The trial lawyer who organized today’s media event in Washington D.C. and arranged for paid experts and one of his clients to appear with him has been suing auto manufacturers in unintended acceleration cases since 1994.

 

Judges and juries have consistently rejected his theory that electromagnetic interference (EMI) with vehicle electronics is the cause of unintended acceleration and ruled that the hypothesis is not scientifically reliable.

 

There has been a great deal of confusion, speculation and misinformation about unintended acceleration in the past several weeks – much of it fueled by unsupported claims by trial lawyers and their paid advocates.  Toyota believes that judgments about unintended acceleration, an industry-wide issue, should be based on scientifically reliable evidence.

 

Toyota has sold more than 40 million cars and trucks with our electronic throttle control system (ETCS) and we are very confident that the system is not the cause of unintended acceleration. Toyota engineers have comprehensively tested our ETCS under both normal and abnormal conditions including electromagnetic interference, and we have never found a single case of unintended acceleration due to a defect in the system.