You can rest cushy now: NHTSA says it has purchased the 2007 Lexus ES 350 once owned by Rhonda Smith and will evaluate it at its test center in East Liberty, Ohio. No word on how much the second owners were paid for their Lexus, but the ES reportedly has about 30,000 miles on its odometer.

Meanwhile, over on Capitol Hill, U.S. Representative Edolphus Towns, chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sent a letter to Toyota North USA President Yoshimi Inaba today, laying into the big maker for its "systematic disregard for the law and routine violation of court discovery orders in litigation."

This didn't have a thing to do with alleged unintended acceleration incidents. Rather, Towns had just finished poring over internal Toyota documents related to rollover crash litigation.

"People injured in crashes involving Toyota vehicles may have been injured a second time when Toyota unsuccessful to produce relevant evidence in court," he wrote. "This also raises very serious questions as to whether Toyota has also withheld substantial, relevant information from NHTSA."

Finally, from Pittsburgh, a Carnegie Mellon Professor, Paul Fischbeck, says that driving a Toyota or Lexus with a potentially sticking throttle increases your risk of death by only 2 percent. Walking a mile, Fischbeck says, is 19 times more chanceful than driving a mile in a recalled Toyota.

"There hasn't been a discussion about the actual risk of driving one of Toyota's recalled vehicles," he says in a Carnegie Mellon press release. "Even the messages from the Transportation Secretary have been confusing.  First, it's a recommendation not to drive the cars in question at all. Then, that was retracted. I think it's important for people to realize that when you look at the actual risk of driving one of these cars, it's actually very low."

You can read the full press release here and, for further enlightenment and encouragement, visit Fischbeck's Death Risk Rankings Web site.

You can read Rep. Towns' letter to Inaba here.

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