At least if you drive a Toyota. Or a Lexus.
Toyota Canada has just sent out a press release, which I am parsing from canada.com, asking all owners of Toyotas made this century to remove the front driverside floor mat. The recall, the largest in Toyota's history, covers the following models: The recall will cover the Camry and Avalon sedans, the Prius hybrid, the Tacoma and Tundra pickup trucks and luxury Lexus models, the IS250 and the IS350 as well as the ES350.
Apparently the floormat gets loose and can cause the gas pedal to pedal towards the metal, a problem that has resulted in multiple crashes and five deaths in the USA.
This is serious and deadly stuff. In August of this year an off-duty California state trooper and three members of his family were killed in a crash of a 2009 Lexus ES350 in the San Diego area. Before the crash, a passenger in the car had called 911 and told dispatchers that the accelerator was stuck and the car had reached 120 miles per hour which is close to 200 km per hour.
For more details go to the Toyota website www.toyota.com.
You may also call Toyota at 1-800-331-4331 or Lexus at 1-800-255-3987.
WFDS
So the car got up to 200kmh and crashed...driven by an off duty trooper...who would have had some form of professional driver training...and he never thought to simply turn off the ignition, or perhaps slip it into neutral and let the engine self destruct?
ReplyDeleteMy condolences to all those involved, but perhaps humans have just grown too stupid to drive (and do alot of other things).
Whilst this can be a hazard then so can any after market floor mat. As for the off duty patrolman whilst I feel for his family shurly he knew where neutral was on the shifter, where the key to turn the engine off was and I trust that his brakes were in working condition. If his passenger had time to call 911 then he should have had time to use these other options. Something is off with this story!
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