Toyota apologizes for safety problems, says electronics not cause of stuck gas pedals

Toyota apologizes for handling of safety issues

WASHINGTON — The president of Toyota’s U.S. operations insisted Tuesday that electronic problems did not contribute to sudden acceleration of its cars, drawing sharp criticism from lawmakers who said such a possibility should not be ruled out and from a tearful woman driver who could not stop her runaway Lexus.

“Shame on you, Toyota,” Rhonda Smith, of Sevierville, Tenn., said at a congressional hearing. Then she added a second “shame on you” directed at federal highway safety regulators.

Toyota’s James Lentz repeated Toyota’s position that stuck gas pedals in some of the company’s most popular models were caused by one of two problems — misplaced floor mats and sticking accelerator pedals.

Meanwhile, Toyota president Akio Toyoda, who will testify before a separate panel on Wednesday, said he took “full responsibility” for the uncertainty felt by Toyota owners and offered his condolences to a San Diego, Calif., family who were killed in late August, reigniting interest in the problems.

“I will do everything in my power to ensure that such a tragedy never happens again,” Toyoda said in prepared testimony for Wednesday’s hearing to the House Government Oversight Committee. “My name is on every car. You have my personal commitment that Toyota will work vigorously and unceasingly to restore the trust of our customers,” Toyoda said.

Lawmakers heard a brief, but riveting, description of the problem from Smith, the Tennessee woman whose Toyota-made Lexus suddenly zoomed to 100 miles per hour as she tried to get it to stop — shifting to neutral, trying to throw the car into reverse and hitting the emergency brake. Finally, her car slowed enough that she was able to pull it off the road onto the median and turn off the engine.

She told described her nightmare ride in October 2006, calling it “a near death experience.” Fighting back tears, Smith told the panel “I prayed to God to help me.”

“After six miles, God intervened” and slowed the car, she said. She said that nothing she had tried had worked. She said it took a long time for Toyota to respond to her complaints.

Three congressional panels are investigating Toyota’s problems. The hearings are important because Toyota has recalled more than 8 million vehicles worldwide — more than 6 million in the United States — since last fall because of sudden acceleration problems in multiple models and braking issues in the Prius hybrid. It is also investigating steering concerns in Corollas. People with Toyotas have complained of their vehicles speeding out of control in their efforts to slow down, sometimes resulting in deadly crashes. The government has received complaints of 34 deaths linked to sudden acceleration of Toyota vehicles since 2000.

“We are confident that no problems exist with the electric throttle control system in our vehicles,” Lentz said in prepared testimony to the House Energy and Commerce’s investigative subcommittee. Lentz cited “fail-safe mechanisms” in the cars were designed to shut off or reduce engine power “in the event of a system failure.”

But Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the full Energy and Commerce Committee, scoffed at Toyota’s insistence that electronics were not a possible cause and said the company should have investigated more thoroughly. Waxman also took the government to task for not doing enough. “Toyota failed its customers and the government neglected its responsibilities,” he said.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told the panel in his prepared testimony that all possible causes, including possible electronics problems were being investigated by his agency. “We will continue to investigate all possible causes of unintended acceleration,” LaHood said. He said that the millions of recalls by Toyota were important steps but “we don’t maintain that they answer every question.”

Toyota hired a consulting firm to analyze whether electronic problems could cause unintended acceleration. The firm, Exponent Inc., found no link between the two. But committee investigators said the Exponent test was flawed because it studied only a small number of Toyota vehicles

Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., chairman of the subcommittee, said Toyota “misled the American public by saying that they and other independent sources had thoroughly analyzed the electronics systems and eliminated electronics as a possible cause of sudden unintended acceleration when, in fact, the only such review was a flawed study conducted by a company retained by Toyota’s lawyers.”

But Texas Republican Rep. Joe Barton cautioned his colleagues against conducting a “witch hunt” and said “We don’t want to just assume automatically that Toyota has done something wrong and has tried to cover it up.”

In his written testimony, he apologized for the company’s slow handling of problems. “We have not lived up to the high standards our customers and the public have come to expect from Toyota,” Lentz said.

“Put simply, it has taken us too long to come to grips with a rare but serious set of safety issues, despite all of our good faith efforts,” said Lentz, president and chief operating officer of Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. Inc.

Among an army of Toyota dealers lobbying members of Congress Tuesday, there seemed to be a widespread rancor toward a federal government they view as picking on the automaker, at least in part because of the government’s investment of billions of dollars in General Motors and Chrysler.

“That’s hard for me as a citizen to understand why my tax dollars are going in that direction,” Paul Atkinson, a Houston-area Toyota dealer, said at a news conference that also served as a pep rally for the visiting dealers. “To compete with the government as an individual entrepreneur is pretty tough.”

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Associated Press reporters Alan Fram, Stephen Manning and Tom Raum contributed to this story from Washington.