SUDDEN UNINTENDED ACCELERATION (SUA)

uh-oh

unfortunately, the u/a ship sailed a few years ago. i'm not sure why you are reporting here, but if you are looking for advice, i would have a talk with my insurance company, legal advisor and nhtsa.

not sure what else we can do to help.

if you are trying to warn others, that has been tried before. these incidents are so rare, and rife with questions, people have to experience them for themselves.

i'm glad no one was hurt.

 

The car has a type of black box. Your insurance company will likely want to validate your claim. Toyota's or your liability - or lack thereof will turn on what the Black Box reveals.
.

 

Just ignore post #2, but post #3 is exactly correct, let your insurance company examine your black box and rest easy, it is rare, but it did happen, so a few phone calls should resolve the issue.

 

First of all I'm very glad that nobody was hurt.
As far as the rest?
I'll wait and read the last chapter of this book first....

There are a lot of things that can cause SUA, and no offense but most of them involve cockpit error or equipment that the manufacturer has no control over, and your car is now 7-8 years old, and the Prius SUA saga has already been written.

Good Luck!
Please stick around long enough to write that last chapter, and let us know how it shakes out.

 

March 19, 2014, the DOJ issued a deferred prosecution agreement with a $1.2 billion criminal penalty for issuing misleading and deceptive statements to its consumers and federal regulators, as well as hiding another cause of unintended acceleration, the sticky pedal, from the NHTSA.[44]

This fine was separate from the $1.2 billion settlement of a class action suit paid to the drivers of Toyota cars who claimed that their cars had lost value as a result of the SUA problems gaining publicity in 2012, and was at the time the largest criminal fine against an automaker in US history.[52]

Toyota was also forced to pay a total of $66.2 million in fines to the Department of Transportation for failing to handle recalls properly and $25.5 million to Toyota shareholders whose stock lost value due to recalls.

Nearly 400 wrongful-death and personal injury cases were also privately settled by Toyota as a result of unintended acceleration.[52]

Wikipedia

 

If you really believe that is was a car-induced SUA, not related to driver error, then please file a vehicle safety complaint with NHTSA:

File a Vehicle Safety Complaint

Be forewarned that there is very strong statistical and circumstantial evidence that at least 80% of SUAs are pilot error, not a fault in the car. And some are now even being verified by the onboard event data recorders, or by nearby surveillance cameras showing showing brake lights only after impact.

But it is also very clearly less than 100%, as a variety of other causes have been demonstrated, though in lesser numbers. While modern designs are making those problems far less frequent, they have not been eliminated.

Long ago, in a previous car and while seriously fatigued, I experienced a parking lot SUA myself. But a couple of deeply ingrained reflexes not trained into most of today's drivers (manual transmissions and non-ABS winter driving) halted it without damage before I had any time to think. Only afterwards did I figure out that it was driver error, based solely on the car's responses to those reflexive actions. Had I been driving a normal ABS-equipped automatic, I'd have gone through a fence and into a neighbor's house, and would likely still be swearing that it was car-induced SUA, not a driver error.

 

It is probably very difficult to keep your wits about you during an incident like this.
Step 1...make sure you are stepping on the brake and push hard
Step 2...turn off the car by pressing the power button (everyone forgets this)
And of course steer the car to not hit anyone or anything if possible

Mike

 

Better yet, remove and re-apply the brake, as if you are 'pumping the brakes' in an old fashioned non-ABS car while sliding on winter ice.

My incident happened in the middle of summer, without a scrap of ice around, yet this reflex it still worked. And very importantly when mentally reviewing afterwards, the second application had a different foot feel and engine sound than the first. E.g. the first was on the wrong pedal, the second try got it right.

Stomping hard on the pedal is the right response for failure of the brake's power assist. Passenger car regulations demand the underlying non-boosted hydraulic system still work manually when the boost vanishes, though it requires vastly more pedal pressure. Apply your full body weight (or more, braced against the seat back).

Yes in a normally keyed ignition, but this takes too long on a Prius push-button ignition, something like 3 seconds.

For faster response, shift to Neutral. In a Prius, this has about a one second delay. Faster still is to shift to Reverse. If you have any significant forward speed, the Prius will override and instantly go to Neutral with a double-beep warning.

In my incident, the other foot slammed on the clutch, instantly disengaging power to the wheels. But this reflex works only with manual transmissions. Drivers of automatics and CVTs can only shift to Neutral.

Yes, steer to not hit anyone. But solid inanimate things, especially those that can be sideswiped instead of hit head-on, may become necessary speed-reducing targets before speed builds up too high.

 

Toyota sure paid out a LOT of money for something....

My 2005 Camry was rock solid. Drove it for 11 years, with no major problems. However, now I do recall two or three minor unintended acceleration incidents. I believe the Camry drive-by-wire was fairly new back then? Not sure. Stopped at a red like waiting to make a right turn, barely touched the gas pedal to begin the turn, and the car just took off. (Easily corrected by just mashing the brake.)

It also had a weird "hesitation" if you ever had to jump on the gas. One thousand one... One thousand two... then it accelerated. Several years later I unexpectedly received a check from Toyota Corp for $150. Some type of settlement? I never joined a law suit, nor new of one, but that $150 bought me a nice steak dinner and a movie.

 

The cover-up is always worse than the crime.....
LOVE the avatar!
(First Man reference......)

 

Glad you wen't hurt!

It's really great that you were able to observe your wife's foot on the brake for the duration of the incident. I would never have thought of that while lunging over a curb and down a steep embankment.

You need to keep this memory alive because the insurance company will say that because your wife was involved in operating the pedals (stopping at a marked parking curb) she simply pressed the wrong one. They will have an expert witness who will testify that when someone is pressing the wrong pedal, they don't realize it and will continue to press it for awhile thinking that it is the brake, not the accelerator.

The jury's verdict will turn on your memory of watching your wife's foot while plummeting down the embankment against the expert's testimony that your wife was probably pressing the gas instead of the brake when she tried to stop at the marked parking curb. Hopefully, you will be a better witness than the insurance company's expert and recover your damages.

 

get a great injury lawyer like jackie chiles, and don't settle for a lifetime of free lattes!

 

... and the testimony of the built-in Event Data Recorder, if it triggered on anything.

 

makes sense are they putting out a warrant for akio toyoda's arrest?

 

Care to elaborate on what you mean? Were you expecting FHP to do anything?

From your description, this happened in a parking lot on private property and there were no traffic laws broken, regardless of what caused the incident. Plus, no other cars were damaged and no one hurt, thank goodness.

 

Good point, although it probably didn't trigger the EDR given that there was no airbag deployment or near deployment. According to the OP, there was a "panic stop on the other side of the parking lot without damaging any other cars or injuring anyone."

Even if this incident were considered a crash, the EDR only keeps the last five seconds. Both the OP and the defendant (presumably Toyota) would probably agree that the car was under braking during the last five seconds before complete stop and that the unintended acceleration (either by the Prius itself or by his wife pressing the wrong pedal) was over.

In other words, in the last five seconds before the complete stop, probably no one disputes that the "Percent throttle" parameter would be 0% and the "Brake switch status" parameter would be ON. Otherwise the vehicle would not have stopped.

For winning a lawsuit, it's amazingly fortuitous that the OP would be looking at his wife's feet and the brake pedal for the "duration of this incident," given that it must have been a horrifying experience to be plummeting "down the side of a steep embankment."

His observations will be critical, especially given the recent government study indicating that "accidents in which drivers mistakenly hit the gas instead of the brake tend to involve female drivers in parking lots." The insurance company -- or Toyota's lawyers -- are going to hammer against the notion that he would be watching his wife's feet during an incident like this and they will push the mistaken pedal theory.

 

Those would be the legal minimums.

I seem to remember the 2010 James Sikes runaway Prius incident as having been shown as fraudulent in part by additional information recorded in the car.

 

Machines can fail.
Systems can fail.
I'm not going to tell somebody, something they think happened, in the way they believe it happened, didn't happen. I wasn't there, I didn't experience it.

I would say I find the following things interesting:

By this description, speculatively it would seem to me, this would be saying you had at least 2 systems failing simultaneously. You would have to have the vehicle accelerating spontaneously, so a failure of the drive by wire system-fuel delivery, acceleration, AND a failure of the braking system.

Or would you describe it simply as a complete failure of the braking system?

It would seem to me, again speculatively that if the event began as described, that is from a stop, if it was case of the vehicle suddenly accelerating, even with that failure the brakes should of worked.
Conversely, if coming from a complete stop, the brakes totally failed, the acceleration should of been gradual or at "creep" along speed.

It's at least interesting, that the event as described I think, describes the sudden failure of two separate systems simultaneously.

This is also interesting. There is a finite number of symbols that can possibly appear on the display. It should be possible to find out exactly what symbol you were witnessing, assuming you would recognize it again if you saw it again. If you can pin point the area the symbol appeared in...what symbol it was, should be definable.

Whatever the reality, I hope the truth prevails.