Edmunds dealer partner, Bayway Leasing, is now offering transparent lease deals via these forums. Click here to see the latest vehicles!
Afraid Camry Owner - Toyota found to keep tight lid on potential safety
This discussion has been closed.
Popular New Cars
Popular Used Sedans
Popular Used SUVs
Popular Used Pickup Trucks
Popular Used Hatchbacks
Popular Used Minivans
Popular Used Coupes
Popular Used Wagons
Comments
I prefer manual transmissions and it as occurred to me that a good old-fashioned clutch pedal pretty much cancels out any accelerator problem without adding modifications.....
I'm sure this thought has probably occurred with others....
With a manual a person could simply step on the clutch if the gas pedel stuck but would they think to do that? Just like simply shutting off the ignition.
It will be interested to see if Toyota follows through as the company they claim to be: Issue a buyback for ALL effected vehicles and offer either a refund or comparable; otherwise, it will go to prove Toyota really is no different than Ford, GM, Honda, or Nissan...including their perceived level of quality.
An unfortunate lesson learned...Shame on Toyota!
Meanwhile we can continue talking about safety issues as they relate specifically to the Camry here.
that's smart. people usually overreact to good news and bad news.
it depends on what you define as a lemon.
you know that because?
and risks come with life and with asset ownership. the only way not to take risks is not to own anything and not to live.
do this math: of those millions of vehicles subject to the recall, how many of them have reported "sudden acceleration"? at that kind of odds, you can win many lotteries easily.
Next the cover up and lack of action for the floor mat problems. They knew of the problem but waited months until sending notices to Camry owners. The FIX still hasn't been implemented.
This is the final straw for me - This runaway issue is potentially too dangerous for me and I don't feel like waiting months for Toyota's solution.
TOYOTA - FORGET ABOUT JD POWER RATINGS ! STOP DRAGGING YOUR FEET AND DO THE RIGHT THING. Correct ASAP - SOONER NOT LATER. BTW - I DON'T really think Toyota is "voluntarily" recalling these vehicles! Do you?
then dump your Toyota. that's where you can really hit back at them.
Point is Toyota built itself on its so called Quality which is why I bought my current Camry. Now for all of this to unfold says alot about Toyota. They did everything possible to avoid this and cover it up until the news finally broke.
The sad thing is, even with the loss of all the people from associated accidents, Toyota would had continued to deny there was a problem to save their image.
Sorry, but all I can say is SHAME ON TOYOTA! You let not only me down, but all the Toyota owners who bought into believing Toyota quality was 2nd to none. Instead of trying to become the biggest automaker, they should have focused on being the best.
Maybe they need to go back to the drawing board and review the commercials they tried to get the consumer to buy into.
Toyota Welcome Home TV Commercial
or maybe they need to reintroduce the 1990 Toyota Camry
I'm very sure that will be temporary. Unfortunately after Toyota announces "OK - All is well", consumers will still be gun-shy.
As for your other point - still not being able to disable the Camry or other vehicle - I'm done with that argument - you either believe the car has some sort of propensity to be a "Christine-like" killing machine or a reasonable vehicle that has unfortunately had accelerator hick-ups that need to be addressed and nothing more. Pick your poison and move on.
And LOCK the stearing wheel..??
Yes.
"..eliminate the hesitation.."
No.
The 1-2 second downshift delay/hesitation is still in there, just cloaked to virtual invisibility with the latest firmware "patch".
Please don't include me in your tirades. This is life; stuff happens; mechanical stuff breaks; you fix it. Nothing is perfect. Anyway, that's my experience during 50 years of driving a wide variety of makes and models.
John
Exactly, I'd have to look it up to really know. But absent really knowing, for sure, wouldn't most of us hesitate using the key to switch off the engine..??
And what about the PB start/stop, when does that lock the stearing wheel..?
5 empty chambers or 2 million, your "number" might be next up.
No, I do not find that acceptable from an automaker to proclaims itself to be different and above the rest. Your reason you would find with any other automaker, not Toyota. Unless there image has been truly fabricated.
Toyota Quality - Who Could Ask for Anything More!"
Oh my, how embarrassing is that??????????????
So, just throw it in neutral!
That will give you an advantage in this game of russian(toyota) roulette.
I (ponderpoint) never said;
"You let not only me down, but all the Toyota owners who bought into believing Toyota quality was 2nd to none."
Toyota needs to go on TV with a mea culpa, an apology and say they are doing everything they can to fix the problem as soon as possible.
My initial complaint about the 2010 I bought in October was the hesitation when I firdt stepped on the accelerator. I don't know if this is in any way related to what's going on right now.
that's very unfortunate, for the families and for Toyota.
"Point is Toyota built itself on its so called Quality "
and they delivered on that - quality is a statistical concept. While Toyota's quality continues to lead the pack, Toyota never marketed it to say that their vehicles are free of defect, or that everyone of their vehicles are free of defect.
"which is why I bought my current Camry. "
what can I tell you? just because some buyers have the wrong perception of what was communicated to them doesn't mean those buyers have earned the right to blame the communicator.
At some point, people have to be responsible for their own mistakes.
where is the logic here?
however it also seems likely that some "unintended accel" accidents/incidents could have occurred with manual transmission Camrys - but maybe not as severe? Maybe zero fatalities have occurred with manual-transmissions toyotas/camrys so far? Maybe all the very severe incidents that caused casualties were with automatic-transmission cars? I suppose this data is all there in the NHTSA database/website in case we really want to peruse it...
I always view those unintended acceleration with doubts, especially when the supposedly "root cause" is a sticky accelerator.
a sucky accelerator may have caused "unintended acceleration, but a sticky accelerator?
and the brakes would have to fail at the same time too.
.....
don't let him wait for a fix from Toyota. Get him another vehicle ASAP.
you monetary lose from a bad car is a few hundred dollars or maybe a couple grand. your emotional lose from a bad car injuring your son is priceless.
Oh sure - I don't disagree with that at all. To me the clutch pedal just gives another avenue of safety, not a "cure all".
You have to admit - a big pedal on the floor that instantly disconnects the engine from the drivetrain (essentially) is a pretty powerful tool for safety.
a driver who knows how to drive a car is the most powerful tool for safety.
unfortunately, s/he is in short supply.
Yes. Quite simply, yes. You are far to logical to be here - get out before somebody performs "rocket surgery" on your logic reasoning and common sense!!!
Once again:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoIIT0WJS4s
Drive safely and enjoy your Toyota
Snark away.... Last post....
Man, this is getting messy.
“The safety of our customers and employees is our utmost priority, and in that regard, the suspension should continue until the issues have been resolved,” the National Auto Auction Association said in a statement released to the media.
ADESA and Manheim together control well over half of the wholesale auction industry in the United States.
The decision to pull recalled Toyotas from the auctions follows the footsteps of many major rental car agencies, which are not renting recalled Toyotas until a fix is made. Hertz, Enterprise (which runs Alamo and National), Avis Budget and Dollar Thrifty have all decided to stop renting Toyotas until a fix is made.
Used car retailer CarMax has also decided to temporarily halt selling all new and used Toyotas that would be covered under the recall.
corner-case. race condition. rare occurrence.
but overall it's guaranteed to happen way-too-often when there are so many millions of susceptible vehicles on the roads.
i have made much of my career by of hunting & eliminating problems like this for communications embedded-systems products.
chetj, that is precisely part of the problem - it appears that in some cases the car apparently will NOT shift into neutral. in some cases it will shift into neutral. in this area i disagree with ponderpoint's analysis, but i sure agree with regard to manual-transmission/clutch.
one reason I am convinced that the vehicles sometimes will not shift into neutral is the Lexus-driving-cop-and-family on his 911 call saying something closely resembling "It won't shift into neutral, and the ignition will not turn off". that tape is probably on youtube/whatever/abc-news. maybe i am not remembering/quoting what the cop said just before he and his family died in their non-Camry - please correct me if so.
Not sure if there are any 911-audio-tapes of Camry drivers in the similar predicament.
I was a flag waving, card carring member of the I LOVE MY TOYOTA CLUB until my 1996 Camry, one day in 08, it just accelerated on its own. I was at a stop light with my foot on the brake ( thank God) and the engine just started to run faster and faster and it was pulling away. It was like someone just stepped on the gas and pinned the peddle to the floor. There was nothing I could do. I had both feet pressing on the brake peddle as hard as I could. I was literally standing on it and my butt was off the front seat trying to control this car. My wheels were smoking, my brakes were smoking, it was a nightmare. I slammed it in into neutral then into park and shut the car off. Waited a while and started the car again leaving it in park. It seemed fine. no revving, not sense that it was accelerating on its own. I was about a mile from my house and wanted to get it into the drive way and off the road. I put it into park and let it roll a bit on its own. Seemed ok. So I put my foot lightly on the gas, still ok. About a half a mile of driving very gingerly- its starts to take off again, exact same thing and I was hardly touching the gas.
If my 69 year old mother was driving she never would have been able to handle or control that car the way it was behaving.
So I called Toyota- they said they never heard of that before- but funny how my mechanic did. He thought he fixed it once- then on the way home from the mechincs it took off again. Then he got in it and it took off on him. After he began doing some research and knowing a few long time mechanics for toyota- it was acknowledge that this was a problem they had seen before. about $1000 later it seemed fixed. I drove it for a month to make sure- but I wasn't comfortable driving it anymore even though i LOVED THAT CAR and took great care of it- I sold it. I now drive a Honda Accord. Not nearly as smooth a ride as my Camry, but so far it hasn't launched me down the street.
That is only beginning to be known; the TOYOTA RECALLS HAVE ONLY BEGUN!
Mitchell Walorski, head of the supplier’s investor relations department, told Automotive News that CTS is assisting Toyota, “but this is their recall. Toyota is heavily involved in all stages of testing and production. That is why their quality is so high.”
“The newly designed pedal is now tested, and parts are beginning to ship to some Toyota factories,” CTS said in a statement released to the media. Toyota says it has not decided if it will ship the new pedals to dealers to have them installed in unsold inventory and customer cars or if service departments will modify the existing design.
Elkhart, Indiana-based CTS began producing the pedals last year at its Mississauga, Ontario, assembly plant when Denso was unable to supply enough for Toyota.
CTS isn’t taking the blame for crashes involving Toyota vehicles, however.
“We are aware of fewer than a dozen instances where this condition has occurred, and in no instance did the accelerator actually become stuck in a partially depressed condition,” the company said in a statement.
CTS builds pedals for a number of automakers, each based on a different design. The company says that the Ford pedals it builds in China for that market’s Transit Classic large truck is of a different design.
Toyota has separately recalled many of its models over floor mats which the automaker says can become lodged against the gas pedal or which prevent the brake pedal from operating.
The automaker redesigned the part and by that June every 2004 model year Sienna off the assembly line came with the new panel. Toyota did not notify tens of thousands of people who had already bought vans with the old panel, however.
It wasn't until U.S. safety officials opened an investigation last year that Toyota acknowledged in a letter to regulators that the part could come loose and "lead to unwanted or sudden acceleration."
In January, nearly six years after discovering the potential hazard, the automaker recalled 26,501 vans made with the old panel.
a coworker of mine sued chrysler for not recalling his early-year minivan after they knew-of-dangerous-issue redesigned the e-brake-cable for future years. the defect resulted in his rear brakes locking up in a snowstorm, and his wife and 2 daughters died.
he sued Chrysler and "won" about $10M. This was in the late 1990s.
seems to me that Toyota is going to be receiving to a BUNCH of lawsuits like that.
In 1994, NHTSA slapped Toyota with a $250,000 fine, at the time the agency's second-largest, for providing misleading information about a fuel leak in Land Cruisers and waiting two years to undertake a recall to fix the problem. Toyota acknowledged that it failed to conduct a timely recall but denied withholding information from the agency.
A decade later, Toyota recalled about 330,000 vehicles in Japan after a 2004 crash there -- caused by a broken steering linkage -- seriously injured five people. The vehicle in the accident, a Hilux Surf, was sold in the U.S. as the 4Runner. Other truck models sold here, including the Toyota 4x4 and T100 pickups, also used the same linkage, a steering relay rod.
Despite that, the company told NHTSA in an October 2004 letter that it would not conduct a U.S. recall because it had not received information here indicating a problem with the part.
Documents entered in four lawsuits filed in Los Angeles this year, however, show that Toyota had received numerous consumer complaints dating from 2000 and had replaced dozens of the parts under warranty. The documents also show that Japanese police, in an investigation of the defect, said that Toyota employees had known about the problem since 1992 and should have initiated a recall immediately.
In September 2005, Toyota recalled nearly 1 million vehicles in the U.S. to replace the part, its second-largest campaign.
Toyota delays have deadly consequences. Zackary Audulewicz of Ila, Georgia paid the price for Toyota's delays. The 20-year-old was driving a Toyota 4x4 in August 2003 when the pickup lost control after a "pop" and a "spark".
karen@edmunds.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03m7fmnhO0I
At no time can you hear anyone indicate the car would not shift into neutral. In fact from the San Diego police report the driver who had the mat problem only a few days before, in the same car, was able to shift into neutral then move the mats away from the gas pedal.
Here is a link to the San Diego county sheriffs police report:
http://autos.aol.com/gallery/saylor-crash-report#
If you go to page 28 the report will tell you what gear the car may have been in when the crash happened.
Yes, not many of those around, just as it should be.
The sticking gas pedal is REAL.
None of that means, conclusively, that there isn't yet another causative factor waiting in the weeds to be discovered.
I'm personally casting my vote for a "bug" in the firmware.
But again, even if "this" problem isn't discoverable in the short term an interim solution, WOT failsafe solution, will be quite easy to implement.