Some doubt mat was the real cause
BY JUSTIN HYDE
FREE PRESS WASHINGTON STAFF
SANTEE, Calif. -- Surveying the dry riverbed north of San Diego where the Saylor family perished last August, Forrest Folck sees a puzzle.
A forensic mechanic who reconstructs accidents and vehicle defects for a living, Folck says the crash could well have been caused by a floor mat -- just as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration concluded.
But he has doubts, too, especially now that the safety administration and Toyota are studying the electronic controls and software in the Lexus ES 350, a luxury Toyota brand, and several other models. In his experience, such faults could come and go without a trace.
"It could be the floor mats. It could be the pedals. Or it could be the algorithms," or how the vehicle handles faulty signals from its sensors, Folck said. "It's just hard to know what it is."
Those doubts have grown since the series of recalls Toyota has launched after the deadly California crash, including 5.4 million vehicles for floor mat problems and 2.3 million vehicles for sticking accelerator pedals.
So far, Toyota has maintained that it has not identified any problems with electronics in its vehicles that could trigger the sudden acceleration, and no outside body has proven such a fault exists. The NHTSA ruled the floor mat caused the crash, accounting for four of the five deaths it has officially linked to sudden acceleration in Toyotas.
But with more than 2,000 complaints of sudden acceleration, several dozen of which happened in vehicles without floor mats, even the crash that has become the poster case for dangerous floor mats has come under question.
"If the floor mat was to blame (in the Santee crash), Toyota is guilty of failing to acknowledge the very serious and real consequences of pedal entrapment for at least two years," the legal advocacy group Safety Research Services said in a report this month.
"If the floor mat did not confine the pedal, then Toyota and Lexus owners have real cause to worry that their vehicles have an unidentified defect constituting a severe safety hazard."
Floor mats and pedal problems
On the morning of Aug. 28, 2009, Mark Saylor had taken his 2006 Lexus IS 250 sedan to Bob Baker Lexus in nearby El Cajon for minor repairs. The dealership had given him a 2009 Lexus ES 350 as a loaner; he had been expected to return it that evening, but for reasons unknown, he was keeping it overnight.
Unknown to the Saylors, another customer of Bob Baker Lexus had been in the same car a few days earlier when it began to accelerate for unknown reasons.
Frank Bernard was passing a truck on a San Diego freeway and when he took his foot off the pedal, the car kept increasing speed until it hit 85 m.p.h.
Bernard told investigators that he stepped on the brakes and smacked the gas pedal to stop the car, with little effect. The brakes finally slowed the sedan to about 30 m.p.h., when Bernard steered to the shoulder and shifted into neutral as the engine kept surging.
After he pulled over, Bernard reached down and saw the pedal was stuck in a groove in the mat. He told the dealership about it, but investigators say the complaint was never relayed to the dealership employees who prepare loaner vehicles.
The dealership told employees to use only the mats made for each specific vehicle, following Toyota's first recall in 2007 for pedal-trapping mats.
But again, for reasons unknown, the mat in the ES 350 was actually for a Lexus RX 400h SUV. San Diego County sheriff's investigators later photographed the same type of mat in another ES 350, showing how it could catch the bottom lip of the accelerator pedal in one of its grooves.
After the crash -- which involved the Lexus speeding through an intersection at more than 100 m.p.h., hitting an embankment, going airborne and catching fire -- investigators found the driver's floor mat loose in the footwell, with part of the accelerator pedal melted into it.
What witnesses saw
But the recalls and the concerns about electronic controls have put some of the details of the crash in a new light, such as the first signs that the Saylors' car was in trouble.
Several witnesses in other cars along the freeway told investigators that when they first saw the Lexus south of the crash site, it was moving slowly or nearly stopped along the edge of the road, with its emergency flashers on. One said she saw a puff of smoke come from the front of the car. Witnesses reported that several seconds later, the Lexus flew past them toward the end of the highway.
And even though several witnesses said the car's brakes were on fire in the moments before the crash, another said it didn't have brake lights on.
Problem could be under hood
Those details concern Tim Pastotnik, an attorney for the Saylors. He said he assumes that Saylor, a 20-year veteran of the California Highway Patrol, did all he could to shut off the engine or get the transmission out of gear. Like Saylor's Lexus, the ES 350 had a push-button starter that had to be held down for three seconds to shut the car off, a fact buried in the owner's manual.
"That's why I don't think it was a floor mat," he said. "If it's a floor mat, it's not going to cause it to lunge forward while it was sitting."
Another concern involves the gear shift. Like many models, the Lexus had a notched, rather than a straight-line, shifter. Folck demonstrated on his own car how a quick slap of the gearshift should have put the Lexus into neutral.
"That's what puzzles other investigators," he said. "Why didn't he just knock it into neutral?"
Pastotnik said his cursory probe suggests that at full engine power, putting the car into neutral takes far more effort than normal. He also notes that the San Diego sheriff's department lacked the resources to test any of the electronics systems in the Lexus, and that the NHTSA has done no further testing.
"Those investigations were done well before the recalls and the congressional probes," he said. "Hopefully, we'll have a more honest look at the facts and tear it apart in a much more meaningful way."
An attorney for the Lexus dealer, which could face the brunt of any liability lawsuits from the crash, said the first reports were rushed and that the cause of the crash "is under the hood, not under the floor."
"I was, at the very beginning of this situation, seriously doubtful that a floor mat caused the death of the four members of the Saylor family," James Marinos said. "I'm convinced now more than ever that it didn't."
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