Toyota Recalls and the Little Black Box

Posted on March 16, 2010 by Greenberg & Bederman

 Plane crashes are taken quite seriously in this country. It doesn’t matter if the crash involved a crop dusting, single propeller plane or if it involved a 747 jumbo jet. Any time a plane goes down, agents of the National Transportation Safety Board are dispatched to the scene. They aren’t just there to clean up the wreck. They are there to examine every aspect of the crash, and one of the first things that they look for is “The Black Box.”

“The Black Box” (which is actually orange in color) is the nickname for the Flight Data Recorder, which records quite literally everything that goes on in a plane. It records cockpit conversations, air speed, height, which controls were used, what actions were taken by the crew, and every conceivable action that takes place during the course of a flight. It is this data that helps the NTSB determine whether or not the plane crashed due to an equipment malfunction, or weather conditions, or pilot error.

 Believe it or not, most cars also have similar versions of the “black box.” They go by the name “Event Data Recorders,” and while they are not nearly as all encompassing as the recorders that you find on planes, they are still valuable tools for determining what causes automobile accidents.

The vast majority of car manufacturers make the data in their EDR’s as accessible as possible. Allowing the police, insurance companies and even the press to see the results of the data after an accident can prove to be a good thing. You could determine any number of variables with the information from these recorders. You could determine how fast the car was going before it crashed, or if the brakes were applied suddenly. You could determine where the car got hit or if it hit something first. And, most importantly, you could determine whether or not everything in the car involved in the accident was working as it should have.

EDR’s have occupied a certain prominence in the news lately, mainly because it appears that Toyota is not and has not been entirely forthcoming with the data that appears in their EDR’s. And considering that Toyotas have been undergoing critical and dangerous malfunctions, that data could be considered very important.

The past few months have seen practically every model that Toyota manufactures being recalled due to serious malfunctions. Accelerator pedals have stuck to the floor or have been pinned under defective floor mats, brakes have been periodically unresponsive, and even the steering in some models has been faulty. According to the NHTSA, 52 people have died over the years due to malfunctions of these types. These were problems that could have been brought to the public’s attention and possibly rectified well before 52 people died and countless others had been injured, but since Toyota has a policy of not letting anyone see the information that is contained in these EDR’s, everyone simply made the assumption that the occasional stuck accelerator problem was a freak occurrence rather than a systemic problem.

Toyota does not share the information on their EDR’s on the grounds that they are using proprietary software and sensors and monitoring devices. This would be a perfectly valid line of argument if there were a huge black market for EDR software. But your average car accident victim (as well as the companies that insure them) is more interested in the data than any of the proprietary software in the EDR. The fact that Toyota doesn’t let anyone see any of that data is suspicious to say the least.

According to a recent article by the Associated Press, the EDR’s in Toyota are so inaccessible that there is only one laptop in the entire continental United States that is able to access Toyota EDR’s. And on the few occasions when Toyota has been forced to provide data from an EDR after a wreck, they have either quickly come to a financial settlement in order to avoid showing it, or they have provided incomplete data.

If you combine this behavior with the fact that Toyota executives recently negotiated a less serious recall with the NHTSA in 2007 in order to save money, it’s very easy to come to the conclusion that Toyota has been well aware of these deficiencies in their cars for quite some time. And, despite being aware of these deficiencies, they did nothing to repair their Toyota recall problems until highly publicized accidents left them with no choice but to initiate the recalls. 

If that is indeed the case, then Toyota could be found guilty of negligence. If Toyota knew that there were problems with their cars, it was their responsibility to initiate a recall as soon as possible. Hiding the data and covering up what was really wrong was the most irresponsible thing that they could have done.

Greenberg and Bederman is a Washington, D.C. personal injury law firm that is currently offering legal assistance to people who have been injured due to Toyotas that malfunctioned. Toyota Recall cases like these often fall under the heading of both car accidents and product liability, and our attorneys have decades of experience in both areas. Our main office is in Silver Spring but we serve accident victims in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and the Baltimore, Maryland region. We can help injury victims in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

If you or a loved one has been injured in a toyota recall accident, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

 
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