In a U.S. News and World Report editorial, columnist Rick Newman makes some bold statements in Toyota’s defense about sudden, unintended acceleration. Newman cites a number of reasons why, like Toyota itself, nobody is likely to find a glitch in Toyota’s electronic throttle controls. But all his reasons suggest that neither of the “high-caliber probes” examining Toyota electronics is likely to uncover any “evasive electronic bugs” because those bugs probably aren’t there to start with.

Toyota has adamantly insisted that electronic problems aren’t why so many of its vehicles to accelerate suddenly. To support this claim, the company points to tests carried out by its own engineers, federal regulators, and consultant engineering firms – none of which have been able to replicate the mysterious acceleration problems.

If all the experts can’t duplicate the problem in lab tests, then according to Toyota, the problem either doesn’t exist or it lies somewhere else, such as in a poorly designed floor mat or gas pedal.

Supporting this rationale, Newman says that Toyota “has found no verifiable problems with the electronic throttle controls on more than 40 million vehicles it sold over the last decade.”

But that isn’t true. By its own admission, Toyota said electronics were to blame for some sudden acceleration incidents in 2002. In August of that year, the auto manufacturer issued a Technical Service Bulletin warning every dealership in the country that Camrys were reportedly surging out of control and that recommended adjustments to the electronic controls could fix the problem.

Newman acknowledges in his editorial that an electronic problem may still exist, but at the same time he seems to dismiss the idea. He says that “complaints about sudden acceleration have surged since the crisis began drawing attention, creating the impression that there’s a deeper problem that Toyota hasn’t acknowledged. So some critics (and class-action lawyers) are blaming the electronics.”

It doesn’t seem Newman is aware that Toyota has received nearly 40,000 consumer complaints involving sudden acceleration in the last ten years, so the problem has been understated rather than exaggerated. Also, the 52 sudden-acceleration deaths Newman cites are only what have been reported to the federal government. Many more may likely come to light as federal investigators scrutinize Toyota’s internal documents.

Moreover, there may have been a recent surge in the number of sudden unintended acceleration incidents reported, but there has also been a recent slip in vehicle quality, according to some long-time Toyota workers in Japan.

In 2006, a group of factory workers sent a memo to Toyota’s executive leaders expressing dire concern that systemic problems were being created in Toyota vehicles during the planning and design stages, not in the manufacturing process.

“We are concerned about the processes which are essential for producing safe cars, but that ultimately may be ignored, with production continued in the name of competition,” the memo warned as it boldly accused Toyota’s leaders of sacrificing quality for higher profits.

There’s also the fact that 52 deaths have been linked to sudden acceleration incidents in Toyota vehicles, which is higher than all other auto manufacturers combined. And those deaths come from the public record. They don’t take into account any fatalities that could be linked to the 37,900 complaints of sudden acceleration Toyota received directly from customers.

But the most egregious claim cited by Newman comes from Mike Jackson, CEO of AutoNation, “a Florida-based dealer group that’s the top Toyota seller in the United States.”

Jackson argues, “Ninety-eight percent of the time it’s pedal misapplication,” adding that Toyota drivers “genuinely think they’re pressing the brake but they’re really pressing the gas. Then they panic and press the gas even harder.”

The other 2 percent of cases are probably due to floor mats, he says.

This attitude may explain why people continue to become hurt in sudden acceleration incidents even after the recall repairs have been made to their cars. Drivers who live to tell about their experience of being trapped in a runaway car typically take their cars to their dealership to be checked. But because mechanics can’t replicate the acceleration problem, they give the car a clean bill of health and tell the owner all is fine.

The fact is that bugs do exist in Toyota’s electronic code; they’re just exceedingly difficult to replicate. According to electrical engineer Dr. Keith Armstrong, even NASA’s Space Shuttle software, the most error-free software in the world, has one undetected error in every 10,000 lines of code. A typical car has 20 million lines of software code, so in all probability Toyota has at least a couple thousand things wrong with its electronic controls.

But the odds of finding the bug responsible for sudden acceleration in a controlled environment are very remote, according to Dr. Armstrong. It would take about 3,120,000 hours and 200 million miles of driving to reproduce the acceleration incident.

“Even if you had 36 cars, no matter what the brand, they would have to be driven around the clock for 10 years to replicate one instance of unintended acceleration,” says Consumer Reports.

“For reference,” Consumer Reports says, it “tests about 80 new cars a year, and puts an average of around 7,000 miles on each of them, for about 560,000 miles a year. At that rate, it would take us 357 years to experience one unintended acceleration episode.”

Just because these electronic flaws are difficult to find doesn’t mean they aren’t there. But until a definitive link is made between Toyota’s electronic throttle controls and sudden acceleration, drivers may have to shoulder the blame for any accidents resulting from their runaway cars.

Related posts:

1. California men file sudden acceleration lawsuit against Toyota
2. NHTSA contacts Toyota drivers who report post-repair sudden acceleration incidents
3. Toyota investigates new sudden acceleration crash in Wisconsin
4. Toyota owners describe acceleration incidents after recall repairs
5. NHTSA receives more Toyota acceleration and brake complaints