In a widely anticipated study, the group called on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to add technical help, refine its investigative techniques and push for automakers to install “black boxes” that record data in car crashes. It also recommended that the federal agency form an advisory panel of specialists who can assist both in regulatory reviews and specific vehicle investigations.
With electronics systems becoming more complex, the agency needs to “gain a stronger understanding” of both the hardware and computer software that automakers are installing in their latest models, the group said.
The National Academy of Sciences was asked to review procedures at N.H.T.S.A. after the agency’s investigation of unintended acceleration of Toyota vehicles and a possible link to electronic-control systems. The Japanese automaker recalled more than eight million vehicles worldwide in 2009 and 2010 to fix sticky accelerator pedals or replace faulty floor mats that Toyota had claimed could cause unintended acceleration.
In a statement, the safety agency said it had “already taken steps to strengthen its expertise in electronic control systems,” but added that it would review the recommendations by a committee of the National Academy of Sciences to do more.
The agency said it would “continue to evaluate and improve every aspect of its work to keep the driving public safe, including research to assess potential safety concerns and help ensure the reliability of electronic control systems.”
Members of the science committee said that despite its shortcomings, the safety agency had done all that it was capable of doing to determine why Toyotas were suddenly accelerating out of control and causing serious accidents. They concluded that the agency had correctly closed its investigation after failing to find evidence of defects in Toyota’s electronic throttle systems.
Federal regulators accepted Toyota’s explanation that accelerator pedals or floor mats had been causing the problem. They closed the investigation last February after a separate study by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration also found no electronic defects.
“The agency got this right, and that was subsequently confirmed by the NASA report,” said Adrian K. Lund, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and a member of the National Academy of Sciences study committee.
The chairman of the study team, Louis J. Lanzerotti, stopped short of ruling out electronic malfunctions as a possible cause of sudden acceleration. “It’s impossible to prove a complete negative, but all the data available to us indicated the conclusion that there was no electronic or software problem,” said Dr. Lanzerotti, a physics professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
The 16-member study committee focused primarily on how the agency, and later NASA, conducted their investigations, and whether the results yielded conclusive evidence of causes beyond pedals, floor mats or driver error.
And while the committee found the decision to close the investigation “justified,” it questioned the overall competence of the agency to regulate automotive electronics.
“It is troubling that the concerns associated with unintended acceleration evolved into questions about electronics safety” that the agency could not answer convincingly, necessitating assistance from NASA, the report said.
The committee also called for a review of how the agency’s investigators share data with its researchers, and supported the agency’s recommendation that electronic data recorders, or black boxes, become standard equipment in new vehicles.
The committee recommended that the agency “give explicit consideration to the oversight challenges arising from automotive electronics” and “develop and articulate a long-term strategy for meeting the challenges,” the report said.
One auto safety consulting firm, Safety Research and Strategies, expressed disappointment with the committee report because it had reviewed the agency efforts rather than holding its own investigation into the Toyota incidents.
“It is an incredible assertion for them to say that N.H.T.S.A. is not equipped to deal with electronics, but that they were justified in closing this investigation,” said Sean E. Kane, a founder of the firm, based in Rehoboth, Mass.
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