I-Team: Auto Problems Accelerate Out Of Control

The debate over what's causing some Toyota's to suddenly go out of control may have grabbed headlines, but the CBS4 I-Team has discovered an underlying problem that has affected the automotive industry for years. And it affects every modern car, not just Toyota's.

I-Team investigator Stephen Stock breaks down the numbers to find out how more on the problem of sudden, unintended acceleration.

"I'm going to accelerate hard, and my foot is still on the floor," said a professional driver Bill Adam as he demonstrated what to do when a car sudden speeds out of control.

Adam not only is a professional race car driver, he tests street cars for organizations like Car and Driver Magazine.

"If you're worried when the car speeds up, simply take the car out of gear," Adam said as he did just that while speeding towards 50 miles an hour on a test track.

Adam took the CBS4 I-Team out for a spin to show how easy it is to stop even the very rare runaway car. It is an experience that has been in the news a lot these days. It is an experience that he and other experts call sudden unintended acceleration.

"When this sort of an incident happens where somebody is panicking where they think the throttle is stuck, you're going to jump on the brakes," Adam said as he demonstrates, bringing the test car to a sudden stop.

And that, the I-Team has learned, is the larger story, that this sudden acceleration can happen and does, though infrequently, more than many people might imagine.

The I-Team dug through millions of records with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration or NHTSA. The I-Team talked to a dozen different experts. The I-Team read both independent and industry sponsored research. And the I-Team uncovered the fact that almost everyone inside and outside the industry agrees that sudden or unintended acceleration is NOT a problem with just Toyotas but with nearly every make, model and design of car in the world.

"Stuck throttles are going to exist with any mechanical car in the world," Adam said. "Whether it's a Ferrari or a Toyota it doesn't matter if something is mechanical or electrical it can malfunction. But does it do it very often? Hardly ever."

In fact, the CBS4 I-Team's analysis of 16,449 different sudden acceleration complaints filed with NHTSA since the 1970's shows the complaints and problem of runaway cars stretches across the industry.

You can look at that data from NHTSA by clicking here (Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet) including breakouts and a chart showing the growth of this problem as more electronic speed control devices came on-line
 
NHTSA can't even tell exactly how many of these complaints actually were from sudden unintended acceleration.

The NHTSA complaints almost certainly include things such as driver error, driver panic or other issues.

And out of the number of cars on the road today, 254.5 million cars, the number of complaints represents an extremely small number of problems.

But none of that matters if you happen to be in the driver's seat of one of those few cars that experiences sudden and seemingly uncontrollable acceleration.

The CBS4 I-Team analysis shows the number of complaints appear to rise dramatically as new, electronic throttle controls or ECU's came on-line. Depending on the manufacturer, the number of complaints spike beginning in 1998 through 2002 and beyond into the new century.

"They (car manufacturers) are doing quite remarkable things with electronics trying to get us better fuel economy better safety," Bill Adam said. "So, yes there is a possibility it (an ECU) can have problems."

Another expert, independent master mechanic David Perez agrees.

"We're looking at an ECU, an electronic control unit," Perez said as he showed the inside guts of an ECU to the I-Team.

The small, thin, metal box is what now controls the throttle in every modern car in the world. It is an electronic control unit that, most often, sends a wireless signal from your gas pedal to the fuel injection system.

These ECU's began replacing the old gas pedal cables used in cars in the 1980's. But the ECU's really began to gain widespread use around 1998 as more and more manufacturers made them standard in new models.

That's also when the number of complaints about sudden acceleration began to spike at NHTSA.

"The ECU is a good thing will be able to compensate for engine wear and tear automatically," David Perez said. "This will compensate automatically so it will burn fuel more efficiently."

But, these electronic systems can also fail says David Perez, an independent master mechanic of two decades.

"Just like in the old system cables you can have a cable bind and the car accelerates," Perez said. "The same thing could still happen to an electronic system. If the computer doesn't know (that) it's getting a faulty information (reading. But instead it gets) in real time information it believes the information it will accelerate the car because it doesn't know any better."

"Even a slight voltage spike can create havoc in the system," Perez said.

Perez says his garage in Doral gets two to three complaints a month about various troubles with electronic control systems.

"You'll have cases where it will show everything is perfect and everything's fine and there is an issue," Perez said. So those are very hard to duplicate and resolve. Sometimes it can take weeks. And unfortunately we're finding more and more of that."

That's why this problem of sudden acceleration in Toyotas becomes so difficult to solve.

While debate still rages over whether the problem of sudden acceleration is directly tied to the use of electronic control units, the data shows number of complaints to NHTSA does rise as ECU's are introduced and installed in new cars not just in Toyotas but in every other major car maker.

Click here to see a graph of the complaints from 2010 to 1985 charted historically.

"It's a force called electromagnetic interference (EMI)," said plaintiff's attorney Tom Murray. "And that can only be diagnosed after the fact and fairly by the affects produced on the automobile."

Murray has done years of research on the problem using NHTSA data as well. He believes something called electromagnetic interference explains many of these high profile cases of out of control cars.

Murray is a consumer attorney who has represented different clients suing auto manufacturers over various defects during the last thirty years.

I-Team investigator Stephen Stock asked Murray "And this affects all cars not just Toyotas?"

"This is across the industry," Murray said. "The data shows that as more and more electronic throttle control systems come on to market you have more and more of these failures."

"This is a common problem for all electronics," said electrical engineer Keith Armstrong.

Keith Armstrong has studied electronics for 40 years, including the last 20 years specifically studying electromagnetic interference.

Armstrong spoke to the CBS4 I-Team via satellite from London, England, near his home.

"The issue here is that if you're controlling a throttle with electronics and it mis-operates you can have something very, very serious happen like as a runaway vehicle or a stalled vehicle which can serious itself if it stalls on a freeway," Armstrong told the I-Team. "But after the event you can find no trace of it (the event.)"

Armstrong says the public needs to be aware that these electronic throttle controls can fail and, on extremely rare occasions, be affected by outside electromagnetic interference such as high power lines, cell phones, poorly shielded wires, radio signals even lightning.

"The electronics can mis-operate," said Armstrong. "I wouldn't say it malfunctions. It doesn't do it's correct function at the correct time. There's nothing wrong with it. It's just that it is being interfered with and it's doing the wrong thing at the wrong time."

Car companies have studied this problem of electromagnetic interference, EMI for short, for years.

In fact, it first became an issue with Audi cars in the 1980's.

Car makers say they shield their electronic control units to prevent EMI and have taken further steps to address the problem. Critics say car companies haven't shielded their electronics enough.

And the critics say the rise in NHTSA complaints of sudden acceleration that mirrors the use of newer electronic technology is no coincidence.

Professional race car driver Bill Adam tells drivers to be educated and prepared just in case a rare sudden acceleration occurs in their car.

He gives three strategies to stopping an accelerating car:

Shift into neutral
Immediately take all feet off the gas pedal and press hard on the brake. Adam says cars are designed to have brakes override fuel injection systems in every instance. Adam demonstrated how even with the car's fuel system wide open and taking in maximum gas and air the brakes still stopped the car.
Turn the car off with the ignition switch or key. The power steering and brakes may become more stiff and harder to work but they Adam said they are not designed to fail and will in fact keep working with minimal effort.