Last September, Toyota and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a recall of millions of Lexus and Toyota vehicles that have the potential to accelerate suddenly and unintentionally. After nearly two years of denying reports of unintended acceleration problems, Toyota finally issued a recall when California Highway Patrol Officer Mark Saylor and his family died in a crash while driving a Lexus ES 350. As tragic as that accident was, it helped bring Toyota’s unintended acceleration problem to light and prompted the company to serious and definitive action.

Inaba, who serves as the chairman of Toyota Motor Sales USA and president of Toyota Motor North America, said that his company is now working to restore quality and safety in its vehicles.

“During 2009, our commitment to quality and safety — the two most important attributes of Toyota — were severely questioned, and we learned some lessons the hard way,” Inaba said.

“These issues generated plenty of debate and unfortunately, some miscommunication,” he said. “That was our own fault.”

Inaba’s words had the same apologetic ring to them as those spoken by Akio Toyoda, Toyota’s President and grandson of the company’s founder, when he spoke at a press conference in Tokyo just after the Saylor crash last August.

“Four precious lives have been lost. I offer my deepest condolences,” Mr. Toyoda said. “Customers bought our cars because they thought they were the safest. But now we have given them cause for grave concern. I can’t begin to express my remorse.”

“Toyota has become too big and distant from its customers,” he added.

Weeks after the big apology, Inada said that Toyota learned from its mistakes and is confident that it is now “doing the right thing for our customers.”

Toyota’s desire to recover its reputation for quality and safety led to its decision to install a brake override system in all Toyota and Lexus vehicles by 2011. This system, which likely could have prevented the fatal acceleration incidents, is standard in most German vehicles and in Chryslers. Toyota is already installing the new brake override system in Toyota Camry and Lexus ES 350 models.

SOURCE: Personal Injury Attorneys › Toyota says it mishandled unintended acceleration problem

Toyota’s latest recall in China comes just months after it announced its largest ever recall in that country. On August 24, 2009, Toyota recalled some 688,000 vehicles for faulty electric window systems. Less than one month later, Toyota announced its plans to recall 3.8 million vehicles in the United States because of their potential to accelerate unintentionally and speed out of control. The recall was later expanded to encompass 4.3 million vehicles, which is one of the largest safety recalls of all time, anywhere.

The recalls have landed Toyota in a public relations crisis at a time when the company is already financially distressed. Years of denying the unintended acceleration problem culminated when California Highway Patrol officer Mark Saylor and his family were killed when their rented ES 350 sped out of control on a San Diego highway. That incident, which claimed the lives of four people, prompted Toyota’s president Akio Toyoda to issue a dramatic public apology.

Just three months after assuming office as the company’s leader last summer, Toyoda said the company, which his grandfather founded in 1937, had betrayed the tradition of quality that helped it become the world’s largest automaker.

Now, Toyoda said, his company is barely able to navigate the worst economic downturn since its founding – a shameful state of affairs that put Toyota a step away from “capitulation to irrelevance or death” and left it, in his dramatic words, “grasping for salvation.”

SOURCE: Personal Injury Attorneys › Toyota announces another vehicle recall in China

Since the recall was first announced, Toyota has focused on floor mats as the likely culprit. In my Tacoma, the floor mat is secured in the back by two pivoting hooks. You turn the hooks to align with the holes in the mat  and then place the mat over the hooks, adjusting it as necessary. I only remove the floor mat when I clean the vehicle thoroughly, about every other month. I remember I forgot to secure the floor mat once, but I didn’t have any problems with it sliding forward and interfering with the gas and brake pedals.

Curious about my truck’s potential to accelerate unexpectedly, I unfastened the driver’s side mat while the truck was parked and slid it forward to see how it could interfere with the accelerator pedal. I couldn’t visualize this problem occurring in my particular vehicle. I don’t see how the standard floor mat in my truck could jam the gas pedal in an open position, either by catching a part of it or coming to rest on top of it. It’s easier to imagine the problem with a heavier mat, like an optional all-weather floor mat or some rubber that wasn’t designed for the Tacoma specifically.

Still, though, it’s hard to picture the floor mat being responsible for causing some vehicles to speed and crash so violently. I know times are tough for Toyota, but let’s hope the company is 100% certain that floor mats caused all of the unintended acceleration incidents and that fixing the floor mats will prevent sudden acceleration accidents from happening again.

Some Toyota drivers, after all, have reported unintended acceleration events in cars without driver’s side floor mats, and others question why the problem ceases after turning the engine off without repositioning the mat. Whatever the problem, the consequences have been tragic when drivers weren’t able to regain control of the vehicle.

Smart pedal technology seems like it would be a panacea for whatever is causing the unintended acceleration problem, be it floor mats in one model or software problems in another. A smart pedal would disengage the accelerator if it were pressed concurrently with the brakes.

It’s also standard technology in most German vehicles and Chryslers. But the thought of retrofitting 3.8 million vehicles with it could have Toyota scrambling for a less expensive fix.

In the recall announcement, Toyota says that it is “currently developing a campaign remedy and will notify you when it is ready.”

Read the Toyota recall letter.

Other sources: Consumer Affairs

SOURCE: Personal Injury Attorneys › Toyota mails recall announcements, but no fix yet

Toyota and Lexus owners have lodged more than 2,000 complaints of sudden and unintended acceleration against Toyota, according to the lawsuit. Toyota’s unintended acceleration problem has caused numerous accidents, resulting in 16 deaths and 243 injuries, the suit alleges.

The plaintiffs, Seong Bae Choi and Chris Chan Park of Los Angeles, filed their lawsuit as a class action, seeking to represent the owners of all Toyota and Lexus models affected by the unintended acceleration problem and included in Toyota’s latest recall.

According to the lawsuit, Toyota “failed to incorporate failsafe measures” that allow drivers to maintain control of the vehicles in an unintended acceleration situation. The plaintiffs allege that the acceleration problem is the result of faulty electronics.

In the affected cars, acceleration is regulated by an electronic throttle control system called the ETCS-i.

The plaintiffs also claim that Toyota could have implemented smart pedal technology that would “automatically reduce the engine to idle when the brakes are being applied while the throttle is an open position.” Such technology is standard in almost all German-made cars and Chryslers.

The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration hasn’t adopted a very clear stance on the issue. The agency says that it hasn’t found sufficient evidence of electronic defects in the cars it has analyzed, but that it has found evidence that floor mats could jam the accelerator pedals. Yet when it denied a request to further investigate Lexus ES models, the agency said that doing so did not “constitute a finding by the NHTSA that a safety-related defect does not exist.”

SOURCE: Personal Injury Attorneys › California men file sudden acceleration lawsuit against Toyota

Since the NHTSA first announced the recall on September 29, there has been a lot of conflicting information and confusion about the cause and solution of unintended acceleration in the recalled vehicles.

Early media reports claimed that floor mats caused the problem because they could slide forward and jam the accelerator pedal. Later reports suggested that Toyota would not issue a floor mat recall but instead would implement a “smart pedal” solution that would allow the brakes to disengage the accelerator when both pedals were simultaneously used. Subsequent reports indicated that the massive recall – the largest ever for Toyota – would indeed focus on the floor mat design only.

According to the NHTSA, in a press release published earlier this week, Toyota “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.’”

The NHTSA said that it simply told consumers to remove the driver’s side floor mats in all affected vehicles as an “interim measure” to help prevent unintended acceleration from occurring.

“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,” the NHTSA said, adding that it continues to work with Toyota 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,” the NHTSA warned.

Owners of the recalled Toyota and Lexus models are being notified of the recall by first-class mail. Once a solution is developed, consumers will be told in a second mailing the procedure for getting their vehicles fixed.

SOURCE: Personal Injury Attorneys › Toyota issued misleading and inaccurate recall info, NHTSA says

Toyota, however, is reportedly considering implementing this technology as a solution to the acceleration problems in up to 3.8 million Toyota and Lexus vehicles. Toyota announced last month that it would soon issue a vehicle recall over concerns that the driver’s side floor mats can slide forward and jam the accelerator pedal in full open position.

Toyota’s recall announcement followed the highly publicized deaths of Mark Saylor and his family members, who were riding in a Lexus ES 350 that sped out of control last August. The incident ended in a fiery crash, claiming the lives of everyone onboard and prompting a dramatic public apology from Toyota Motor Corp.’s president Akio Toyoda, who said his company was “grasping for salvation.”

In a New York Times report, BMW spokesman Thomas Plucinsky said that the brake pedal has taken precedence over the gas pedal in all of its cars beginning with the 2005 models. Unintended acceleration shepherded the design of BMW’s smart pedal, which tells the car’s electronic circuitry to ignore the gas pedal when the brake pedal is pressed simultaneously.

Brian Lyons, a spokesman for Toyota, told the New York Times that the company was considering the implementation of smart pedals rather than a redesign of the floor mats as a solution to the unintended acceleration problem.

Audi, Volkswagen, and Chrysler are other car manufacturers that have standardized a similar safety feature in all vehicles.

A Honda spokesman told the New York Times that his company continues to “accept application of the accelerator and brake pedals as representing the driver’s intention.” It’s a position still held by General Motors, Ford, Acura, Nissan and Hyundai.

SOURCE: Personal Injury Attorneys › Toyota may use “smart pedal” to fix unintended accleration problem