Marc 85Z28

Right... Because a problem with over 10 million vehicles compares to one with a couple thousand from 50 years ago.

This floormat problem cannot possibly be to blame for 10+ million vehicles. The pedals, floorpan, carpet, and floormats are all identical across all those different vehicles and generations of each? Or they all have the same cumulative flaw? The ONLY common link between ALL of the recalled vehicles is Toyota's PCM calibrations.

El Duce

Both of you completely missed the point.

If you notice, I quoted his statement about the way Toyota handled the situation. I was not doing a compare and contrast between the actual problems of the cars' themselves, but how the situation was handled and the "behavior of the company."

Z28Wilson

How was Corvair handled exactly? When Nader's book came out it essentially killed the car. Testing through the lifecycle revealed no larger propensity to roll/crash. Still, in each year from 1962 to 1965 (when the second generation car with a completely new IRS was introduced) Chevrolet made incremental improvements to the suspension including front sway bars and new leaf springs to better stabilize it.

Maybe it's just me, but that situation is a little bit different than Toyota's succession of stances on the UA issue, which have ranged from "there is no problem" to "driver error" to "it's the gas pedal" to "it's the floormats" to....???? But I realize that's just an opinion.

El Duce

He says he doesn't like how the situation was handled, in particular blaming the drivers or anything along that line. But I propose how is that any better than trying to defame Nadar by sending prostitutes his way trying to capture him in questionable photos or tapping his phones? Do you see what I'm getting at here?

Threxx

Let's pretend you're a very high up member of Toyota corporate and despite all your efforts, your own engineers and even NASA can't find anything wrong with your software. All internal audits point seem to suggest that what's happening in nearly all cases are consumers see these news reports, get their floor mat jammed up in their accelerator pedal, and freak out 100 times worse than they would if the exact same thing happened and their car wasn't made by Toyota.

What would you decide to do at that point?

Personally if I was in that situation I can't think of anything to do but let the software investigations continue and meanwhile keep fixing the only thing we have found as a potential issue, and fix it on all of our vehicles, since even though all vehicles in the world may be prone to a loose floormat working its way toward the gas pedal, its our vehicles that consumers tend to assume the worst in when it happens.


I see what you're saying but my point remains that those other 'pools' are 'acidic' at times, too.

How many people have died or been seriously injured due to unintended acceleration issues? If we have a figure, are we counting every time anyone ever pointed their finger at Toyota, even if it's likely they screwed up and wanted to use Toyota as a convenient scapegoat to shift blame?

Anyhow... whatever that realistic/adjusted number is... is it really that much higher than the number of people that have died or been seriously injured from many other manufacturer's safety defects?

I honestly don't know... I'm asking an honest question.

That, to me, would seem to determine the realistic relative 'acidity' of Toyota's 'pool' at the moment.

Z28Wilson

Proven or unproven those were some pretty despicable actions and I'd like to think those types of tactics wouldn't be attempted almost 50 years later. I was under the impression that we were talking about the companies actions' in regards to fixing problems, real or perceived, with the cars themselves.

Darth Xed

A can understand this to a point, but it's not just floor mats. They've blamed the drivers, they've replaced accelerator pedal linakge or whatever that was, they've done the floormats things more than once now... and, if it were as simple as the floormats, you'd think that other manufacturers would have the same level of problems, unless of course, the floormat is the actual cause for Toyotas problems.... which round one didnt show to be true.



I agree they can be, but I KNOW that there is a more liekly chance right now that Toyota's pool has the acid... so why should I jump in their pool when I can jump in Honda's or GM's unstead?


I get this. I totally do, and I would guarantee more than a handful of people are jumping on the bandwagon to cover up their own stupidity. I get that. But it's way beyond that. I dont believe that 99.999999% of the cases are just made up stuff. If that's the case, then you have to apply the same logic to every other company's problem in every instance of every other problem...ever... and even if you do that, there are a ton more 'finger points' at Toyota right now than possibly any other situation in the industry.

I don't know either, but by applying my line of thining in the above paragraph, I would say that all that 'washes out' because you still have a ton more compalints onthe Toyotas than , say a Nissan or pick your manufacturer.

In other words, if only 1 out of every 100 claims is actually true, then you have to divide other manufactuers claims of problems by 100 too, and Toyota , therefore, obviosuy still has a lot bigger problem on their hands.

Threxx

I see what you're saying and I think we largely agree even though we see the same thing from different angles.

However I would still argue that Toyota's recall is a fairly unique situation when comparing incident reporting frequency. Most recalls out there involve things that are very cut and dry. Take Ford's ongoing F-150 airbag recall issue. You KNOW if your airbag blew up in your face while you were driving along normally. Ford will know too. There's no chance you will accidentally think your airbag went off and I imagine it would be difficult to blame an early airbag deployment on causing an accident unless for some reason the time of these deployments are not recognized by the car's computer.

On the flip side, unintended acceleration is a VERY common issue, and 99.99% of the time it can be attributed to either a bound up floor mat or somebody hitting the gas when they meant to hit the brake (I personally have known two people do did that and their gut reaction was to actually hit the supposed brake (which was actually the gas pedal) even harder).

I guess what I'm saying is I think you can attribute the large majority of these people saying "me too" to the Toyota issue as people who experienced normal simple unintended acceleration issues, but because they drive a Toyota and have been watching the news, they assume it was something far more sinister that caused their episode and they flip out thinking their car is trying to kill them. And then of course you have the scapegoat people, too, who are looking to avoid taking the blame for the accident they caused.

Those sort of 'phantom issue' scenarios are just not going to happen when your recall involves something like an exploding gas tank or exploding airbags.

I really believe psychology is playing a huge role here.

I'm not saying there aren't any 'real' issues here. I just think the real issues are incredibly rare and surrounded by a see of phantom issues or at worst real 'floormat' issues. So when you're talking about comparing the number of issues reported to Toyota vs other recalls... I just don't think from a scientific or statistical perspective, it's apples to apples.

Chrome383Z

I actually agree with Threxx on this one.

95redLT1

Another case of a runaway Toyota today...crashing into a coffee shop.

http://news.yahoo.com/video/bostonwb...asset-24322897

94Camaro_Z_28

Hmmmm.....Using anything even remotely related to this administration as evidence is asinine, it's by far the most corrupt one yet. If this is so "isolated", why are there over 10 million vehicles being recalled? Why were there PCM updates being done at the time they fixed the floor mats? Why was it so important to keep that lawyer quiet? Why were we discussing this very problem on this board more than 5 years ago?

I guess were mind readers, huh? You couldn't pay me to take a Toyota, and I'm amazed, but not surprised, that there is an entire culture that has no issue with Toyota basically saying their customers are the problem. Maybe their foot is positioned on the gas pedal wrong, kind of like holding the bottom of an I-Phone

People often floor their cars at highway speed. That, or the other theory that they meant to hit the brakes...lots of people slam the brakes as hard as they can at highway speeds too. Come on, you guys really are not this stupid, are you?

Threxx

Because there are millions of Toyotas out there and almost all of them have floormats and drivers who have been watching the news that will automatically assume anytime their floor mat binds up in the pedal that they have the "unintended acceleration" issue with their ECU.

They're possibly adding a brake override feature or simply covering their *** in unlikely case there's undetected software corruption. In other words they're being proactive... much like I would in my job as an IT person in the quest to reduce the chance of a problem ever occurring in the first place.

In some/most cases it's likely a combination of them having their foot positioned wrong and the pedals being spaced too closely by design and or a poorly designed/anchored floor mat.

Because when people mean to lightly hit the brake and instead accidentally hit the gas, their natural reaction is to hit what they THINK is the brake (but is actually the gas) even harder. Meaning they end up gunning the gas.

This is not uncommon at all in all brands of vehicle, but with Toyotas these owners have been watching the news and automatically assume the worst... something they wouldn't do if they drove, for example, a Honda or Chevy or Ford.

Did you even read the thread before you asked all these questions? They've all been answered; maybe not definitively, but they've all been discussed pretty fully.

94Camaro_Z_28

I did read the thread and figured they were worth bringing up again. I'm smart enough to know that a lot of people jumped on the bandwagon with this, but there is an obvious problem here that is not being addressed. I truly doubt thousands of people just decided to destroy Toyota's image.

As for hitting the wrong pedal, who hasn't done that at some point in their lives? Considering this, how many of us have run our cars through buildings, off roads, and into any other obstacle we could find? It just doesn't add up. Maybe, just maybe, I'm giving the general public too much credit with that...scary thought.

This has been a known problem on this very board for more than 5 years. First it was floor mats, then it was the shape of the bushing in the pedal, then it was the driver....but at no point was it an electrical issue. I don't buy it.

Threxx

It's simple psychology. Dumb consumer watches the news, sees the Toyota hoopla going on, starts to worry their Toyota may kill them some day. Then dumb consumer experiences a fairly normal 'floor mat stuck under the pedal' issue or 'hitting the wrong pedal' issue like they might experience in any brand of vehicle, but since they watched the news they automatically assume the worst.

It's not dissimilar to people who happen across a news article about some health issue that mentions some very common symptoms (headache, muscle pain, etc) that can occur for 100 different completely mundane reasons, but because they read that article they start to assume they have that exact issue and they go visit their doctor and worry themselves unnecessarily about it.

Again I'm not saying this is what has caused 100% of the reported cases. Especially the ones where people have legitimately spent a couple minutes or more at WOT going down the highway, called 911 and done everything they can think of to try and stop the vehicle. I just suspect 99% of the reported cases involve much more brief periods of intended acceleration that could be attributed to floor mats, pedal confusion or simply using Toyota as a scapegoat for their stupidity. Which leaves us to the other 1% to legitimately discuss what might be going on. Maybe there really is an PCM issue in that 1%, or maybe a pedal defect or maybe those people are just really so stupid they didn't think to check their floor mat before they dialed 911.

Threxx

Another thought I just had... let's say the 1% of these people that spent several minutes at WOT are really THAT stupid that they didn't think to check their flooormat.

The question remains why haven't we heard about this happening with other brands of vehicles?

Well, aside from the obvious answer of "they're not under the microscope for this problem right now", there's something else to consider here:

IIRC Toyota is one of the very few (maybe only?) company that did not install a brake override feature in their late-ish model vehicles, right?

So if this happened in pretty much any other brand of vehicle, if the consumer hit the brake, the throttle is automatically cut off. But not in a Toyota... a Toyota will just keep on going.

Bad design decision by Toyota? In retrospect, definitely. But a lack of a brake override feature is a lot different than an actual PCM defect that results in unintended acceleration.