Sudden acceleration is a quirky issue that pops up once in a while in lemon law litigation.  Recently, federal regulators received 33 complaints of vehicles accelerating on their own, restarting decades-old debate about whether sudden acceleration claims reflect vehicle defects or mental ones.  The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched an investigation into 2006 and 2007 Tacoma pickups over sudden acceleration — the fourth such look in three years at Toyota models over similar complaints.

These cases don’t come along frequently in lemon law litigation, but they do pop up once in a while. We had one last year involving a Japanese car manufacturer. Our client’s car apparently accelerated on its own as the owner was pulling into a parking space, crashing into a nearby building. Luckily, no injuries resulted.  We put the case into suit based on the Lemon Law, and the vehicle was soon bought back by the manufacturer. While federal regulators looking at the issue have time and again concluded that sudden acceleration results from driver error, in our case, the SUV had been in repair for sudden acceleration issues on previous occasions and the dealer had documented and replicated the complaints on several occasions.

The Tacoma cases, however, have yet to proffer a technical explanation. Over the past eight years, the agency has closed no less than six investigations into reports of unexpected or uncontrolled acceleration in vehicles without finding evidence of defects.

Vehicle manufacturers will typically claim that they’ve found nothing wrong with the car or truck, basically calling the owners stupid.  Instead, officials and automakers take the position that without evidence of a problem, the most likely answer will always be driver error. Before last October’s recall of Toyota and Lexus floor mats in Camry and ES 350 sedans, the NHTSA had triggered only two other similar recalls since 1989.

The basic advise bears mentioning - better to be safe than sorry! If you think your car is accelerating on its own, don’t stand wait, call the dealer. Make them get to the bottom of the problem.