You have a serious attitude and your like an import Nazi ,
and I thought I didn’t like Toyota.

Dear Everyone else,

I guess I am a division of Need more oil for imports but only like German cars (Mostly Volkswagen)
I don’t have anything against Ford so don’t explode all over the discussion board.

NMOFVW

You are all idiots….
A floormat? “They deserved to be killed?” Goverment owned and still bankrupt?
What is your problem. Toyota can’t get a floormat right, NMOFGM is a Patriotic American Murder,
and GM is a dating the American goverment (Shes a gold-digger). You guys need to be real!
Volkswagen never had an attitude, floormat issues, or goverment money (GM) addiction.

NMOFVW

Then he sells you the junk
And charges u double
Cheers!
DrFill

-they know what the problem is, and are going to try to fix it quietly (not many are this stupid, but…)
-they know what the problem is, and are going to announce it after crash investigation is finshed
-they’re “adjusting floor mats” doing this mostly as a PR move for a possible lawsuit

Anyway, this is just a sad situation. People died, and that’s no laughing matter.

All cars should have the pegs that the mats hook onto, next to the front of the seat, so the mat can’t move
DrFill

i love the recall just saying to take out floor mat, from what i have read no new one or any thing.

“The mat design was implicated in the fatal accident that killed a family of four in a Lexus ES 350 loaner vehicle. In that vehicle, the removable mat became lodged against the accelerator pedal forcing the vehicle to reach speeds around 120 mph.”

Has this been verified as being the cause of the accident? Isn’t the floor mat issue still a “suspected cause” at this point?

My understanding is that the investigation by the state has not been completed.

The article states that it has and that the floor mat issue was determined as the cause of the accident.

??

Also coincidentally I was just talking with a woman today who owned a Lincoln LS, and had the same issue happen to her. Fortunately she was only doing 35mph, and drove her car against a median to slow herself down. She said that Ford never looked into to it either when it happened…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiFFlYMM2YY&feature=related

it’s about “Sudden Acceleration Investigation”…take a look

I don’t think Toyota knows the exact nature of the problem or how to fix it. That is the nature of electrical and computer glitches. They are intermittant and can be maddening to try to track down. Whatever the problem is, it is not leaving a fault record in the main computer. But, something in the engine management software or hardware triggers an inappropriate switch in the throttle and fuel map to go to Wide Open Throttle. This will take some serious effort to try to track down.

That said, I don’t think Toyota has put the resources in to try to figure it out. They have taken more of a “head in the sand and hope it goes away” approach. When my father in law had the problem with his car, they didn’t even want to look at the car. They just assumed it was a problem with the driver and sent him on his way.

What should have happened was as follows. Tthe car should have been sent back to Toyota, hooked up to external engine management monitoring, and driven until the fault re-occurred. The problem was, in real world driving each episode was about a month apart. So, it would take time and resources to look into, which Toyota was unwilling to do.

I am hoping that they have a team on it now, because it is obvious this problem is not going away. Time to get the head out of the sand.

/sarcasm on

It’s too early for many of these cars to be accelerating uncontrollably. They are supposed to wait until the drop dead time, and all of the Toyotas will suddenly accelerate and kill lots of Americans all at the same time. It’s a terrorist plot.

/sarcasm off

Be American. Buy American. Buy GM.

OH BUT THIS IS OK LEFT LANE NEWS???? c’mon now?

Either way, we don’t know, we weren’t there. It happened so quickly, there’s plenty that could have happened that only those who were in the car would know.

Aside from the tragic loss, the bad thing about stories like this is people tend to side with who they favor.

Logically, it would seem Toyota is trying to look good for a possible lawsuit. If there was another issue they’re really going to fix, it’ll sure show up fast – the thousands of mechanics across the country will know about it…they’ll be the ones’ fixing it.

I would imagine the Toyota brass isn’t stupid enough to think they could slip an auxillary recall into a sure-fire publicity magnet of a multimillion unit recall, especially one that would require the co-operation of millions of Toyota employees across the U.S.

If they are that stupid…I doubt it would stay hidden for long.

Luckily I did. I let off the brakes, regained control and carefully reapplied the brakes until I came to a safe stop.

There’s a point to my cute little story… I knew how to react quickly and effectively in an emergency situation and I did it without losing my head. Not everyone does, some people don’t know what to do, or they panic, or both. PLEASE stop blaming the drivers like you actually were there and know exactly what happened. That one man who was killed was a cop, I’d put money on him being a better driver than most of us.

This is not an issue?

Come on… you’ve got to be stupid for this to be a problem.

My car (a Citroën) is subject to unintended Acceleration, similar to the case of the Audi 5000: The Idle speed sensor of my car is a bit worn out, and I don’t want to pay for a new one .

In my car, sometimes when I release the gas pedal, it happens that the engine speed does not goes back to its normal idle speed (1000rpm), but get stuck at 2000rpm. In some other cases, the idle engine speed of my car would just fluctuates from 800rpm to up to 2500 rpm. In an automatic transmission, I guess it can be dangerous when you have the drive gear engaged, but as I drive a manual, I simply have to press the clutch and stop the car.
When this type of behaviour happens to me, the solution is to stop the car, switch off the engine and switch it back on, then this idle speed problem disappears.

The root cause of the problem is that over time, the idle speed sensor does not work as good as when it came out of the factory. However, the engine computer does not wear out, and here is the problem: it expects a certain behaviour from the sensor, but does not necessarily take into account the fact that a worn out idle speed sensor may behave strangely. Anyway, this issue is well known for my car and other car which use this type of sensor (mid-90s technology), but when you have a manual transmission it is not a big deal.

As an Engineer, I am interested in knowing the technology used in these Toyota:
Do they use a complete electronic gas pedal (no mechanical wire)? and are they using Direct Injection?
If both answer are yes, then the problem of my car cannot happen in the Toyotas. From the description of the problem, I would say that it is a computer bug (maybe from engine control unit, the gearbox control unit or even the traction control system) or simply the gas pedal electronic and moving part which get stuck.