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As part of a Toyota family, I'd really like to believe North American Toyota's latest iteration of the reason for the sudden, dangerous accelaration of some of their otherwise-impeccable vehicles. The present explanation is that wear in linkages to the fuel feed cause the problem, and that wear can be offset by installing a small metal bar on the gas pedals of the offending vehicles. That explanation smacks of the snake-oil-and-mirrors school of vehicle problem resolution.
Of course, it has now come out that sudden-acceleration accidents to many Toyota and Lexus models were noted as early as 2007 -- but that information was kept secret by North American Toyota. That sounds like something Ford or General Motors would do -- oh, wait, those American motoring icons did things like that in the past. Remember the Pinto, which tended to burst into flame so often that Saturday Night Live spoofed that it was not a vehicle at all, but rather a five-passenger stove. Remember the American pickup trucks which had gas tanks in a vulnerable spot right behind the driver's seat? Or, more recently, recall the Ford Explorers which tended to explore by rolling over, while Ford and Firestone argued over whether it was the vehicle or its tires which were at the root of the rollover problems.
But, we Toyota owners expected better from our company -- after all, in Japan corporate honor still means something, or at least it did. We had difficulty believing the first explanation for the runaway Toyotas, which was that loose or non-regulation floor mats were causing the problem. I can recall floor mats sneaking under gas pedals, but never on top of them, yet Toyota said that was what was happening.
Then, as more and more serious accidents were studied, it was found that some Toyota accident victims had removed their floor mats; in the case of one multi-fatality wreck, the floor mats were in the trunk.
But, not to worry -- now it is the wear on fuel feed linkages which is causing the problem, and a little metal bar on the gas pedal will fix it.
At least, that is what we are now being told, and millions of Toyota owners will soon be scheduled to have that little metal bar installed.
One problem, though -- it is often new or nearly-new Toyota vehicles which experience the dangerous sudden acceleration, resulting accidents, injuries and even deaths. There is little or no wear in the fuel feed systems of those vehicles, so it is not sensible for such nonexistent wear to be the cause of those accidents. Indeed, older model Toyotas do not even seem to have the problem at all, even though they would have the greatest amount of system wear.
My own guess, not being an automotive engineer but having driven more than a million miles in my lifetime, is that it is the electronics which are at fault; there is some glitch in the computer-controlled fuel delivery system which is causing the dangerous sudden acceleration.
But fixing that type of problem would be very expensive for Toyota.
Indeed, even diagnosing electronic or automotove-computer problems
seems to be more than this once-respected firm can handle. It is far easier to install little metal bars on Toyota gas pedals -- and then hope for the best.
And that is why I have lost my respect for Toyota. First, their North American operation failed to disclose the problem when discovered in 2007, putting their owners and drivers at unnecessary risk from lack of information. Then, they invented the loosefloor mat theory. Now, we have the "stick a metal bar on the gas pedal" approach. Meanwhile, the real root cause or causes remain undiscovered, probably because they are likely to be really expensive to fix. Shame on you, Toyota!
