The people were killed because of TOYOTA'S Defective Design:
And TOYOTA LIES? [see comments below]
Trudy Baltazar authored this book to document the fight of strangers to free Koua Fong Lee:
Ms. Baltazar is in the courtroom documenting the trial against TOYOTA and has been commenting elsewhere.
Update of courtroom activity on Thurs., 1-15-15
A toyota
employee gave a deposition on 12-4-14 (they showed the dep in court for us all
to see) stating heat tests were conducted on these 2 plastic pulleys which have
been proven to be defective when exposed to a certain degree & amount of
heat.
The pulleys are part of the throttle body and they control the accelerator
cable. When the upper pulley is working properly, the pulley will release the
accelerator cable when one takes their foot off the gas. I think I mentioned
yesterday the expert mech engr who heated the pulleys to 165 deg and the top
pulley that the accelerator cable goes into binds up against the metal bracket
it’s up against and won't release the accelerator cable. It appears the pulley
gets stuck to the metal bracket/plate.
It took ~7 mins for the pulley to cool
down and release the accelerator cable. Well in the toyota deposition, this
employee of 40+ yrs stated that they had heat tests done on these pulleys for 8
days @ 248 deg F. This expert for the plaintiff’s used a hair dryer for 30 mins
and got the pulley to heat up to 165 deg and the pulley wouldn't function
properly at that temp. Well 3 weeks before toyota employee gave the deposition,
they learned that the heat tests on the plastic pulleys had NEVER been
conducted!
Three weeks later this toyota employee swore in a deposition that the
tests were done. In cross examination, the toyota lawyer asked the expert John
Stilson, "did you take the 1996 Camry for a drive and hook up monitoring
equipment to the pulleys and the metal bracket to see in real life situation if
the pulleys were heating up due to real driving time? Expert's answer, "no,
because I wanted to follow toyota test specification". cross examination ended
not too long after that.
Turns out it’s in toyota’s own 1996 Camry owner’s manual
that (paraphrasing here) ‘If you need to conduct a test to see if a part is
malfunctioning due to heat, use a hair dryer’ and they even show a picture of a
hair dryer.
