<p>ABC News has a story about a Toyota problem with unintended acceleration. Toyota claims that it’s due to a problem with rubber floormats getting stuck with the accelerator pedal and they are doing a 3.8 million car recall. Some owners that have experienced the problem disagree. There have been numerous accidents and some deaths.</p>
<p>I drove Audi 4000s and 5000s for 18 years and this reminds me of the 60 Minutes story on Audi back in the 1980s. It was pretty clearly pedal design as the pedals were more to the right on Audis than on US cars to accomadate the clutch pedal (I think that this was true on their automatics).</p>
<p>I have a Toyota today and can’t imagine how a floormat problem could cause a stuck accelerator until I read that the problem was with rubber floormats. On my car, the floor mats are anchored by two steel hooks into the floor and there are rubber/plastic spikes on the bottom of the floormat. The floormats do not move on the Avalon.</p>
<p>The affected cars include the Camry and Prius. Lexus models are also included but the article didn’t specify which models.</p>
<p>The brakes, if functioning, should be able to handle an unintended acceleration problem. There are electronic systems that can affect braking but I would hope that the default failure mode just goes into mechanical mode.</p>
<p>I saw the report, as well and, like you, drive a toyota. There were others models involved and they think it could be a potential problem in all Toyota cars made after 2002. The most important information that they gave was how to stop the car if it happens to you (because the brakes were NOT working during the incidents). The advice was to press HARD on the brake. Do not pump the break. While pressing hard on the break, shift the gear into neutral. The car will stop and the engine will rev, then turn the car off. Do not try to turn off the car while in motion because you will lose your breaks and steering.</p>
<p>My Corolla floor mats don’t move either - same hook fastener.</p>
<p>I watched the ‘crash’ video at the link - wow. Maybe it’s a presence of mind-type problem, but using the emergency brake, or shifting into neutral, or even turning off the car seem like things to try before you smash through an intersection.</p>
<p>I’ve thought this through because in ancient times my dad’s Buick had a ‘sudden acceleration’ problem. It was very scary when it happened. Years later (long after the car was gone) we heard that it was motor mounts that were not secure; the motor shifted, nudging some cable that caused the acceleration. </p>
<p>By the way, I just ordered some new ‘laser’ front mats from WeatherTech since they claim they’ll keep the crud off the mats (I hate that salt/water/slush pile mid-winter). I have throw rugs placed in the car to keep maintenance low, but they scoot around too much, and in the winter they freeze into a bunched up shape in the driver’s seat. Not good.</p>
<p>My car has a foot e-brake and it takes a moderate amount of effort to use it. It would take some time to lift your left foot and push down hard. The e-brake is on the side because we have the 6-passenger seating option. Shifting to neutral would be a lot easier with a standard transmission - just push the stick up or down and you’re done.</p>
<p>I guess that pushing the brake down hard overcomes bunching of the floormat?</p>
<p>During the winter, the buildup of water is a problem. The mats are carpeted and there is carpeting underneath. What I do when it gets wet is to bring the mat inside and let the dry air of winter dry it out. I have to do a little work with a vacuum but only when everything is dry.</p>
<p>I don’t like the rubber mats at all. It’s too easy to slide around on them when you are getting in or out.</p>
<p>This has been on the news a couple of months ago. Two (!!) years ago we got a recall notice from Toyota that we needed to get new floormats for hubby’s Lexus. Of course, H simply ignored it - why would he spend his precious time to drive to the dealership to get a piece of rubberized carpet :rolleyes: Thanks for the reminder - I will nag him again!! I wonder how many others got such notices and also ignored them???</p>
<p>Do his floormats have the steel hook connectors? I wonder if they did away with these.</p>
<p>They are a royal pain if you want to remove the mat because the spikes in the mat make it hard to move so that you can undo the hook but they really hold the mat in place.</p>
<p>I have maintenance done at the dealer so I would expect them to take care of this without even telling me about it if my car had the problem.</p>
<p>Thanks for the link showing “What to do if the car accelerates?”</p>
<p>I sent the link to our two college kids. We have a 2008 Toyota Highlander and I can’t imagine the panic of speeding up and not being able to stop the vehicle. After viewing the link a few times, at least now we’ll have some idea how to attempt to stop the vehicle if it happens to us.</p>
<p>There must be a defect in the computer system (not the mats). The mats are bolted down. I watched a report which included first hand experiences of people who have had this happen to them. They said that it wasn’t the mats, and it felt as though something else was controlling the car. Goodness, why hasn’t Toyota informed us about “How to stop the car if it accelerates?” The only recall we were informed of was in regards to the mats.</p>
<p>In the link, I noticed that VW cars (one of our kids drives a Jetta) have built in technology where the brakes override the accelerator. I’m glad to hear about this.</p>
<p>There was an extensive story about this in the Sun-Sentinel (Ft. Lauderdale) several weeks ago. Best I can tell, it only involves the Lexus ES series and Toyota Prius and Camrys. The problematic mats are not anchored to the floor (many have been after-market mats) that bunch under the gas pedal.</p>
<p>I have a Lexus RX (which is the same as the Toyota Highlander) and the bottom of the gas pedal is far off the floor so even if the mat bunched I can’t imagine it interfering with pedal’s motion.</p>
<p>It is scary. If you have a push-button starter (I don’t, but some of these cars do) they say to push the starter button for at least 3 seconds to turn the car off. </p>
<p>I have been a big fan of Toyotas and I hope they cure this problem soon.</p>
<p>The stories I’ve read on this all say that there’s a major problem with how Toyota/Lexus implemented their keyless ignition. Unlike with a key, the emergency off procedure requires the driver to hold down the ignition button for three seconds. Not intuitive, and not the sort of thing that most of us would even think about hunting up in the car’s manual. </p>
<p>In one crash, the driver (a police officer or similar) was driving with other family members, including a teenaged daughter and an adult brother (in-law, possibly). The car accelerated up over 100 mph, and the adult brother called 911 asking for help while the driver wrestled with the car. The call was recorded, and ended badly.</p>
<p>That’s 146 feet - plenty of distance to do a lot of damage.</p>
<p>Holding the on button for three seconds is common on a lot of devices that I use but they are not devices that have a critical impact given the amount of time.</p>
<p>As BCE noted, Audi was severely damaged by the sales slump associated with the coverage of unintended acceleration. Road and Track did an extensive study where they debunked some of the victims claims. Especially the one where drivers claimed to be pressing on the brake as hard as they could. In that case, it was clearly demonstrated that the brake would hold the car. There were multiple claims of UA from various manufacturers, but Audi was the main focus. R&T demonstrated that the configuration of the brake and gas pedals was somewhat different from most of the other cars. There was never an official conclusion AFAIK. </p>
<p>These new cases seem slightly different. In the police officers instance, this happened after the car was underway. Disturbing. Possibly the mat. Possibly not.</p>
<p>I’m not familiar enough with the throttle systems to know if there is any logical way for this to happen. Obviously, the presence of cruise control equipment means that there is a way for the car to accelerate with touching the “gas” pedal. I wonder if this is the culprit…I never use mine (cruise control), and never will, but I have a feeling there are lots of [others] out there who love driving along without touching the gas. In that case, if something held down the accelerate control on the cruise control lever, you might get this kind of phenomenon.</p>
<p>In any case, you should always be really careful about your mats. A friend’s wife once got into her car after a carwash, and wound up shooting out into traffic on a 4 lane divided highway…pulled a u-turn into oncoming traffic and completed a “donut” route at high speed into a utility pole, breaking her leg. They concluded it was the loose floor mat. Not much time to react.</p>
<p>I mentioned this to a friend of mine and he said that he has a brake problem on his Reatta where it takes a half-second for the brakes to activate after he steps on the pedal. The ABS light comes on and it takes a moment for the brakes to engage.</p>
<p>The Audi problems were before the era of ABS, traction control and devices which could disable or apply braking outside of the control of the driver. 60 Minutes did have one example of a car that could take off on its own with a malfunctioning cruise control system but the driver would have to enable the cruise control. I use the cruise control on my Avalon a lot and have never had a problem with it. There is a button for acceleration but it does so in very small incremements, about 1.5 MPH per press. Electronic systems could be more prone to software failures I think.</p>
<p>I’m in software and have done a fair amount of study on software risks. Some of these drive and stop by wire systems are scary. We’ve seen that catastrophic problems can occur on airplanes with these very complex piloting systems. I always think back to Therac-25.</p>
<p>I do wonder if automobile black box analysis could be used here.</p>
<p>This crash with the CHP officer and his family happened out here in the San Diego area so I heard of it right away. It sounded unbelievable to me at first that it could happen to a trained CHP officer. However, after see all the facts surrounding it, I can see how it could happen even to a savvy driver.</p>
<p>The car was a rental Lexus with a pushbutton ignition so the officer wasn’t familiar with how to turn off the ignition with the ‘3 second hold’ technique. The floormats, which apparently were NOT stock floormats from Lexus, apparently stuck the accelerator pedal.
This Lexus has a reaonably powerful engine that the brakes weren’t able to overcome and then the brakes likely went out once they overheated and the fluid boiled anyway. An emergency brake on almost any vehicle would be even less effective than the normal brake. I’ve also read of issues with putting some of these runaway cars into neutral - they won’t go for some reason. Maybe the computer won’t allow it when there’s full throttle - all of these things are now controlled by the computer.</p>
<p>I think Toyota needs to do more than tie-wrap the floormats down (apparently that’s their fix - tie-wrapped floormats on the $35K Lexus). They also need to make some software changes to make the car cutoff the engine when it detects conditions like a depressed throttle and brakes at the same time. It also ought to have the ignition cut off immediately when the button’s depressed rather than after 3 seconds. I’m sure there are some more relatively easy fixes but these in particular should be fairly simple software changes that would have resolved the issue. When something like this happens, the fix needs to be intuitive - there’s no time for a driver to get out an owners manual and peruse it for the right procedure.</p>
<p>I think that the horsepower levels on the old Audi 5000s was around 130. Horsepower levels on luxury cars today are far higher so the brakes not holding the car makes sense. I’m not sure what the tie-wrap solution looks like but it would seem to me that trying to provide a general solution to every kind of floormat out there would be quite difficult. The best solution would be to use the floormats designed for their vehicles. There is no reasonable way to guarantee this though.</p>
<p>It would seem to me that the rental car company has some liability here in changing OEM parts though they obviously didn’t know that this could happen. Has this been a problem with other car models in the past? I’ve heard anecdotal problems of others having interference problems with floormats but it was just a matter of moving them out of the way.</p>
<p>This car was a loaner from a Lexus dealership - so not the typical rental yet a car the driver wasn’t familiar with apparently. Apparently the gas pedal itself has an unusual design that could contribute to making it difficult to get ‘unstuck’. This is all just from what I’ve read - I don’t have a Lexus.</p>
<p>I saw a photo of the tie-wrapped floormats - they look pretty kludgy - especially for a Lexus but it’s better than having the problem.</p>
<p>Have both a Camry and Tacoma truck affected by this recall. I happened to have my car at local Toyota dealer for service yesterday and was told about the floor mat issue. (I already knew it, but was officially informed.) Anyway, Toyota’s short term solution is to remove your floor mats for you until a permanent fix is determined. I declined, it was noted on my service invoice. H asked if Toyota was going to shampoo the floorboard carpets after winter if they removed my mats for me. Some solution…</p>
<p>^^ Are your mats held in securely - i.e. by anything other than the nubs on the mats? I’m familiar with the Corolla where they seem to be held in pretty securely with some curved posts from the floor that go through grommets in the mats. I’m also familiar with a Hyundai where they tried to hold them securely with a similar post/grommet method but it doesn’t work at all on that vehicle since it just pops out.</p>