Toyota to recall 3.8M vehicles over floor mats

  • Thread starter Thread starter JCE
  • 418 comments
  • 28,362 views
I still can't believe 16 people have died because they didn't know to put the car into neutral.
 
Omnis
I still can't believe 16 people have died because they didn't know to put the car into neutral.
Click to expand...

It's not something that most people learn. Not to mention when the "fight or flight" response kicks in it's hard to think logically.
 
Omnis
I still can't believe 16 people have died because they didn't know to put the car into neutral.
Click to expand...

What about the other 1,984 or so people who just crashed but didn't die ?

Also, the irony pertaining to the aforementioned Honda recall is that it took Honda a very short time to isolate, identify and correct the issue they had with a simple water leak problem for an electrical switch. From what I read, it took an inordinate amount of severe rain/snow/ice to cause the failure. It wasn't caused by an attempt to gain market share by rushing to market cars which were built under the unique guideline of bringing costs down.

Just my opinion maybe :)
 
Ok, I'm sitting here watching the History channel, and a commercial just popped up for a law office asking people to call in if their "Toyota or Lexus" caused them to be in an accident by "sudden acceleration".

Oh boy.
 
Jim Prower
heeeere we go. It's Class Action, now...
Click to expand...

There is always a class action suit when there is a recall. However they rarely get anywhere and if they do they don't get much. I don't see this going anywhere since if you were injured resulting from it chances are you would already be in the midst of a lawsuit and if you weren't injured they can't get anything since they didn't suffer and damages.
 
This is scary... Indeed Toyota have, HAVE to do something of this. Now my neighbour have just bought a Lexus IS.
 
SR-71_Blackbird
Actually the recall is because of a wreck.
http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local-beat/Deadly-Accident-Prompts-Floor-Mat-Warning-59394687.html
Thing is my dad told me a story where he once floored his car a long time ago and when he went to lift the throtle stayed down. He put it in neutral and turned it off while rolling. Turned out the floor mat slipped forward and got the throtle stuck.
Click to expand...

Here's the 911 audio clip from that accident. Pretty scary stuff :scared: :nervous:


I must say, it's amazing that a CHP vet of 19 years (the guy who was driving) didn't have the common sense to either pull the floor mat away from the throttle, shift the car to neutral, or simply turn the ignition to the off position...instead they decide to call 911 when they are 30 seconds away from their deaths = FAIL :ouch:
 
timeattack07gt
I must say, it's amazing that a CHP vet of 19 years (the guy who was driving) didn't have the common sense to either pull the floor mat away from the throttle, shift the car to neutral, or simply turn the ignition to the off position...instead they decide to call 911 when they are 30 seconds away from their deaths = FAIL :ouch:
Click to expand...

We all know that calling 911 was not a good way to do it at such critical time. But I believe, they were overly panicked that time... Does the Lexus ES350 have a push to start button?? I heard that by pressing the button for 3 seconds will shut the car off completely.

EDIT: Aha!! Found an article which I think, another problem for Toyota...
 
Last edited:
Toyota will have to do A lot to get rid of the deathtrap image they are starting to adopt.
 
Pretty much. Toyota is trying to do some PR, but it is not working very well. The Television, Radio and Print people are all over them, and we're really not hearing much back from the company. Lahood was on NPR this afternoon discussing his dissatisfaction with the whole situation, and I didn't find that particularly surprising. Based on what he said, it sounds like the NHTSA has been on their ass for a long time about it, but (pun intended) Toyota rode the brakes for as long as possible. As the number one selling brand in the world, one known for quality and reliability, this is a pretty massive blow. Will it be like the Audi 80 situation from waaaaaaaay back in the day? That all depends on how the press handles it. And if Toyota can be taken seriously in their PR efforts.


Generally speaking, this all becomes a "What the hell were you thinking?" situation for me.
 
I think the Car and Driver article had a pretty good write-up of the situation. They mentioned that the brakes failing to stop the car is an odd occurrence and did some tests duplicating the sitation (though the test itself had one glaring hole in it), but that the Toyotas lack some emergency failsafes that other automakers do include in case the brakes did fail to stop the car.
 
Adding to the "WTH?" situation for me. I have yet to figure out why they wouldn't include those failsafe systems. Did the people at Toyota have their heads shoved so far up their own behinds, drunk off their sales successes and perceived safety awesomeness, they "didn't need it?"
 
From my own "back-lot/back-road" testing, you can disable the engine that uses a start/stop push button by pressing on it for 3-4 seconds. You can also put slide the shifter into neutral, and disengage the transmission, regardless of the RPMs the engine is turning, and it will slow an automobile down, although it takes longer to do so at highways speed. It's still possible, unless there are no brakes left. Even then, one can physically slow the car down through methods like gently rubbing the side of the car along a wall or guardrail as a last resort.

The "runaway ES 350" was a loaner car, possibly unfamiliar to the driver (although basic operation is generally the same). People panic, but regardless of how you point fingers, Toyota is going to take their lumps for a while.
 
Lots of things in the press pointing to the fact that Toyota was reluctant to admit any fault or take responsibility. Doesn't surprise me at all. I've already gone on record stating that I personally feel Toyota to be an unethical company. The absence of certain saftey technologies in their cars can probably be attributed to their simple bottom line profit and reduced cost programs that they entered upon a few years back.
 
^^ Now with that, I'm with you :)

Seriously, Toyota is 100% responsible for what defect/fault with their cars. Looks like they left it all aside and Toyota, no more good company.
 
Toyota has just announced their new company motto.

Toyota: Once you start you just can't stop

I think Pringles may be upset about it though.
 
Damn it! I just wish the FT-86 was on the market and had this problem...then maybe I could get one for a hell of a deal :sly: :lol:
 
Rennsport
Toyota have been ignoring this problem for a long time. Maybe this will take some of the smug out of Prius drivers 👍

read up gents.. http://www.leftlanenews.com/report-...emendous-pressure-from-federal-officials.html
Click to expand...

That's pretty much every manufacturer of goods selling its products in United States!

Say a government authority is telling you how to spend your money whilist scaring the public with an free and potentially uninformed public media...you would convince government officials otherwise, unless they had enough indisputable and substantial evidence proving your company is willfully creating unsafe products.

What do you tell people? We have a fix, we just don't know what it is yet or how to distribute it? Every idiot, lush, and infirm goldfish that gets behind the wheel of a Toyota will sue and bear no personal responsibility, when armed with that information.
 
Could it be that there's too much computerization controlling the Toyota drivetrain? Simple computers rarely, if ever, get viruses...but if you sneeze wrong on your PC, you could create a malicious program. at least, it seems that way.

It's starting to sound, from a lot of these "owner descriptions" that keep coming up, that there's a programming bug that causes these cars to do these things...particularly when the much-vaunted "Hybrid Synergy Drive" comes into play.

Toyota is a quality-oriented company. They invented production systems to ensure this. However, now they're writing software...which cannot be quality controlled in the traditional way, or even the Toyota way. a piece of software is copied over and over, perfectly the same, no variants. You can't see what's wrong with software until it does something wrong.

It could be that a specific number of inputs could cause a division by zero, which causes the car to think that's in cruise control and is set at infinity. Or something of the like. Whatever it is, Toyota needs to bring a Geek in and have it fixed.

[joke]They must have used someone from their Formula 1 effort to program it.[/joke]
 
Am I the only one that's getting tired of this now that the media has their hands on it? I went to Autoblog today and was just completely bombarded by Toyota news that I didn't want to deal with it. It was funny, but now it's just getting annoying.

And then there's Toyoda who seems like a reasonable guy. I seem to remember him saying that he wanted to try and inject some character into the brand. And it's kinda sad to see somebody respectable take over a company only to be immediately thrown into a giant controversy.

Jim Prower
Toyota is a quality-oriented company.
Click to expand...

Apparently they're even letting that slide a little bit in order to shove more cars out the door and be top dog...
 
Should the thread be renamed? Since this isn't just about floormats, anymore... we can officially call it unintended acceleration.

There's also data from the UK that owners were complaining about unintended acceleration in the winter of 2008... complaints which died out after winter ended in 2009... after that, they figured the rate of incidence was too low to be of concern... till the issue came up again in the winter of 09... and it's only now that the US recall has hit hysterical proportions that they're finally recalling European units.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/transport/article7011671.ece

More news... the shim fix is only temporary... as the part wears down, the effects of the shim will change, also... so there will be cases where the shim will not act as intended:

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/tt...m-fix-temporary-solution-at-best/#more-344089

What's more encouraging... is that they're going to reflash ECUs, so that brake inputs take precedence over throttle inputs... like they should in the first place. (Unless you're left-foot braking... but who does that in a Camry?)

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/to...uter-reflash-trimming-gas-pedals/#more-344129

Good thing Toyota is working towards fixing this issue... but the big question is... was Toyota ready to go into cover-up mode? With worries over the recession and the bad press of numerous recalls in the past few years, could it be possible that Toyota, even knowing of the problem with accelerators from several sources since 07-08, was trying to keep the issue as quiet as possible?
 
The lesson in all of this: Go back to cable throttle.
 
Cables were the tried and true technology for probably a century, but they certainly have their foibles as well .... kinking, binding, stretching, breaking. I'm no expert, but I was thinking that a lot of aircaft still use cable controls even though the run lengths are very long. It would seem that electronic controls would be prefered but they're not in some cases. Of course, aircraft have much more stringent inspection and maintanence schedules which would catch worn cables ??
 

Latest Posts

Back