'Biggest Toyota Recall Ever'

Biggest Toyota Recall Ever

10/21/09 07:54

Last August 28, an extremely sad event happened when a family of four died in a car accident deemed as a result of a malfunctioned break due to a mismatched floor mat that got stuck in the car's accelerator which resulted to an unstoppable 120 mph speed.

On that day, the police department received a call from someone who is telling them the car they are in is not responding to the breaks and that the accelerator is stuck. The call ended with the police hearing the words "hold on and pray" from one of the male passengers and lastly a scream from a woman.

The car that was involved in the accident was a 2009 Lexus ES, Toyota's luxury brand. According to the investigators, the faulty floor mats really did stuck up on the accelerator that caused the vehicle to run a whopping 120 mph and is very difficult to stop,

Weeks after the incident and the investigations, Toyota announced that they will be recalling about 3.5 million cars that may be equipped with the deadly floor mats. “A stuck open accelerator pedal may result in very high vehicle speeds and make it difficult to stop the vehicle, which could cause a crash, serious injury or death,” Toyota said.

The recall, the biggest in the Japanese automaker's history, will be covering Toyota models such as the 2007-2010 Camry, 2005-2010 Avalon, 2004-2009 Prius, 2005-2010 Tacoma and 2007-2010 Tundra. Lexus will also be recalling the following models: 2007-2010 ES 350, and the 2006-2010 IS 250 and IS 350.

Its a bit hard to accept that just because of a faulty floor mat, 4 lives were lost. I believed its not just in the floor mats, maybe there is more to it, like a problem with their accelerator pedal. But let's leave the investigations and the truth as they are.

We own a Prius and a Lexus GS. Both have an electronic on/off button rather than a key to start and stop the car. I can imagine the button is locked out when the car is moving to prevent accidentally turning off the engine while driving. So if you were wondering why they didn't simply turn off the engine, that is why.

I do however believe the Lexus could be shifted into neutral manually, allowing the engine to race but letting the car slow down. After hearing this story I tried it under moderate throttle and it worked. Perhaps they tried that but with the engine under full throttle the load on the transmission prevented the transmission linkage from releasing.

The Prius has an electronic shifter so it is probably prevented from going into neutral while driving.

If like motorcycles, cars with electronic on/off switches had an emergency kill switch, this tragic accident could have been prevented.

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