Exponent’s Event Data Recorder report is based on extensive testing of a cross-section of Toyota and Lexus models. These include models that had the highest rates of Vehicle Speed Control complaints made to the NHTSA. Exponent’s report validates that Toyota’s Event Data Recorders (EDR) are a highly reliable and useful tool that, along with physical evidence and forensic analysis, can help investigators reconstruct and understand the causes of a collision.

 

Exponent’s report on Toyota’s EDR is the first of several sections of a comprehensive, independent investigation Exponent is undertaking on issues related to claims of unintended acceleration in Toyota and Lexus vehicles. Retained in 2009, Exponent is conducting tests of various aspects of Toyota’s Electronic Throttle Control System with Intelligence (“ETCS-i”) in multiple vehicles under a variety of normal and abnormal conditions. As each of the remaining installments of the overall report are completed and provided to Toyota in the coming months, Toyota will make them available for public review as well.

 

Last year, as part of its overall commitment to strengthen quality assurance in North America, Toyota committed to increasing the availability of Toyota’s EDR read-out tools, and today there are more than 150 Toyota EDR readers deployed across North America and the U.S. territories. Fourteen of these devices were delivered to the NHTSA and Transport Canada to allow these regulatory agencies to retrieve data independently from Toyota vehicles during their investigations.

 

Moreover, Toyota and Bosch have entered into a license agreement to allow commercially available Bosch Crash Data Retrieval Tools to have access to Toyota EDR system information. All of Toyota's 2011 model year vehicles are equipped with advanced EDRs that have the ability to capture pre-crash as well as post-crash data.