I agree that they are currently ignoring the Taco problems (and Prius and maybe more vehicles) or blaming them on other issues. But what's most interesting to me is the jump in sudden acceleration complaints for the years and vehicles when Toyota added a certain drive-by-wire throttle system to the Tacoma (and supposedly also Highlander). Even if a portion of those can be blamed on an aftermarket floor mat or a stupid driver, the statistics and stories say people are telling the truth about a real problem.

This is the most recent article I've found (2 months old) that also explains it the best:
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/nov/29/business/la-fi-toyota-throttle29-2009nov29

Two other links that provide more info from 2008:
http://usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/car...Since-February/
http://suddenacceleration.com/?p=371

You can search for and read NHTSA complaints under a couple of "vehicle speed control" categories at:
http://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/complaints/index.cfm

When dealerships inspect a vehicle after some incident, the stories always say there are no error codes found and they can't find anything wrong. Again, that just points to a software problem where the software doesn't do enough or appropriate self-checking, or the programmer didn't think of certain failure modes to watch out for, such as if both the brake and accelerator pedals are pressed at the same time, particularly if it's for any length of time (like more than a second).

I remember discussing the possibilities of installing a drive-by-wire system in an engineering college-built experimental vehicle almost 20 years ago. We discussed some scary failure modes that you'd need to very carefully watch for in the software and design around potential problems. It's mind-boggling to me that a major auto manufacturer wouldn't add appropriate safety checks in the software when they install any drive-by-wire system, such as when the final throttle output signal is fairly high while the brake pedal is pressed at all. If I'd be the programmer, that would be the first and most obvious safety check in the drive-by-wire software. And if they do check for that, then there's some other interference (software, hardware, or electromagnetic) in the system that's preventing the computer from properly seeing either the brake input signal or throttle output signal to allow detection of the problem.

So it's understandable to me that Toyota and the NHTSA would brush off the initial reports of the sudden acceleration problems, but after there is a clear statistical difference with complaints pointing to the drive-by-wire systems on certain vehicles, they should re-open the issue and dig deeper into improving the software and/or hardware. I also agree that it sounds like a very difficult problem to track down since it may not be repeatable. How can you fix a problem if you can't repeat it to find the problem or to test that you've fixed it, right? All the more reason to have additional safety checks in the software to drop the throttle in certain scenarios (like gas and brake simultaneously).