unintended acceleration incident, suggesting that deteriorating reflexes are a factor.

But the older-driver theory raises the ire of attorney Tom Murray of Sandusky, Ohio. "These cases go back to the 1980s and involve Audi 5000s, Ford Thunderbirds, Mercury Cougars and Grand Marquis, Ford Aerostar vans, as well as Town Cars, and the complaints and incidents cover a broad demographic waterfront," Murray said.

Audi perhaps has the most to fear from a fresh look at the issue. In the mid-1980s, Audi was investigated for hundreds of complaints of unintended acceleration in its 5000 sedan. The resulting bad publicity caused Audi sales to drop 60 percent in three years, even though NHTSA never found a flaw in Audi's design and blamed driver error.