US may push brake safety feature in all cars
by Deborah Pasmantier

WASHINGTON-Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood on Tuesday told lawmakers probing deadly Toyota defects that he may urge all automakers in the US market to install a safety feature to prevent sudden spikes in speed.

"We are looking at the possibility of recommending the brake override system in all manufactured automobiles," LaHood told the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee in a hearing on the Japanese auto giant's safety woes.

Toyota has announced it will install that feature -- which ensures that a vehicle's brake trumps its accelerator when both are pushed down, automatically reducing power -- in a range of its vehicles.

The world number one carmaker has been plunged into crisis over its response to safety defects causing sudden, unintended acceleration blamed for about 50 US deaths.

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Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood vowed Tuesday to make the case on an upcoming trip to Japan that US regulators are treating Toyota more fairly than their Japanese counterparts treat US beef.

"It's a point well made and one that we should be making when it comes to automobiles," LaHood told Republican Senator Mike Johanns, who had accused Tokyo of double-standards. "I'm going to raise it when I go to Japan."

His pledge came as a key US Senate panel hammered the world's number one carmaker and US regulators for their handling of safety defects tied to surprise spikes in speed now blamed for 52 reported US deaths.

The secretary said the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) was fully investigating reported incidents of so-called sudden, unintended acceleration and that he may call for all new automobiles in the US market to have brakes that can override their accelerators.

"We are looking at the possibility of recommending the brake override system in all manufactured automobiles," LaHood told the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee in a hearing on the auto giant's safety woes.

Toyota has announced it will install that feature -- which ensures that a vehicle's brake trumps its accelerator -- in all of its new vehicles in North America and several existing models.

US lawmakers have shown increasing anger at the way the company handled the defects, and expressed disbelief in two hearings last week when top Toyota executives said all safety and recall decisions are made in Japan.

In response, Toyota's top North America executive, Yoshimi Inaba, said in prepared testimony that the company would give its US and Canadian divisions "more autonomy and decision-making power" on both fronts.

He also announced that a transportation secretary under former US president Bill Clinton, Rodney Slater, would lead a special quality control review of Toyota's global operations.

The auto giant, which passed GM for the number one spot in 2008, has denied that an electronic defect is to blame for the speed surges but vowed to take a second look after a US expert said last week he found just such a flaw.

Thus far, Toyota's assurances appeared to have done little to blunt congressional anger, which observers said was stoked by looming mid-term elections in November.

Johanns, from the farm state of Nebraska, accused Tokyo in exceptionally blunt language of having one safety standard for US beef and another for Toyota's cars and said he was "extremely tired" of the imbalance.

He wondered aloud "what the response would be in Japan if I suggested that -- because people have died because of the way they have conducted themselves -- that until the Japanese government can assure us that all of the defects are out of these vehicles, we're just not going to accept any vehicles from Japan.

"That's what they did with one of our industries," the lawmaker said. "There is a role for the Japanese government here to step up and to make sure that what they're sending to our borders is safe."

"What you said has struck a chord with me and I think it's something that we need to raise," said LaHood, whose office indicated he planned a trip to Japan later this year and would press Tokyo for a more aggressive role.

Japan banned US beef in December 2003 after the brain-wasting cattle disease bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) was found in a US herd. Japan had until then been the US cattle industry's biggest export market.

The ban nearly grew into a full-blown trade war, with US farm-state senators pressing for sanctions unless Tokyo opened up its markets by the end of 2005.

Japan agreed in 2006 to resume US imports on condition age and portion limits were imposed on cattle at the time of slaughter.

The panel was also to question Toyota's top quality control and engineering executives -- Shinichi Sasaki and Takeshi Uchiyamada -- as the NHTSA reported new complaints of deadly Toyota crashes.

Shortly before the hearing, LaHood's office said the US regulators were now looking into 43 complaints of deadly accidents involving sudden unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles, involving 52 fatalities and 38 injuries.