An examination of the crashes also found only one instance in which an accelerator pedal became trapped under a floor mat, and none in which a pedal became stuck or sprang back too slowly, according to a preliminary report to Congress.
Toyota has recalled nearly nine million Toyota and Lexus vehicles worldwide to correct problems involving floor mats and sticky pedals, and lawmakers and some drivers have long suggested that a malfunction in the electronic throttle control system of the vehicles might explain some of the reports of sudden acceleration.
Though federal officials said the investigation was continuing and they had not yet drawn conclusions, the raw findings support Toyota’s contention that electronics were not at fault and that many of the reports of sudden acceleration might actually have been instances of human error — drivers mistakenly pressing the gas pedal instead of the brake.
“Having conducted more than 4,000 on-site vehicle inspections, in no case have we found electronic throttle controls to be a cause of unintended acceleration,” Toyota said in a statement. “Toyota is committed to listening more attentively to our customers and continuing to investigate unintended acceleration concerns.”
Toyota’s critics remained skeptical. Sean Kane, a Massachusetts safety consultant working on behalf of plaintiffs in lawsuits against the carmaker, said the event data recorders in the crashed vehicles — known as E.D.R’s and the primary source of information for the federal investigators — were unreliable and not scientifically validated.
“The public wants to believe that E.D.R.’s are independent witnesses,” Mr. Kane said. “These are not aircraft black boxes, and they rely on the same electronic systems that are suspect to begin with.”
The government has received more than 3,000 complaints of sudden acceleration involving Toyota vehicles, but investigators from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration were able to study the data recorders in just 58 vehicles. The recorders provide information only in the case of a crash. The complaints relate to at least 93 deaths.
The vehicles were chosen for analysis based on several criteria, including the presence of a data recorder, which Toyota did not install on some models until 2007, the owner’s willingness to allow testing, and the vehicle’s involvement in a crash severe enough to activate the recorder.
Mr. Kane, the consultant, said many of the reported crashes happened at low speeds, often in parking lots, and would not activate the data recorders. Regulators do not plan to examine data recorders on other crashed vehicles.
The analysis of the 58 vehicles, provided in the preliminary report on Tuesday, is only one piece of the federal investigation into sudden acceleration, said Olivia Alair, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Department. Among other matters, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and National Academy of Sciences are studying electromagnetic interference as a possible cause.
Toyota’s own examination of sudden acceleration reports has found instances of sticky pedals and so-called pedal entrapment, problems it has been fixing on the recalled vehicles. Federal officials said Tuesday those problems remain real and the preliminary report should not suggest otherwise.
The recalls have marred Toyota’s reputation for high-quality and safe vehicles, hurting sales for much of the year and costing the company hundreds of millions, if not ultimately billions, of dollars. In May, the company paid a record $16.4 million fine for failing to report its knowledge of the problems in a timely manner.
In the report to Congress, the safety agency said that in 35 of the 58 accidents, the data recorder did not indicate that the brakes had been applied — suggesting the possibility that the drivers had mistakenly floored the gas pedal instead of the brake.
In 14 of the vehicles analyzed, there were indications that the driver had braked; in 9 of the cases, the brakes had been pressed “late in the crash sequence,” the report said.
One recorder showed that both the brake and accelerator pedals had been pressed. Toyota has said it would install a brake override system, which allows the brake to stop the vehicle even if the accelerator is pressed simultaneously, as standard equipment across its lineup by the end of this year.
Seven recorders did not provide useful information, the investigators said.
In addition, the government investigators, by examining the vehicles and interviewing the drivers in addition to downloading data, found one instance of the accelerator pedal’s becoming stuck under the floor mat, and no cases of a sticky pedal.
B. Craig Hutson, an analyst with the research firm Gimme Credit, raised doubts about the findings in a note to clients.
“We would not expect an investigation of the E.D.R.’s to find a problem with Toyota’s electronics systems,” Mr. Hutson wrote. “The E.D.R.’s are not designed to identify these types of problems. An electronics problem likely lurks in the millions of lines of software code found in a typical vehicle.”
Toyota’s chief quality officer in North America, Steve St. Angelo, said last week that he was “100 percent confident there’s nothing wrong with our electronic throttle control system.”
Mr. St. Angelo told reporters at an automotive conference in northern Michigan that proving the absence of an electronic flaw was not easy but that Toyota “will not stop investigating until everyone is satisfied.”
Toyota has provided 10 readers, the machines capable of retrieving and interpreting the recorder data, to the government, Mr. St. Angelo said Tuesday in a post on Toyota’s Twitter page.
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