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Les Jackson and Jeremy Anwyl Picture
Edmunds' Unintended Acceleration Contest engineering advisor Les Jackson said no one had been able to meet the contest requirements. Edmunds CEO Jeremy Anwyl said that the prize money will instead be used to fund grants for university safety projects.
| May 25, 2011
| Ralph Alswang
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News
Unintended Acceleration Debate Continues at Edmunds Safety Conference
Published May 25, 2011
Just the Facts:
- Edmunds determined that no one met the terms of its $1 million Unintended Acceleration Challenge prize.
- "Evidence keeps piling up" that driver error was to blame, and research should now focus on what to do about pedal placement and confusion over electronic ignition shutdowns, said the company's CEO, Jeremy Anwyl.
- Toyota critics at the conference continued to point to a possible electronic problem that they said Toyota has ignored or covered up, but Anywl called those theories "the auto equivalent of the grassy knoll."
WASHINGTON — At the Edmunds Safety Conference Tuesday, attention turned for a time from discussions of driver distraction and safety technology to Toyota's unintended acceleration controversy. Edmunds had offered a $1 million prize in its Unintended Acceleration Contest to the researcher who could demonstrate a "novel and plausible cause of unintended acceleration in a consumer vehicle."
Contest engineering advisor Les Jackson said that while there were intriguing entries, no one had been able to meet the contest requirements. Edmunds CEO Jeremy Anwyl said that the prize money would instead be used to fund grants at universities that are involved in "interesting safety projects."
Anwyl said that in the wake of investigations into the unintended acceleration incidents, mounting evidence is showing them to be instances of driver error. In addition to stacked floor mats, some of the incidents took place because drivers apparently mistook the accelerator for the brake, and did not know how to turn off the car's push-button ignition.
The focus now should turn to what to do about pedal placement and standardized processes for push-button ignition shutoff.
Some of the conference attendees took issue with Anwyl's conclusions, and cited what they said was evidence of unresolved issues in the crashes.
"There are a lot of unsophisticated analyses and we haven't gotten to the bottom of the problem — and it's not all driver error," said Sean Kane, founder of Safety Research & Strategies, a consulting company based in Rehobath, Massachusetts, and a critic of Toyota's handling of the incidents.
After listening to Kane, Anwyl said that the issues he was describing as a possible cause of unintended acceleration were "beginning to sound like the auto equivalent of the grassy knoll."
"It would be better to focus on the probable causes," he said.
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