"" (Bensinger & Vartabedian). .
Most of these complaints had happened between the years of 2003 and 2009. According to NHTSA, Toyota and Lexus has had the most reported incidents where the automobiles were smashing into other cars, smashing into buildings, hitting pedestrians, and suddenly racing forward. In 2001 Toyota had the most incidents than any other automobile makers around the world and this had lead Toyota to put a halt on sales and productions until the problem with the gas pedal was fixed. "We take all customer reports seriously," Toyota said in a statement released Monday. "That's why we are taking steps to implement more stringent quality controls, investigate customer complaints more aggressively, keep open lines of communication with safety agencies and respond more quickly to safety issues we identify." (Bensinger & Vartabedian). .
The NHTSA and Congress are looking further into the problem by checking to see if the electronic throttle control could be the major cause of acceleration in their automobiles. Toyota Corporation is denying that could be the cause because they had internal and external testing and several federal investigations in which this had found that the throttle defect was not the reason for the cars to have a sudden acceleration. .
Moreover, when discussing Toyota's acceleration problem the independent and dependent variables need to be considered. The independent variable is manipulated by the researcher and causes an effect on the dependent variable. The dependent variable is affected by the independent variable. After researching Complaints of unintended acceleration in selected brands, some interesting information was discovered. The presumed cause of complaints (independent variable) is the gas pedal sticking; the cause (dependent variable) is a faulty gas pedal. .
From 2005 to September 2009, Toyota received 532 complaints (edmunds.com) in regards to the gas pedal sticking in their vehicles.