10/2/09

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One facet of the announcement earlier this week that 3.8 million Toyota and Lexus owners needed to immediately remove the driver’s side mat from their cars to prevent it from jamming under the accelerator pedal caught us by surprise.

It was the role played by what has lately become one of the fastest-growing features on new cars, the start-stop button.

If you’re driving a Toyota or Lexus that has a start-stop button instead of a traditional turn-key ignition switch, the car can’t be turned off in an instant in an emergency. The button must be depressed for three seconds – an eternity in a panic situation. At least that’s how it works in a Toyota. In a new Buick LaCrosse, which USA TODAY auto editor Fred Meier has been testing, the button must be firmly pressed but appears to shut the engine off faster.

In issuing its warning, Toyota tells owners to make sure that they don’t just tap the button in an emergency. Press it steadily for three seconds. Yet that could be counterintuitive for anyone who has ever operated industrial shop machinery, on which a panic button usually cuts power in a single hard slap.

Toyota’s safety action was prompted by an Aug. 28 crash that killed four people. The runaway Lexus ES 350 was driven by off-duty California Highway Patrol Officer Mark Saylor. Barreling down a highway near San Diego at 120 miles per hour, a passenger called 911 and said they couldn’t stop the careening car. In a tape recording that was released, the dispatcher asks the caller if they can turn off the engine. It’s unknown what exactly Saylor did, but it’s conceivable that he or a passenger may have repeatedly depressed the stop-start button in vain.

So far, the issue of stop-start buttons isn’t raising any government interest:

The official line from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with stop/start buttons. “It’s a new technology that drivers need to familiarize” themselves with, said NHTSA spokesman Rae Tyson. The agency is always looking at new technologies, he says, but there’s nothing active at the moment concerning the buttons.

Likewise, Toyota spokesman John Hanson said at this point, there are no changes imminent for start-stop buttons, not even a warning label. The three-second activation time was quite deliberate.”That feature is a safety feature in (and of) itself,” he said. “we want to make sure the engine is not shut off inadvertently by touching the button.” Toyota is yet to announce how it plans to deal with a permanent fix on the accelerator problem that would let people put their floor mats back in the cars.

Toyota’s position regarding the buttons make sense, says David Champion, test director for Consumer Reports magazine. It’s a case of what’s the worst risk. ”The worst risk is if you accidentally hit the button and stall the engine,” which would result in losing power steering and other systems, he says.

Still, it makes you wonder. On the Buick, the start-stop switch is tucked away where it’s less likely to get bumped, not staring right back at you like on many Toyota and Lexus models. We’ll see if something comes of all this.