Find Reviews by Make:
The Brits have an expression for this situation: “When you’re in a hole, the first thing you do is stop digging.”
The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued a statement today correcting inaccurate and misleading information put out by Toyota concerning a safety recall involving 3.8 million Toyota and Lexus vehicles:
A press release put out by Toyota earlier this week about their recall of 3.8 million Toyota and Lexus vehicles inaccurately stated NHTSA had reached a conclusion “that no defect exists in vehicles in which the driver’s floor mat is compatible with the vehicle and properly secured.” NHTSA has told Toyota and consumers that removing the recalled floor mats is the most immediate way to address the safety risk and avoid the possibility of the accelerator becoming stuck. But it is simply an interim measure. This remedy does not correct the underlying defect in the vehicles involving the potential for entrapment of the accelerator by floor mats, which is related to accelerator and floor pan design. Safety is the number one priority for NHTSA and this is why officials are working with Toyota to find the right way to fix this very dangerous problem. This matter is not closed until Toyota has effectively addressed the defect by providing a suitable vehicle based solution.NHTSA constantly monitors consumer complaints and other data. This comprehensive recall focuses on pedal entrapment by floor mats, but NHTSA will fully investigate any possible defect trends in these vehicles.TIMELINE OF EVENTS• On September 29, 2009, NHTSA issued a Consumer Alert warning owners of Toyota and Lexus vehicles about “conditions that could cause the accelerator to get stuck open.” As an interim measure, NHTSA “strongly encouraged” owners of specific models to take out the removable driver’s side floor mats and not to replace them any other type of mat. NHTSA warned consumers “a stuck accelerator may result in very high vehicle speeds and a crash, which could cause serious injury or death.”• On the same day, Toyota issued a voluntary recall of 3.8 million vehicles to address problems caused when removable floor mats push the accelerator pedal to the floor.• NHTSA officials are meeting with Toyota to hear their action plan for redesigning the vehicles and correcting this very serious defect.
32 Comments on “NHTSA to Toyota: Stop Lying About Floormatgate...”
Read all comments
For information on how to successfully handle a potential PR nightmare, google “Johnson & Johnson” with “Tylenol murders.”
Or just take any class with the words “crisis management” in the title; I can virtually guarantee it will appear somewhere on the syllabus. It’s kind of shocking Toyota isn’t a little better at this.
Pretty simple solution. Design about 3/4″ off the bottom of the accelerator pedal and replace them all.
OEM part cost in million volumes? About $2.00 or less.
Murphy’s Law.
Shorter accelerator pedal leads to feet/shoes slipping off bottom of pedal leading to loss of acceleration briefly resulting in side impact by vehicle, train, etc. that otherwise would have been avoided if feet/shoes had not slipped off of shorter pedal installed to prevent entanglement with floor mat.
I think we should embrace the herd thinning ability of this new floormat technology.
Five words: Drive-by-wire joystick control. It’s a crime this isn’t already an option on any production model cars.
Contrarian :
November 5th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Pretty simple solution. Design about 3/4″ off the bottom of the accelerator pedal and replace them all.
OEM part cost in million volumes? About $2.00 or less.
Or even more simply, give every owner affected a smaller replacement floor mat with a more secure fastener.
Srynerson: “Five words: Drive-by-wire joystick control. It’s a crime this isn’t already an option on any production model cars.”
Do you really want to drive a First Model Year GM implementation of that?
jmo: “I think we should embrace the herd thinning ability of this new floormat technology.”
Agreed. Everything has become so safe, we have to many people who would have died off with their inability to survive hundreds of years ago are still around. Natural selection isn’t working anymore.
OEM labor cost to replace accelerator pedals in million volumes: $30 per car, at a minimum. Hey, it could be worse, they could have to replace the floorpans on all those cars. :)
Clearly, Toyota is designing their vehicles with a nod towards selling replacement vehicles and reducing overpopulation. Besides, it’s against public policy for people to live too long.
If you’ve ever “experimented” with foot placement on an accelerator, you may have, depending on design, noticed that the closer to the floor you apply pressure to a gas pedal the harder it is to get full acceleration. Most of the cars I’ve driven in the last 20 years have the gas pedal attached to a metal rod coming down from above, at about midway on the pedal, top to bottom, and it usually is not rigid, but pivots at the attachment point. Also, there has certainly been a plethora of variations within this design so that, for example the distance from the floor to the bottom of the pedal has varied considerably from maker to maker, model to model, and even vintage to vintage. The theory that the less than rigid floor mat, which would have to curve upward (further reducing rigidity) could be applying enough pressure to an accelerator to wind out an engine, against the weight of the vehicle and against any available braking pressure and just on Toyota vehicles, just doesn’t add up to me.
It would appear that Toyota is quite anxious to sweep this issue under the floor mat.
Whaddya think? Way to far to go for that line?
Presidential task force hard at work.
The theory that the less than rigid floor mat, which would have to curve upward (further reducing rigidity) could be applying enough pressure to an accelerator to wind out an engine, against the weight of the vehicle and against any available braking pressure and just on Toyota vehicles, just doesn’t add up to me.
What are we talking 200 cars out of 3.8 million? That’s 0.005% of cars. When you’re talking about 0.005% of drivers anything is possible as 99.995% of drivers seem to be able to figure it out.
“What are we talking 200 cars out of 3.8 million? That’s 0.005% of cars. When you’re talking about 0.005% of drivers anything is possible as 99.995% of drivers seem to be able to figure it out.”
So, it would appear that NHTSA’s job is simple: get those .005% drivers off the road and stop bothering Toyota.
@ Ralph SS: Most of the cars I’ve driven in the last 20 years have the gas pedal attached to a metal rod coming down from above, at about midway on the pedal, top to bottom, and it usually is not rigid, but pivots at the attachment point.
From a quick look at about 20 2009-10 model midsize cars, it looks like this design is obsolete. Most cars simply have a single-unit gas pedal with a plastic bracket suspended from above, and the pedals don’t pivot at the attachment point. VW/Audi models were the exceptions, with old-style large pedals bottom-hinged at the floor.
My 2004 Camry still has the metal attachment rod, but no pivot at the gas pedal.
A few Japanese engineers are closely eyeing their seppuku-kit these days, I take it.
Fly-by-wire in a car would be absolute nonsense – lots of systems have been tried, and nothing beats the direct mechanical link (though a lousy power-steering setup can screw with the feedback.)
Stein
Porsches use an e-throttle in Boxsters and Caymans, at least. Its the basis of the Sport Chrono, which is an overpriced stopwatch attached to a user selectable throttle response remapping. No change in power, just in responsiveness. I think this option is also in 911s so probably the same e-throttle there. BTW, it is floor mounted.
I have no complaints with it.
Power-shear one inch from the pedal and zip-tie the mat to something solid in a drive-through lane.
Anything, anything to keep from looking 20 inches higher to an ignition system it takes a rocket scientist to shut off the engine.
Anything, anything to keep from looking at the computer code for the line “If brake pressure = >25% then throttle maximum = <25%".
The objective is to get out of this as cheaply as possible.
I recall that one possible solution is to cut off fuel to the engine if the brake pedal is depressed, regardless of the position of the gas pedal.
BTW, RF, I thought your opening quote was attributable to Oklahoman Will Rogers?
I drive an IS 350. It is completely beyond me how a floor mat, by itself, could exert sufficient pressure on the gas pedal to cause massive acceleration. The pedal has resistance, and I can’t believe that the weight of such a small part of the floor mat in my car could cause the sort of terrifying acceleration you read about in this case. I’m tempted to go out into the parking lot and see if the mat could even push down the pedal hard enough to rev the engine beyond idle…
Safety is the number one priority for NHTSA
There’s a great deal of evidence against that assertion.
jmo :
I think we should embrace the herd thinning ability of this new floormat technology.
agreed. if you met your fate because of a floormat, then you probably should have gone out long ago.
I’d love to rail on Toyota for making boring, appliance like cars but this safety recall is serious and I’d like to see how they handle it.
My cousin had a late 90’s Toyota Tacoma, and lives in Wisconsin. Rust belt central. And like many Tacoma’s, he had the frame rail rust issue and didn’t even know about it. He was at a dealer to buy (of all things) new floor mats, and the dealer inspected the truck since it was in because of the TSB on the frame.
Two days later a representative from Toyota called him and asked if he was interested in a new Tacoma, with an additional $10000 on the hood in addition to any other incentives to get his old truck off the road.
His truck was 12 years old and had just under 200K miles on it.
THAT is what I call standing behind your products.
Oh… he took the deal, and got a new one for less than $10K.
Fly-by-wire in a car would be absolute nonsense.
False. A good drive-by-wire system will outperform a mechanical system any day.
True, the path from mechanical systems to drive-by-wire is not an easy one. For one thing, the NHTSA stands in the way. But look at, for example, the yoke from SKF that GM used in its Hy-wire concept car. That would be a great way to drive.
We are wedded to steering wheels and foot pedals by history only. Functionally, they are now a joke. They don’t work well. As anyone who has tried to steer or brake a car without power can tell you.
For those of you stating that a floor mat doesn’t have enough weight or whatnot to push down a pedal; that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about a foot pushing down the pedal, then the mat preventing it from returning back to the original position. This is quite feasible; I’ve had it happen to me personally (but, since I drive stick, it was a complete non-event that I corrected by clutching in, reaching down and pulling up the mat.)
So, here’s how it works, one of two ways:
1. Mat keeps pedal from returning to original position, person panics and doesn’t realize it’s the mat doing it, and they make an effort to stop the car in other ways (which may or may not be successful.)
2. Mat keeps pedal from returning to original position, person panics and tries to jam on the brake, but hits the gas pedal again by accident, thinks the brakes “aren’t working”, and you know what happens from there (see Audi 5000 et al.)
What shouldn’t be in dispute is that the floor mat can keep the pedal from returning; it happens, it’s happened to me personally, and it’s the catalyst for what happens after.
As to what happens after: that you can debate like crazy.
Ralph SS :
November 5th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
So, it would appear that NHTSA’s job is simple: get those .005% drivers off the road and stop bothering Toyota.
—
Exactly. Instead of spending millions investigating issues that only happen to the most stupid 0.005%, why not use that resource to figure out things that impact 90% of drivers?
For example, a lot of headlights (mostly trucks) are positioned too high, which negatively impact the safety of the car in front of it. Why not make a rule to limit that height?
I’m probably missing something here, but my impression from reading the various reports and the Fed. agency’s comments, is that the floor mat apparently has nothing to do with the problem. It resides elsewhere in some as yet unknown place. Seems to me that this is potentially as serious a safety defect as the one that plagued the Corvair many years ago. Perhaps the names Toyota and Lexus are sacrosanct. Imagine what we’d hear if you substituted the names Volkswagon and Audi!
Safety is the number one priority for NHTSA…
Then why will most any mechanic tell you that many GM models are plagued with brake lines that rot out causing complete loss of braking control? Seems that this would be a serious defect, no?
210delray:
VW/Audi models were the exceptions, with old-style large pedals bottom-hinged at the floor.
Not a design unique to VW — lots of older American cars, including must 70’s GM vehicles, worked that way. What is wrong with that design? It prevents the pedal from being entrapped by a mat, and a foot can’t get stuck underneath a higher pedal.
In a Volkswagen Phaeton, applying the brake pedal electronically limits the engine to 2000 RPM.
Therefore a stuck accelerator would not allow a car to run away. I believe that this came out of the trouble that Audi had in the past.
VW also secures the floor mats with posts.
I’m still rather surprised that there has been little or no mention of the possibility that drivers think they are applying full pressure to the brake, when in fact they have their foot on the accelerator.
You’d still have trouble convincing me that this wasn’t the cause of the U.S. Audi 5000’s “unintended acceleration” issues of the 1980s.
Daanii2 : False. A good drive-by-wire system will outperform a mechanical system any day.
True, the path from mechanical systems to drive-by-wire is not an easy one. For one thing, the NHTSA stands in the way. But look at, for example, the yoke from SKF that GM used in its Hy-wire concept car. That would be a great way to drive.
We are wedded to steering wheels and foot pedals by history only. Functionally, they are now a joke. They don’t work well. As anyone who has tried to steer or brake a car without power can tell you.
Yeah, I’m sure the yolk would give me great feedback for what my tires are doing when I’m driving at the limits. I’ll believe it when someone is winning races with them.
Sure, it’s harder to turn the steering wheel at very low speeds and you have to push harder on the brakes when the engine is off, but it’s still not hard to drive. Many of us even drove Chevettes in high school which had neither power steering nor power brakes. How well does the drive-by-wire system work if it loses power?
Toyota produced and honorably sold the Toyota RAV4-EV, the only NiMH plug-in car ever sold to the public by oil-auto companies.
But Toyota should have stuck to reliable all-electric EVs.
Fly-by-wire means that your accelerator pedal doesn’t have a mechanical linkage to the carb, like old-time cars; instead, it communicates by electronic signal, generated by the “pedal” switch and interpreted by the receiving program (presumably on the fuel-injection system). These FBW systems can be VERY complicated; and there is NO reason to move to them from mechanical linkages. They use it on unstable aircraft (where the aerodynamic constant is behind the center of gravity) because mechanical linkages are too slow; but they build it doubly-doubly redundant, with robust systems that “can’t” fail.
THERE IS NO REASON TO USE THIS ON CARS, and it provides one extremely delicate new way for cars to fail. In the many lines of real-time code, there may be an obscure bug, that only surfaces once every 10,000 cars or so, depending on some other signal from some other system, some condition that only arises very rarely. I DON’T SAY THAT’S THE PROBLEM, but it’s one problem that doesn’t exist with mechanical linkages, and there was no reason to move to FBW with reliable mechanical systems already proven and safe.
The other thing is getting rid of “key less ignition”; I can’t believe they expect you seriously to hold your finger on a button for 3 seconds to stop the thing, if it’s going into runaway mode. Keys are there for a reason! Simple switches are reliable!
Floor mats are always a problem, if you’re a goof; but unlikely to explain all these issues. I’ve had problems with the floor mats curling, but not just on Toyotas! So that’s not the issue, and Toyota should drop that excuse.