Records Relating to NHTSA's Timeliness Query (TQ10-001) of Toyota's Recalls for Unintended Acceleration Due to Interference Between the Accelerator Pedal and Driver's Side Floor Mat 

This page provides background on NHTSA's timeliness inquiry (TQ) into unintended acceleration caused by floor mat entrapment in Toyota vehicles and instructions for viewing documents that Toyota submitted in response to the Agency's probe into the timeliness of related recalls.

On February 4, 2010, after reviewing Toyota's submissions regarding Toyota recalls covering 5.4 million vehicles (NHTSA recall Nos.: 07E082, 09V388, 10V023), NHTSA opened a Timeliness Query (TQ10-001) to evaluate, among other things, when Toyota first learned of the possibility of an issue of floor mat interference with the accelerator pedals installed on its vehicles, the chronology of events leading up to Toyota's defect decisions, Toyota's responses to problems with floor mats and accelerator pedals and the timing of those responses, and the timeliness of Toyota's recalls. On February 16, 2010, NHTSA sent Toyota an information request (IR) requiring Toyota to provide information and documents related to the timeliness query involving the vehicles recalled for a floor mat entrapment defect (TQ10-001).

On March 18, 2010, Toyota provided a response to the Agency's IR letter. Following this response, over a period of several months, Toyota submitted several supplemental submissions. In total, Toyota submitted approximately 130,000 pages of information. In addition to its TQ10-001 responses, Toyota submitted pursuant to NHTSA's regulations, 49 CFR part 512, requests for confidential treatment for certain information and documents. Under these regulations, NHTSA's Office of Chief Counsel determines whether to grant confidential treatment for the requested documents pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act. Documents not subject to a request for confidential treatment or not granted confidential treatment are subject to disclosure following a separate process for redaction of personal identifying information (PII).

Due to the voluminous size of Toyota's submissions, NHTSA’s confidentiality review process will take time to complete in full, however, NHTSA will release redacted nonconfidential documents in phases as they are finished. The first set of documents uploaded to this page below includes the opening and closing resumes for TQ10-001, NHTSA's February 16, 2010 IR letter and Toyota's March 18, 2010 response. Please review these documents, which provide context to Toyota's materials, before proceeding to the data.

In the future, NHTSA plans to upload information related to the supplemental IRs, Toyota's supplemental submissions, Toyota's requests for confidential treatment and NHTSA's confidentiality determinations as the confidentiality process is completed. Documents or portions of documents granted confidential treatment will be identified in the Agency's letters granting confidential treatment.

The links below direct you to certain TQ10-001 documents. Except for the last link, each link leads to a subdirectory for the document type specified. The last link will direct you to the directory for all TQ10-001 documents and a log of the files that have been added to the directory.