Are Toyota drivers still experiencing unintended acceleration?

Considering that the brakes on a Camry are strong enough to stop the car in under 300 feet even with the engine at full power, I think this was never as big an issue as it was made out to be in the first place, so I think that much of the fault was “wetware” (in other words, the nut behind the wheel). Note how few drivers attempted to shift into Neutral or cut the engine? In fact, pedal misapplication was a common cause, especially in rental cars that the driver was unfamiliar with.

Now that I got that rant off my chest, the unintended acceleration issue has been proven to be something other than the software. NHTSA and NASA laid that one to rest.

According to The New York Times

“The study by NASA into Toyota’s electronics, which was ordered by Congress last year, confirms the traffic safety administration’s original determination that the acceleration problems that led to the recall of nearly eight million Toyota cars and trucks in 2009 and 2010 were mechanical, caused either by gas pedals snagging on floor mats or sticky gas pedals that didn’t retract when drivers released them.

Unintended acceleration has been blamed for 89 deaths, according to complaints fielded by the traffic safety administration. But in a separate study of Toyotas involved in accidents, the agency concluded that most cases of sudden acceleration were probably because of drivers stepping on the gas when they thought they were stepping on the brake. ”

I have heard that it may have been due to drivers getting loose mats caught in the pedals- not sure how true that is. I guess most Toyota drivers are those who want an appliance rather than a car, so driver error is a strong possibility. Don’t know about the US, but in Australia Toyota and Hyundai drivers are the worst on the road.

@Harold Here, nobody wants to drive. Why do you think people talk on their phones, apply makeup, eat, and do whatever else it takes to forget they are driving?

Our Toyota mat retention was modified by recall, so mats were the official explanation.

Interesting that my Prius had a weird braking problem – it suddenly forgot how to transition from electric braking to hydraulic braking. I took it to the dealer, and 2 hours later they told me nothing was wrong. The problem has not appeared since. I suspect they upgraded the firmware, since the cure was so fast and permanent.

@jerv – Different country, same problem!!

@RocketGuy That one actually was a software glitch, but unrelated to the acceleration issues of other models; separate recall.

I never got that recall notice, but yeah separate issue.

Thanks, everyone, for your replies.

For me, it is very strange that the problem appeared in different models of Toyotas having different physical designs. Sounded more like a software or firmware problem. Of course, it’s possible that Toyota did discover that it was a software problem and quietly went about updating the software when the cars were brought in for the recalls, in order to avoid bad publicity. That could be why we have not heard of any further problems.

Thank you, @marinelife, for the link to the NYT article.

Most manufacturers try to use the same parts whenever possible in order to cut down on costs (setting up to produce 50,000 of the same thing is less expensive than designing five different setups producing 10,000 each), and pedal assemblies are relatively easy to use across an entire range of vehicles. By the same token, they could use the same instrument cluster even if the dashboard it gets mounted in is different in every model.

Personally, this is why I have always distrusted electronic throttles (preferring a simple cable to the throttle valve instead) and have some slight misgivings about electronic fuel injection. I know for a fact that when my ‘85 Toyota blew it’s alternator, the only reason it was able to run at all was because it has a carburetor. The voltage regulator issues involved in a bad alternator would have made an electronically-controlled engine unable to run and possibly fried the ECU entirely and turned a simple $85 repair into a dealership job costing many hundreds of dollars on top of towing costs that I avoided by actually being able to drive the car to Autozone.

@jerv Yes, and I hate the way everything seems to come as an assembly these days, so that if even the smallest thing goes wrong within it, you have to replace the entire assembly. And this is more often than not quite expensive.
But back to the Toyota question, it is my understanding that at least two different gas pedal designs (or at least two different suppliers) were involved. That’s why I suspected the problem was elsewhere.

Ah. Understandable. I was unaware of that detail.