It was only a few months ago that Toyotas were plagued by reports of cars accelerating out of control. What happened?

Toyota's fix--rework the floor mats, trim accelerator pedal, and add a shim to prevent it from sticking--were all derided as no fix at all. The problem, the media repeatedly said, was a flaw somewhere in the car's electronic system, a ghost in the machine. At least two electrical engineering professors were breathlessly featured on TV has having discovered flaws in Toyota electronics.

Now, we hear nothing. No reports of incidents of unintended acceleration, nor that the problem was fixed.

Was the problem fixed? Did the media just lose interest?

 

Maybe the people who had trouble distinguishing between the gas and brake pedals were victims of natural selection.

 

Great answer Eric!

 

The first rule of modern day politicians...find someone to bash over the head...it makes you look good.
Congress and the President found a new set of whipping boys...Goldman Sachs and BP.

Never forget UA had nothing to do with the car, it was a smokescreen to destroy a successful non-union manufacturer and promote the domestic (owned) companies.

 

A lot of people seemed to have a problem until it came out the Toyota could read the computer in the car after the fact due to a couple of highly reported cases. It seemed that the BS owners went into hiding after that......

 

My, this is a skeptical group!

The steam seemed to be let out of the media hysteria after the California Prius driver was exposed as an obvious fraud. For sure, not all were fraudulent events. Some people confused gas and brake pedals; others misused floor mats. Beyond that, it's tough to see a real problem. Meanwhile, Toyota is out a lot of money.

And the media just dropped the issue . . . with no credible resolution.

 

Then how do you explain the death of the Saylor family...??

 

That's the one where the E350 loaner Lexus became a run away. This is while his Lexus IS 250 was being repaired.
This was the incident was the one of the dealer's workers put in a extra thick mat on top of the thick oem mat. The extra mat or both mats was supposed to have been the culprit that caused the run-away.

 

I don't remember hearing of any ECU problems when testing for the stuck throttle problem. Toyota ran all kinds of test, noise, interference, magnet induction on their ECU and could not cause any failures or stuck throttles. I understand the digital ECU has backups for each circuit. If any fail, it switches to a backup without any digital interruption. Toyota put heavy noise and static into each circuit to see if it would fail. I understand all the test passed.

I don't remember toyota ever mentioning anything needing done on their electronics or ECU for the suspect cars.

 

>>I don't remember toyota ever mentioning anything needing done on their electronics . . .

Nor do I. But others dismissed Toyota's fixes as not likely to stop the problem and said an electronic glitch was the culprit.