Toyota with stuck gas pedal

[oldjones]

Everyone should have taken performance driving class. This is not to advocate more 'street racing' but to let drivers know (1) automatically perform emergency maneuvers w/o thinking about it, (2) know their limits, and (3) if they used their car for the training then know the limits of their vehicles.

When the Finns required everyone to pass Skid School before they got a licence, their accident and death rates went up. Same sort of perverse increase shows up everywhere a new technique or device—like bettter football helmets or pads—fools people into thinking their safety's being taken care of by something else. Which accounts for all the ditched SUVs after the year's first storm: people who think a truck will make them safe. The safest drivers are the ones who are constrantly thinking how dangerous it all is.

Something about the most common equipment failure being the nut behind the wheel.

 

[toughb]

Actually, the Americans getting all pissy with Toyota could be good for Canada. Canada has been keeping its mouth shut in all of this figuring that the Americans can handle it (and they can - they love this sort of shit).

Let the Americans and Toyota get in a war and Toyota will build new plants here, or shift production here.

The US can keep GM and Chrysler since GM still builds shit cars and Chrysler will end up broke sooner or later.

***

Sounds good to me.

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[toughb]

Duh, excuse me, but, I think it has been proven Toyota bulids shit cars. GM and Chrysler use to build shit cars. The worst vehicle I ever owned was a Toyota. I had to sue them, but no one would believe they were wrong. Screw you Toyota, your greed to get to be the top at any price is disgusting. It is good to see and I hope you suffer GM's arrogance.

***

Just a suggestion. Do your homework.

Toyota builds the least complained about car in North America.

So they had a glitch. Let's talk about all the problems GM and Chrysler. Toyota gave us a quality alternative.

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[oldjones]

Actually, the Americans getting all pissy with Toyota could be good for Canada. Canada has been keeping its mouth shut in all of this figuring that the Americans can handle it (and they can - they love this sort of shit).

Let the Americans and Toyota get in a war and Toyota will build new plants here, or shift production here.

The US can keep GM and Chrysler since GM still builds shit cars and Chrysler will end up broke sooner or later.

Actually Toyotas are already built onshore in the US, largely by un-unionized workers FWIW. Although they did share a unionized plant w/ GM where they got better productivity, they shut their side down.

So far all that I've read points to design/quality control flaws in software rather than mechanical/quality control issues during assembly.

 

[Cycleguy007]

The Cambridge plant builds the Corolla, Matrix and Lexus RX 350 for North America. It is the first plant outside of Japan to produce Lexus vehicles.

The Woodstock plant, which opened in 2008, builds the RAV4.

Between the Cambridge and Woodstock plants, they employ about 5,000 non-union workers.

 

[james t kirk]

The Cambridge plant builds the Corolla, Matrix and Lexus RX 350 for North America. It is the first plant outside of Japan to produce Lexus vehicles.

The Woodstock plant, which opened in 2008, builds the RAV4.

Between the Cambridge and Woodstock plants, they employ about 5,000 non-union workers.

And I'd love to see this number double to 10 thousand.

 

[CRX8]

I've always driven manual transmission so I don't know much about how automatics work. If you have a runaway car can you still pop it in neutral? Or must the car be at a complete stop? I was told that there must be brake pressure, I assumed it meant the car must be at a complete stop.

 

[zardoz]

CRX8 where have you been? your timing on this discussion is right on

 

[Mencken]

I don't know that the brakes would have the ability to overcome the momentum already created by the engine. Not only would they have to stop the car, they'd be fighting the engine too (if you have done a brake burn you'd know what I mean).

Easiest thing to do is drop it into first or low, let the engine over rev and either blow, or slow you down to half speed.
Throw it into neutral and let it blow, then apply the brakes and once in control turn off the key.
Turn off the key.

We're talking Toyotas here....not muscle cars. Unless the brakes are faulty you can easily brake a car at full throttle. Not sure if it is easy to move it into neutral or not...but these cars also have keys (as far as I know) so they could be shut off. As previous posters have said...too many instances of suicide attempts, confused seniors, and just plain stupid people to know if there really is a real problem with "sudden acceleration".

 

[Hard Idle]

I absolutely don't believe for one second that the car continued to accelerate in Neutral. The throttle system and the transmission are two separate things, disengaging the transmission bypasses a stuck throttle. Either the people are lying on the advise of a lawyer to pad the shock value of a future claim, or they simply didn't know what the hell they were doing (probably thanks in some part to fiddling around with their phones, navigation toys or some other electronic crap)

Toyota's biggest mistake was not understanding the culture where they're doing business. They should simply have claimed that all cases of unintended aceleration were poltergeists. Doing business in a place were so many people are given to believing in spirits and possesions, i bet they could have passed that off on a large percentage of the public.

 

[Ceiling Cat]

Its all about .................................

If you were going to sue ( screw ) a large company, what better company than...........................

 

[Ceiling Cat]

Toyota!