It’s been, as they say, a long, strange road, but the results are in from the exhaustive NHTSA/NASA (yes, NASA) study on the Toyota ‘Unintended Acceleration’ problem, and the results are: it basically doesn’t exist:

NASA engineers studied Toyota’s (TM) electronic throttle for 10 months and found “no electronic flaws” that could have made the vehicles accelerate out of control, a report that came out today says. Toyota cheered the review, saying it “should further reinforce confidence in the safety of Toyota and Lexus vehicles.”

NASA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) put Toyota’s cars and trucks through the wringer. They examined 280,000 lines of code for flaws, bombarded vehicles with electromagnetic radiation, as well as testing the cars’ mechanical components.

“NASA found no evidence that a malfunction in electronics caused large unintended accelerations,” said Michael Kirsch, Principal Engineer at the NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC).

To be precise; yes, Toyota sold some floor mats that an idiot could let get so tangled up around his/her feet that the brake pedal physically cannot depress to the floor. And yes, they had some pedals that themselves were slightly sticky, and wouldn’t bounce back from being pressed as fast as they should. Neither problem causes, from the car’s perspective, ‘unintended’ acceleration; in the first case, driver error leads to a floorboard too cluttered to depress a brake pedal, and in the second, you *did* intend to accelerate, the pedal didn’t press itself, it just doesn’t unpress fast enough afterward.

About this time last year, the media was awash in literally hysterical reporting about this ‘Unintended Acceleration’ problem. Mainstream outlets like ABC and NBC would report as fact the allegations of paid anti-Toyota hired guns like a Professor who rigged cars to do what he wanted by rewiring them, then claimed it was relevant to cars on the road, or obvious frauds who faked incidents to try and cash in via lawsuits.

At the same time, and to the lefty blogosphere’s eternal shame, people like Marcy Wheeler of Fire Dog Lake were engaged in outright scaremongering, if not race-baiting, against Toyota, alleging fantastic conspiracy theories (completely without evidence, as it turns out, since there was no evidence to be had, per NASA testing):

Witness David W Gilbert, an engineering professor at Southern Illinois University, was able to show that there are some errors in Toyota’s ETCS that do not generate an error code. As a result, in such a case, the car would never enter into failsafe mode.

Now Gilbert immediately informed Toyota of his finding–my best guess is he did so last November. But his finding was not among the things that Exponent tested, starting in December. However, when Toyota learned that Gilbert was testifying (those evil tricksy Democrats added him at the last minute) Exponent did middle of the night tests Monday night and managed to replicate his finding.

Mind you, Toyota consistently misrepresented what Gilbert had found. At first, Lentz said Toyota had not replicated his error, and only later admitted they not only had, but he knew about it. Then they claimed, both politely to the Committee and more rudely to Republicans, that he had hacked into their ECTS and therefore broken it. They consistently avoided discussing the evidence there is a dangerous error in their ECTS error system.

I find this bit really telling. Toyota got this information last year some time. They deliberately did not have their whitewash firm replicate it–though when they learned Gilbert could present his findings in a public forum, they were able to replicate the problem almost as quickly as Gilbert did (three and a half hours). Once again, this is evidence that Toyota has a number of things they are deliberately not looking for.

…

The advanced brake override system

I still can’t figure out why Toyota is ignoring all this–what is either so expensive or so damaging that they don’t want to admit to the real problem. But there’s a hint in the way they’re dealing with the brake override systems. As Lentz described, all new models will be fitted out with what–per Sean Kane–is an absolutely critical feature for Toyota given its problems with unintended acceleration. And they will retroactively put that feature onto seven of their models.

As it turned out, they weren’t ‘ignoring’ or hiding anything. There was nothing to hide, nothing to ignore, and Gilbert’s incredibly obvious hackery had no real world implications.

Toyota was right, and Marcy Wheeler and the many hysterical and conflicted American-car pushers/boosters in Congress eager to demagogue the issue were wrong. Period. Absolutely, categorically, unambiguously wrong.

I was right, on the other hand, and tried to warn her in particular off the evidence-free scaremongering; needless to say, that didn’t work out.

Now watch them ignore these findings.