Toyota to replace 2004-2009 Prius gas pedals, give new all-weather mats

I don't have the big feets, but I do have an OBDC cable splitter that is an inch or so longer. I occasionally hit it with my toe. If it were above the brake pedal it would be dangerous. Now, it is merely inconvenient. Shortening the pedal will make it more of a problem.

I will defer the "fix" until I can see one in place.

 

Obviously we can't make any conclusion, but since this is the internet we can endlessly and irresponsibly speculate, which I will now do.

That one smells like pedal error to me. Operator was 'trying to stop', but car zoomed forward, which is the classic hallmark of pedal error. Since this was a parking area, vehicle shouldn't have been going that fast and brakes should have been able to stop the vehicle if he was pressing the brake with a 'stuck' go pedal. If you examine the picture and google map imagery, he ran off the end of a parking area that did not have curbstops (at the time of imaging), and didn't get too far into the woods before managing to stop. Most of the discussion around stuck pedals has to do with flooring it, an action that shouldn't be occurring in a parking area.

Is it possible that just as he turned into the parking space, the pedal somehow stuck, and it got unstuck by crashing into the woods? Sure, it's possible.

 

Hmmmm . . . our Gen II IS approaching the 100K mile mark . . . hmmm, if one were to have a wreck ... say mess up the whole front end ... it really doesn't take that much ... could someone get a new car out of this? I'm just sayin' ... Hmmm



.

 

My GF often asks questions that I do not have the answer for. She is not satisfied with "I don't know", so I now say "I don't know, would you like me to make something up?" :madgrin:

 

If it relates to your relationship with her then I don't think I'd use that rejoinder. That's for use when ending a relationship.

Meatloaf 'Two Out of Three Ain't Bad'

 

How many people have brake or clutch or accelerator problems every day because of floor mat creep? Simply corrected by pushing the floor mat down with your feet--and securing the mat.

This must be a common problem to many cars--particularly with replacement mats in older cars. It has happened to me a couple of times in 40 years' driving. It must have happened maybe a hundred times today across the country.

The point is it's not a problem indigenous to the Prius or Toyota. And that's all we are hearing about right now.

 

No, they aren't relationship questions, they are questions about topics that I have no specific knowledge of, but for some reason she expects me to be able to answer. Like a medical question. I've never been to medical school, I'm not a doctor, but she asks me to diagnose her medical problems.

I've learned not to answer the relationship questions, if I can get away with it. :madgrin:

 

How many cars have the bottom edge of the pedal touch the floor? I have only been able to check my friend's Mazda, but it has about 3/4" gap between the bottom and the floor. This allows room for something to be under it without snagging the pedal.

 

Re: Toyota to replace 3.8M gas pedals - Washington Post

In my opinion, Toyota will use this "opportunity" to replace the entire assembly. This will essentially mask any problem with the sensor and, combined with the new software update, eliminate the problem.

It would be way to costly to modify the pedal in the field. It would have to be cut and this would open the dealer to all kinds of liability questions. Also, Toyota would have to pay the dealer to do the modification. Replace the module, cleaner, cheaper, and less problems in te long run.

 

Re: Toyota to replace 3.8M gas pedals - Washington Post

there is no chance to do recall 4 million vehicles and hide whatever you are doing. And anyway, ECU's will have to be replaced for smart pedal thing. Most Toyota's dont have ability to update ECU software.

 

Analysis shows over 40 percent of sudden-acceleration complaints involve Toyotas

Fyi:

Consumer Reports Cars Blog: Analysis shows over 40 percent of sudden-acceleration complaints involve Toyotas

 

Re: Analysis shows over 40 percent of sudden-acceleration complaints involve Toyotas

This could be a lot....but on the other hand it might not.

The part of the equation that's conveniently left off these circumstantial evidence cases is the denominator!!

Think about it. I know for certain that amongst the major high volume sellers that Toyota has the most DBW vehicles on the roads over the last 5 yrs. Right now nearly every Toyota being built has throttle, brake, tranny and steering all controlled electronically. Toyota has been the leader in this transformation. Every other maker is somewhat behind.

That means that Toyota has the most vehicles on the roads with DBW technology since 2004. That's the denominator!!

Ford may very well have the 2nd most vehicles on the roads with DBW technology. I don't know for certain.

But what the LA Times and now CR omit is the rate per xxx. If Toyota has 52 complaints in this study but it has 2,000,000 DBW vehicles on the roads ( which is a good estimate IMO ), then the rate per 1,000 vehicles is 0.026. This is roughly 1 in 40,000.

So, what is the rate for the other makers? 1 in 40,000? 1 in 10,000? Or 1 in 100,000?

CR tries to make an effort to make sense of the stats but it fails because it doesn't have any accurate data on the true denominator...so it uses MY sales.

So how many of these MY sales from each company had DBW technology?

 

Re: Analysis shows over 40 percent of sudden-acceleration complaints involve Toyotas

Look, I just posted a news article and I'm personally not particularly concerned. However - they do sell a lot of cars.

Newsroom : Toyota Reports 2009 April Sales / Toyota

At the rate of 1/40000, and if those are all DBW, then they had 1-2 every month....and that doesn't include the SUVs.

 

Re: Analysis shows over 40 percent of sudden-acceleration complaints involve Toyotas

It was a good article to bring to the discussion. I was commenting more on the article and the logic therein. And yes you make a good point given that nearly all Toyotas now are DBW and they sell 150K to 250K per month on average.

If there are outliers in the performance of the DBW systems with Toyota and with every other maker it would be good to track these rates. I'd be very confident in assuming that auto engineers from every maker are being told by managements and their bosses to exhaust every test possible to see if the systems simply thow these faults at random or is there a specific set of risk circumstances that come together to cause an event.

This assumes that outlier DBW faults are an actual cause of these reports. Nobody thus far has been able to identify the situation accurately or even to identify if such an event even occured.

 

Re: Analysis shows over 40 percent of sudden-acceleration complaints involve Toyotas

My FJ not only has DBW gas pedal, but electric assist brakes.

 

This may already have bee posted, but this article suggests that there certainly may be more to the sudden acceleration problem than floor mats and that Toyota will never admit to the actual cause of the actual problem whatever it is unless it is FORCED to do so:

Toyota found to keep tight lid on potential safety problems -- latimes.com

 

Re: Analysis shows over 40 percent of sudden-acceleration complaints involve Toyotas

what i found interesting in CR report is that 30% of complaints were about Ford's... and nobody talks about Fords... I wonder why?

 

Re: Analysis shows over 40 percent of sudden-acceleration complaints involve Toyotas

Fords usually catch on fire before they have an unintended acceleration event. :madgrin:

 

Toyota found to keep tight lid on potential safety problems -- latimes.com
This is another "trash-Toyota" piece by Vartabedian and Bensinger in the spirit of investigative journalism, the 5th or 6th in a series published by the LA Times in as many weeks. It's done to sell newspapers, since each article has included small snippets of some new info, but almost buried in the regurgitation of incidents and accidents previously reported. It is no longer news.

The bigger the corporate target, the better, especially now that Toyota has now replaced GM as the biggest. While Toyota undoubtedly has seen some decline in overall quality and dependability as a result of their strong growth in recent years, I do not think it is intentional, and they are working hard to correct this decline.

The Prius I drive now is the 14th vehicle I have owned in 55 years of driving, but the first manufactured by Toyota, and I couldn't be happier with it.