Electronics-related causes of unintended
acceleration (UA)
Betsy Bejaminson – March 14,
2013
Personal statement of Toyota
whistleblower Betsy Benjaminson: I am a professional translator. I have been
translating from Japanese to English professionally since I lived and studied in
Japan in the 1970s.
My decades of experience
in this profession have earned me many important freelance translating
assignments. In 2010 I started a freelance job editing about 1,500 internal
documents from Toyota about unintended acceleration (UA).
Finding the cover-up
Living on a remote farm in Israel, I had not
heard of Toyota's unintended acceleration (UA) problem, although it was common
knowledge in the U.S. I therefore had no preconceptions that might have
influenced my judgment while reading these documents. The documents spoke for
themselves. I soon noticed that something was very wrong. I gradually came to
understand that the documents contained many contradictory versions of
reality.
First and most shocking were the reports horrified drivers wrote
about their runaway cars. Second were startling emails Toyota’s engineers had
sent each other. They were searching for UA’s root causes, but they could not
seem to find them.
They sometimes admitted it was the electronic parts,
the engine computer, the software, or interference by radio waves. Meanwhile,
efforts were made to find floor mats that would trap gas pedals and conveniently
explain UA. The R&D chief admitted that incompletely developed cars had gone
into production and that quality control of parts was poor or
non-existent.
Third, I read many descriptions by executives and managers
of how they had hoodwinked regulators, courts, and even Congress, by
withholding, omitting, or misstating facts.
Last, and most damning, I
found Toyota’s press releases to be bland reassurances obviously meant to help
maintain public belief in the safety of Toyota’s cars—despite providing no
evidence to support those reassurances. I saw a huge gap between the hard facts
known by engineers and executives and the make-believe produced for public
consumption by Toyota’s PR department.
The Crown Prince and the people
A moment of truth came when I was
shocked at the contrast between the intense determination of Toyota’s
electronics engineers to find and fix the cause of a speed control problem in
the car of Japan’s Crown Prince Naruhito – and how the company stonewalled
government investigators and ordinary American families whose loved ones had
been injured or killed when their cars hit a tree, launched off a cliff, or
landed in a river.
Compelling evidence
I am neither an electronics nor automotive
engineering expert. I therefore had to educate myself until I was confident that
my conclusions were correct. The more I learned, the better I understood how
complex the evidence was and how challenging for me to master it, but when
combined with other sources of information, the evidence was absolutely
compelling. I became convinced that ordinary people were certainly at risk, cars
on the road were dangerous, and that inside the company, they seemed to know it,
but not to care.
Telling the truth
The truth must get out, I thought. Indifference was
impossible. I could not hold it in and allow more people to die or be injured. I
first consulted my Jerusalem rabbi, who is also a respected economist and
business ethics expert.
His wise advice: I could speak out to prevent
future damage. Afterwards, I approached Tel Aviv’s Heskia – Hacmun Law Firm. The
partners, Amos Hacmun and Dor Heskia, provided valuable advice and genuine,
steadfast support during this extremely difficult journey.
I began
seeking outlets for the truth for the sake of furthering public safety and
saving lives.
Eventually, media coverage alerted some in Congress to the
unsolved, ongoing problem. One TV news report revealed a document that Toyota
did not give to Congress but that absolutely should have been turned over.
The Senate Judiciary Committee investigates
When this fact became
public, Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa wanted to know whether the National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) had allowed Toyota off the hook by
accepting the results of a too-narrow NASA study of car electronics. Through the
Senator’s whistleblower program, I gave hundreds of documents to his Judiciary
Committee staffers. I sorted the documents to show that many electronics issues
related to UA were known inside Toyota but not even touched upon by NHTSA and
NASA in their studies of Toyota electronics and UA.
I also organized the
documents to show that it seemed the executives were misrepresenting facts in
their sworn testimony before three Congressional committees. Senator Grassley
was thus concerned about whether NHTSA had done a proper job, especially with
the NASA study it had commissioned, and sent a public letter of inquiry to NHTSA
administrator David Strickland. NHTSA’s response to Senator Grassley was
cleverly worded and noncommittal.
Then the staffers invited me to explain
the documents and permitted me to bring experts to do so. I invited four
experts. We all flew in as volunteers from our far flung homes and participated
in eight hours of meetings. Following these meetings, the investigation was
suspended awaiting more evidence or developments.
Mother Nature doesn’t lie: Working with scientists and engineers
More
scientific and engineering evidence was needed. I contacted UA vehicle owners
who had complained and helped them give failed vehicles and parts to independent
forensic engineers. There were two stunning successes.
In one, a runaway
Camry gas pedal was found to have a short circuit just like the one found by the
NASA study team, corroborating evidence previously dismissed by NASA. In
another, an engineer inspected a UA Prius and found a serious manufacturing
defect in the Prius steering column assembly. He later made a defect petition to
NHTSA that got nationwide news coverage. Hopefully, a full technical
investigation of this potentially dangerous defect will soon be
launched.
Scientists and engineers are frustrated when technical
information is kept secret. I occasionally acted as a kind of switchboard
operator among them to facilitate exchanges and reviews of their UA related
findings. Work is ongoing in various labs, and more findings will be
forthcoming.
Going public, come hell or high water
Toyota settled a UA class action
lawsuit for $1.3 billion in December, 2012.
The settlement kept all discovered
technical facts secret by court order. The public’s curiosity was aroused…what
were the secrets? The publishers of Corporate Counsel magazine decided to find
out. They conducted an in-depth investigation and had experts analyze the
documents. After more than two years in anonymity, in this report I stepped
boldly into public view as a means of catalyzing more action. The article was
published in March of 2013. I hope this and everything else I’ve done will alert
the public and will save lives.
Solving the problem
We must fix the ultimate root cause of UA and other
dangerous vehicle behavior, not only in Toyota but in the entire auto industry.
Today’s cars are controlled by complex electronics that must work perfectly to
keep people safe. UA and other tragedies can happen because there have been no
public standards for safety-critical parts and systems. That needs to change,
and concerned citizens can lead the industry and government to effect that
change, just as they did with seat belts and air bags.
A new ISO safety
standard for road vehicles was published recently. It requires rigorous
engineering of safety-critical car systems such as throttle, brakes, or
steering. Third-party safety certification is part of it. Compliance is still
difficult for automakers like Toyota.
I want this standard fully
implemented to keep people safer. To help push the U.S. government and auto
industry to fully adopt the standard, I have founded a new advocacy group,
Citizens for Auto Electronics Safety. Its mission will be to gather stories,
facts, and scientific evidence about vehicle electronics malfunctions, then to
encourage government and industry to use the standard to boost safety. Please
visit the Facebook page of the
Citizens for Auto
Electronics Safety for more information.
Original
statement on Betsy Benjaminson's Facebook page
