Toyota's Inaba will testify in Senate on safety

The Commerce Committee will also hear on Tuesday from Toyota's executive vice president for quality control, Shinichi Sasaki, and David Strickland, administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

Separately, Toyota President Akio Toyoda and LaHood held a 30-minute meeting on Thursday to discuss safety matters after both testified on Wednesday before a House of Representatives panel investigating how Toyota and NHTSA handled recalls and safety complaints.

A LaHood aide described the meeting as productive.

Inaba also testified at the House Oversight and Government Reform hearing over questions related to unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles.

Toyota has recalled more than 6 million cars and trucks in recent months for loose floor mats that can jam the accelerator and for gas pedals that will not spring back as designed.

U.S. regulators and Toyota are also looking into whether complaints of unintended acceleration could possibly be linked to software-driven electronic throttles.

Toyota has said those systems are sound, and NHTSA found no problems either in previous reviews. But Congress has questioned whether regulators probed hard enough and whether they have the expertise to handle such an investigation.

(Reporting by John Crawley and Nobuhiro Kubo in Washington, editing by Maureen Bavdek)