Toyota built its credibility inch by painful inch over the years with an uncompromising reputation for absolute safety and dependability. Toyota will still have you believe this; but in the whole grisly affair of the vehicle recalls that have plagued Toyota this past year, news has come out that the company knew about a very serious safety issue way back in 2007. The company just did not do anything about it until it was forced to; people have been dropping like flies because the Toyota cars malfunctioned; the unofficial estimate puts it at a hundred car crashes. But the definitive evidence came only last August, in a crash in San Diego. An entire family of four in a Lexus died when their vehicle accelerated uncontrollably, rolled over several times and burst into flames. Now, Toyota has no choice but to acknowledge publicly, that there have been mistakes made.
How did all of this go so far? The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, back in 2007, received a few complaints from 2007 Lexus ES 350 customers that the gas pedal on their cars got stuck in the depressed position. The cars would accelerate uncontrollably. The government looked into it, and found that the gas petal got stuck on the floor mats in the car, and there were other models that were affected too. Toyota asked customers to take out the driver formats, to make sure that they did not interfere with the gas pedal. A family that did just that, died a day after Christmas anyway. Their Toyota Avalon accelerated uncontrollably, and fell into a pond. So Toyota has no choice now but to launch into the biggest vehicle recalls program in its history - nearly four million vehicles. They did try to make sure it did not come to this. Just a month before the accident, Toyota's Vice President claimed that there was nothing wrong with their cars except for a bad floor mat.
It does not seem as if the problem is a simple floor mat issue. Nothing seems to actually fix this. Toyota claims that the floor mat issue was a genuine one, but that the gas pedals were getting stuck now for an altogether different reason. They are issuing vehicle recalls for recent Corollas, RAV4's, Matrixes, Avalons, Camrys, Tundras, Sequoias, and Highlanders. Toyota says now, the people can take heart that this problem with the stuck gas pedal does not occur out of the blue. They feel that it has to do with how the gas pedals on these cars become easily worn out. So you should be able to notice that as the wearing out progresses, the gas pedal is slower and slower to return to idle. That should be your clue that trouble is afoot, literally.
So what will Toyota do with all the cars that are brought in with the vehicle recalls? They say that they plan to install a redesigned accelerator pedals on all of them. They're also putting in new software that will cut out the gas if you press the brakes when the vehicle was traveling at high speeds. And to know that they knew all about this problem in 2007.
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