In the report, released on Feb. 8 by the U.S. National Traffic Highway Safety Administration (NHTSA), government engineers found that the unintended acceleration incidents in Toyota vehicles were due not to electronic problems, but rather to mechanical defects — specifically, to accelerator pedals that stuck to the floor and floor mats that got trapped. Toyota has recalled 8 million vehicles and paid $48.8 million in civil penalties due to those defects.
“We enlisted the best and brightest engineers to study Toyota’s electronics systems, and the verdict is in. There is no electronic-based cause for unintended high-speed acceleration in Toyotas,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in a prepared statement.
