(October 13, 2010) The government expects to meet its late-year deadline for determining whether throttles or other electronic systems could be linked to unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles, a senior safety investigator said.

"We're working hard to get this to you," Richard Boyd, acting director of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's defect investigations unit, told the chair of a science panel that is looking at unintended acceleration industrywide, not just in Toyotas.

"It will be sooner rather than later," Boyd said at a Tuesday public meeting of the National Academy of Science.

NHTSA has set a late fall timetable for releasing the preliminary findings of its investigation of Toyota throttles and other systems. U.S. space agency experts are assisting NHTSA and will release a separate report on more sophisticated aspects of auto electronics.

The government's effort was structured as the most rigorous examination to date of the issue that prompted thousands of consumer complaints over several years, two recalls totaling 6.5 million vehicles, and three congressional investigations.

Source: Reuters