Insurance giant State Farm alerted U.S. safety regulators about reports of unintended acceleration of Toyota Motor Corp. vehicles in February 2004, a State Farm spokesman said Friday.

State Farm said it had notified the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration of a rise in unintended acceleration incidents in Toyotas in late 2007. But a company spokesman said a review of the data showed that State Farm first contacted NHTSA about the issue more than three years earlier, The Detroit News reported.

The latest disclosure by State Farm, the country's largest auto insurer, is bound to turn up the pressure on NHTSA as well as Toyota over their handling of complaints from Toyota and Lexus drivers who said their vehicles could accelerate uncontrollably.

Two Congressional committees will hold hearings next week on Toyota's recent acceleration-related recalls. State Farm has been subpoenaed to provide information.

The insurer maintains a vast trove of crash data from its customer base of more than 40 million. It also alerted federal regulators around 10 years ago of a spike in Ford Explorer rollovers.

NHTSA said Friday that when it received State Farm's reports in February 2004 about the Toyotas, it was aware of the issue. Soon afterward, on March 3, 2004, NHTSA opened an investigation into unintended acceleration concerns in Camry and Lexus models, the agency said.

NHTSA has conducted a half dozen investigations since then. Up until November, Toyota said the problem was caused by loose mats or other materials interfering with the gas pedal.

But in November, when it recalled more than 4 million Toyota cars and trucks, it said it would redesign the pedal and introduce a brake override function to prevent unintended acceleration.

The U.S. Transportation Department is investigating the timeliness of Toyota's response, while U.S. lawmakers are probing the responses of Toyota and NHTSA.