More than 1,000 Toyota and Lexus owners have reported since 2001 that their vehicles suddenly accelerated on their own, in many cases slamming into trees, parked cars and brick walls, among other obstacles, a Times review of federal records has found.
The crashes resulted in at least 19 deaths and scores of injuries over the last decade, records show. Federal regulators say that is far more than any other automaker has experienced.
Owner complaints helped trigger at least eight investigations into sudden acceleration in Toyota and Lexus vehicles by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the last seven years. Toyota Motor Corp. recalled fewer than 85,000 vehicles in response to two of those probes, and the federal agency closed six other cases without finding a defect.
Another reason I will never own another Toyota. They have problems, and either pretend they don’t exist or blame the customer. (My 2000 Corolla had an engine flaw that caused the engine oil to sludge up. I’ve talked to many people hwo had the same problem, and visited web groups devoted to that problem, yet Toyota denied there was a problem, and quietly re-engineered the engine in 2002. Resulting in THIS problem).
nope, no more Toy’s for me.
Jim Elliott
Florida
hwo = who. 🙄 Sometimes I can’t type. “and” and “who” seem to be the most common offenders.
Sorry to hear this. We have had very good luck with Toyota over the years.
Sudden unexplained acceleration incidents often trace back to driver error. Audi was almost driven out of business in the United States 20 or so years ago by reports that on backing out of a garage or parking space, the car would surge forward and go through back walls or into other cars. Sixty Minutes did a big “expose” of the supposed problem. The predominant view of those who studied the incidents was that people were either engaging the wrong gear and/or mistakenly depressing the accelerator when startled by the unespected forward motion of the vehicle. The interlocks that we all now experience that require us to have our feet squarely planted on the brake before we can engage the Reverse gear is a result of that spate of reports. I don’t know whether these Toyota reports are possibly attributable to the same kind of driver error, but I am, as a result of the Audi panic, a little suspicious of unexplained acceleration incidents. If someone engages the accelerator, thinking that they have hit the brake, the first reaction often is to press harder. When a vehicle is in motion, that can cause catastrophic loss of control.