Toyota’s reputation has been tarnished by a series of quality problems that prompted the car maker to recall an unprecedented number of cars to fix a defect that causes random acceleration.
In November 2009, after a succession of “runaway car” incidents that resulted in fatalities, Toyota initiated a recall of 3.8 million vehicles.
The recall was known as “Floor Mat Entrapment” and Toyota blamed the unintended acceleration on the incursion of an incorrect or out-of-place front driver’s side floor mat into the foot pedal well, which can cause pedal entrapment.
Motorists began removing the floor mats yet problems persisted. Tragically four people died in Southlake, Texas late last year when a runaway Toyota sped through a fence and landed upside down in a pond. The car’s floor mats were found in the trunk of the car, where owners had been advised to put them as part of the recall.
This urged a second recall in January 2010 of over 4 million vehicles worldwide, known as “Sticking Accelerator Pedal”, that was based on mechanical sticking of the accelerator pedal that caused unintended acceleration. There is a view that the first recall was simply a cover-up by Toyota.
Further magnifying Toyota’s woes, in February 2010 Toyota announced the “Anti-lock Brake Software” recall of its current generation Prius vehicles with reports of braking problems. The recall entails a software fix for the ABS system, to improve brake response.
Toyota President Akio Toyoda's apology bow
So here we have vehicles capable of unintended acceleration coupled with braking malfunctions. But it gets even worse.
Most major car manufacturers implemented long ago a brake override system, that is, if the brake and the accelerator are in an argument, the brake wins. Toyota did not. This means that randomly accelerating runaway Toyota’s will not respond to braking because, in this case, the accelerator wins.
Over the years Toyota has established a strong reputation as a builder of safe and reliable vehicles, but are they really?
As a long-term owner of Toyota vehicles and a current owner of a Toyota Prius I am now completely disenchanted with Toyota. Once a strong believer in their brand and image I now feel deceived and misled. Worst still, I now feel vulnerable whenever I take to the road in their pile of potential death trap crap.
The following embedded video includes audio of the 911 distress call made by the driver of a runaway Toyota which ended tragically killing a family of four.
Here is an ad from Toyota titled “Commitment”. In it, Toyota admits it “hasn’t been living up to the standards that you expect from us” and promises to “restore your faith”.
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looks like Japanese cars are taking a hit lately. Honda has been having some problems too as well.
In order to turn off the engine when it is moving, you need to reboot (keep pressing the start/stop button for 3 seconds) the car! The 3 seconds when it is traveling 170km/hour will be really long… Are they using Windows in the system???
Windows as an OS for a car; there’s a disgusting thought. But then just knowing that these cars are completely run by a computer—and for some reason that was not clear to me before this—is just terrifying. All the more reason to love the older vehicles:
http://emuu.net/journal.php?7963
Rack, meet pinion.
I heard about the pedal recall, but now a hybrid recall, the honda airbag recall and to think I could have had no idea if it affected my NON toyota car good thing I found more info here http://www.carpedalrecall.com
searched for my make, model, year and found my car had been recalled so look out! it could save a life maybe yours
don’t understand how serious or what the car pedal recall is about?
just watch this video at the end it also shows how to stop a out of control car very useful
It’s actually a joint venture conspiracy between the Japanese Research Institute (Whaling Authorities) and the major oil companies. By sabotaging the Prius and making them a death trap, they can wipe out all the hippies. This will allow the Japanese to continue whaling without obstruction and will allow the oil companies to sell more oil without those pesky hybrid electric cars in the way.
Hmmm…some different thoughts:
1) Put the floormats in the trunk of the car? I don’t see how that would minimize the risk of a crash. If anything, it seems like it would create more crashes by causing drivers’ feet to slip.
2) Along the same line of logic of removing floormats: If the floormats are the cause of the problem, shouldn’t Toyota be able to simply provide Prius owners with newly designed floormats that would fix the problem?
3) Maybe Toyota should provide under-seat floatation devices and safety helmets.
4) Will the insurance premiums of Prius owners skyrocket in light of the brake problems?
5) I would be interested in knowing who designed the Prius brake systems and whether there was any outsourcing of the brakes’ manufacturing process and to which companies.
6) Is it -really- the brake system design or manufacturing materials that are at fault? Or, is there a possibility of a disgruntled or incompetent employee on the assembly line tampering with the brake systems?
7) I don’t know anything about the QA process of automobile design, but now I’m curious how that works and how the Prius brake problem did not show up.
Making some pretty big headlines over here in Japan, too. I thought there would be a lot of avoidance, but the media here is actually pretty focused on the story.
“GM is dead. Long live the new GM?”
“TOYOTA” The manufacturing sacrificial sacrifice. Complaints of deaths due to sudden acceleration in Toyota cars, like the Audi that went 0-60MPH at a turn of a key that involved death and injury, I don’t recall any apologies from Audi. Recalls aren’t new take a look: http://wwwapps.tc.gc.ca/saf-sec-sur/7/vrdb-bdrv/search/search.aspx?lang=e Ford 1419 recalls, Chrysler 309 recalls, Cadillac’s alone 190 recalls Toyota 139 recalls; and them with out sin cast the first stone. Domestic(?) auto makers now push to produce everywhere but north America, Toyota and Honda with plants in US and Canada are turning more domestic then Ford, Chrysler or GM who just opened a new line in Asia. “Domestic” means production that takes place within the country’s borders (Wikipedia). http://twitter.com/economicblow
How do you recall millions and millions of cars? The logistics in organising this must be chaos