Filed under: Trucks/Pickups, Government/Legal, Safety, Toyota
400 owners can be wrong: NHTSA closes Tacoma unintended acceleration investigation
As is usually the case when complaints of unintended acceleration are levied against a vehicle, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has concluded that no specific vehicular defects have been found in 2004-2008 Toyota Tacomas. The mid-sized truck had been under fire from over 400 owners who claimed their trucks had accelerated without them touching the gas resulting in 51 crashes and 12 injuries. According to Toyota, however, the truck features a drive-by-wire system and its computer records any event of a mismatch between the gas pedal and the engine's throttle. None of the trucks involved in accidents reported any such codes. The NHTSA has closed its investigation and believes that driver error is the most likely cause for the vast majority of complaints while a few could be attributed to loose floor mats.
While the fact that the Tacoma has received so many specific complaints is worrisome, we are not big believers in unintended acceleration and tend to agree that publicity of the issue may well have attracted more erroneous claims. Debris stuck under the brake or pedals that are just closer together than some drivers are used to remain possible explanations, but could hardly be considered defects.
[Source: The Detroit Free Press]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Red 2:41PM (9/03/2008)
Perhaps the computer in fact doesn't record a mismatch between the pedal and acceleration? Obviously, that wouldn't show on record. Wouldn't be the first time the company said the car did something it didn't do. I understand there were way more than 400 sold, but 400 owners experiencing the same thing doesn't seem like a coincidence. Once again, there's an issue with Toyota and the company manages to bury it. Just an observation. If you check Toyota's history, you'll see I'm not a conspiracy theorist. lol
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EXPJawa 3:34PM (9/03/2008)
You might surprised by how many things the computer is recording. Comparing throttle position to accelerator pedal position is fundamental for various forms of traction control or stability control, so you can bet your butt that those are on the list of what the computer looks at and logs. With that info, it's pretty easy to match them up to, say, engine RPM to tell what's going on...
Derek 6:13PM (9/03/2008)
The computer indeed is watching ALOT of stuff, but how are the diagnostics? The algorithms can be set very tight and alarm on everything, or very loose and miss many things.
For example, my g/f's Dad has an '04 Corolla (CA spec, even), which is supposed to be ULEV, so the diagnostics are supposed to detect even very small leaks in the fuel system (this is why leaving the gas cap loose can turn on the check engine light). Well, turns out that several inches of the perimeter of the gas tank was not welded at the factory and it was leaking gas out of there. Surprisingly, the diagnostics did not catch this, despite the fact that he found the leak because he noticed the gas level lower after leaving the car parked several days.
Sure, this has nothing to do with the throttle system, but if the diagnostic calibration to meet low emissions requirements was botched, who is to say that the throttle system diagnostics don't have a similar problem.
john 11:22PM (9/03/2008)
Proving once again Toyota products are rock reliable as ever.
knifetramp 2:49PM (9/03/2008)
This generally means the pedal arrangement could use some improvement. The EU has tight specs on pedal arrangement.. not sure about the US.
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Franz 3:30PM (9/03/2008)
The floor mat argument is plausible too. I used to own a Mitsubishi L200 that I'd take off-roading every now and then, and it had a set of all season rubber floor mats that used to jam between the gas pedal and the wheel well intrusion all the time when the mat got wet. It was never a big deal to me though... I'd just put the clutch in and flick the pedal back up with the tip of my foot. I never even thought about changing the mats. I believe that if you can't handle yourself in a (simple IMO) situation like that, you probably shouldn't be driving in the first place.
Randy 4:03PM (9/03/2008)
"Debris stuck under the brake or pedals that are just closer together than some drivers are used to remain possible explanations, but could hardly be considered defects."
So you mean to say that's the case 400 times? Or was it the pedals 400 times! Or was it driver error 400 times? Or maybe since it's only slightly larger than an Explorer we can blame it on Ford.
This is crazy! People drive their Explorers like A holes, blow some tires and it's Ford's fault, but Toyota has 400 people experience the same thing and they say "Well it's likely driver error os is probably the fault of a chicken McNugget being stuck under a floor mat. I mean come on guys!
You all know if this was an American company it would have been a recall, it would have been class action suits, it would have been all over the news! But, we only here about it here and not exploded across the news / media. Nice and contained!
I wonder why that is!
Hey, since everything else is owned by foreign companies (news, entertainment, electronics etc) is it possible that we outsource the NHTSA as well? Heck our President is obviously not working for us, why not the NHTSA too!
HONESTY PLEASE, THAT'S ALL I WANT
ajkl 5:18PM (9/03/2008)
So Randy, because you disagree with the outcome of an investigation, you assume that they are wrong and/or must be influenced by money. I'm more inclined to believe that a good percentage of the small numer of people (in comparison to the number of vehicles sold) that reported the issue are either stupid/bad drivers or people looking to get a quick buck from a settlement of some kind.
PJ 6:35PM (9/03/2008)
Randy, 400 cases really isn't a whole lot statistically. Toyota's probably sold at least a half-million copies of the current-gen Tacoma. Of those 400 NHTSA complaints, only 51 involved an actual incident.
My parents complained about "unintended acceleration" in their then-new Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme (to me, not to the NHTSA) several times. Each time, a cursory glance under the dash revealed that they'd let the floormat bunch up against the pedal.
Randy 7:47PM (9/03/2008)
I know what you guys are saying. I agree for the most part, but do you know how hard it is to get 3 people to agree on something let alone 400? I kinda have to think something is up!
bduddy 5:32PM (9/04/2008)
When the audience is all the people that own current Tacomas (probably hundreds of thousands), you could say "oggly boogly boo" and hundreds would agree. This is no surprise, especially given how the internet works these days, i.e. all the bunchy floormat people going online and saying "OMG! This happened to one other person out of 456,789! That must be it!!!!1"
theron 3:02PM (9/03/2008)
This issue seems to come up every few years. I remember the Audi case many years ago that really hurt them.
I'm a believer in the pedal arrangement argument. I've noticed that a lot of US vehicles, that never have a stick shift, have large gaps between the pedals. Whereas many import vehicles, which almost always have a stick shift option at least back home consequently have a very narrow gap between the pedals, even in the auto version. I can see how someone going from one to the other would hit the wrong pedal. And it's very easy to panic in that situation. Suddenly the world doesn't work the way it should and that's very disconcerting!
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Todd 3:13PM (9/03/2008)
If this isn't the FINAL proof I need to raise the requirements to get a driver's license ( a la Bob Bondurant Racing School ), I don't know what is.
50% of all drivers don't have the skills to operate a vehicle!!!!!!!
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Dean 3:17PM (9/03/2008)
"50% of all drivers don't have the skills to operate a vehicle"??!! You're being a little generous with your guess there aren't you Todd? I'd say it's more like 75%
Yar 3:23PM (9/03/2008)
I'd say only about 20% don't know how to handle the vehicle they drive properly. The current drivers test doesn't cover enough. It assumes that the same skill sets are required to drive a Honda Civic as a 1 ton Dually towing a 12,000lb load as a 1183 hp Ultimate Aero.
Then again, if I'm qualified to drive an Ultimate Aero, why should I still have to drive 65mph on the highway?
Kiiks 7:04PM (9/03/2008)
Around here, it's the Honda CR-V drivers that don't know what to do 75% of the time. Everybody else, 50%. I deliver pizzas to pay the bills which puts me on the road about 5 hours a day 5 times a week, so I would know. I've seen plenty of cases of "unintended acceleration" and "grabby brakes" but I'd bet my PS3 and my roommate's cat that the only faulty wiring is between the drivers' noggin and their right foot.
tankd0g 3:25PM (9/03/2008)
Japanese cars do seem to have smaller and closer spaced pedals, which is part of why I prefer them. I followed this from the beginning and the Tacoma had the same number of complaints as any pickup truck when the story first came to light despite what the original whack job thought he saw in the numbers. Then as if by magic the complaints quadrupled, a lot of them "rememberings" of something happening months or years before but not repeating since.
Personally I don't like the way DBW has felt in the cars I have driven with it, always with a slight hesitation as the computer presumably averages it's input readings to avoid spikes. Ironically I would avoid it because of this extra layer of safety.
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Gregg 3:26PM (9/03/2008)
Unintended acceleration investigations show that drivers who hit the accelerator but thought it was the brake cause this effect. Think about it. If you think you are braking and the car accelerates, your tendency is to push harder and harder. You have a godawful, bearings-lost experience--even if you don't crash--and cognitive dissonance and memory being what they are, only further your resolve that it was the vehicle (not you) at fault. Back when this issue almost killed off Audi, it was determined that their pedal placement could be improved, but it was still the driver hitting the wrong pedal.
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bakka 10:34AM (9/04/2008)
About 10 % of drivers do that. The performance driving schools deal with it all the time.
Hamud 3:43PM (9/03/2008)
Well, if it was in fact an error on the driver side, 400 errors looks a lot to me, something must be leading to these mistakes.
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