Rep Power: 811

anyone else think its going too far? i mean come on, drivers cant be that stupid to let the car keep going until crashing. this is something they teach in every drivers ed class and what i thought was common knowledge. even my 60+ yr old mom says she would just move the shifter to N so the car doesnt keep going, and she knows nothing about cars, not even how to put gas in it. stuck gas pedal is just one of many emergency situations where fortunately there are very easy steps to follow. all you do is shift to neutral, press the brakes to stop, then shut off the car. why is this so difficult? you get clueless people smashing the brakes, then wondering why the car keeps going and their brakes dont work anymore. or just give up and call 911 saying my gas pedal is stuck, what do i do. lol. how about stick your foot under the pedal and pull it back out? shift to N? and then slapping a lawsuit against toyota because they are too stupid to realize basic operating procedures of a car. fact is, no car is perfect and there are thousands of parts and problems all the time. maybe these owners should actually look at the gas pedal and fix it themselves instead of driving around tempting fate all the time. i bet any one of us would have it fixed in an hour and move on to deal with the next problem. whats funny is my dads 83 toyota pickup even had a sticking pedal due to corrosion on the pivot pin. i soaked it in rust dissolver, sprayed some oil on it, and its been perfect ever since. i bet the new fix is so easy anyone who even tries to look will be able to come up with something. im not saying its not a dangerous problem, i think people need to realize how easy it is to avoid crashing and take control of the car. yeah having it stick in town would suck, who knows when you might crash into some car because you gave it a lil gas and it kept going. but people know the problem, yet pretend like oh it wont happen to me. im seriously thinking about finding a new toyota with this issue just so i can see how the pedal mechanism works and post a fix on the internet to stop this madness.

 
Rep Power: 252

I honestly think media is blowing it up to hurt import cars and to try to make sales better for U.S. cars. Its just my opinion but whatever, I feel when bad **** happens on American cars its quickly overlooked and just fixed.

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/toy...lusive-photos/

Just some info on the pedal and why it gets stuck.

 
Rep Power: 200

its pretty much a panic thing they dont realize that they're not stopping and now they're doing 110 on the highway and are freaking out cause they've never been that fast before. if that happened to me i already know what i would do and you described it in your post gearbox. even though its because they panic i dont understand why people are afraid of their cars. its like one thing messes up and the person crashes. i can understand your tire blows out on the highway and you roll over in a suv but thats different theirs not an easy way to control a blowout at 70+ mph in a suv.

i blame our driving school system for people not knowing how to control situations. either you're parent taught (not everybody can drive good, so that doesnt make sense to allow that) or you go to school for a month and learn nothing. i did the school way and i didnt learn anything i didnt already know.

 
Rep Power: 257

what if the gear selector gets stuck in D and you cant shift?

 
Rep Power: 290

There should have been no excuse for that chp officer that started this whole thing but for everyone else I say meh, natural selection.

 
Rep Power: 200

if your gear selector was getting stuck you would feel it being sticky or tough to move for a while if that can even happen lol. and going from D to N is independent of the brake or gas pedal not dependent of the brake being pressed like it is going from P to R after reverse you can shift without pressing the brake.

and idk if you can do this while moving in an automatic but you could just shut your car off if everything went wrong and it got stuck in drive and the gas pedal got stuck.

 
Rep Power: 811

the only problem with shutting a moving car off is you have power nothing. no brakes (maybe a couple pumps), no steering, etc. thats why shifting into neutral is the way to go and there is no way the shifter gets stuck in gear on auto or manual, unless you had a problem with it sticking before which is very rare esp on new cars. but yeah even in the rare case that the whole car takes a crap and everything fails, you can still turn the key off and use the ebrake and hazard lights, road conditions permitting. but if i had a toyota, there is no way i would be driving it with a defective gas pedal. i would go crazy thinking at every stop light, the car might jump forward. if that one guy is right and this is a drive-by-wire electronic issue, toyota has a serious problem.

 
Rep Power: 0

Most recent issue I have heard was the 911 call with the guy in the Prius freaking out because he was doing 80. Really? If I'm on the interstate I'm usually doing at least 70.
If the shifter is "stuck" the next best thing is to shut the car off, even if you lose power to your brakes, it's still better than gaining speed until you collide with someone or something.
There's an article in Car and Driver, they took a variety of cars and tested them from 70-0 while holding down the accelerator. Each car was able to stop relatively close to a normal distance. Even a Roush Stage III at full-throttle, stopped from 70 just 80ft passed normal. That's 500+ hp pushing that car, I don't think there's any reason a Prius' engine should overpower the brakes.
I understand panic is a beast, but come on. How did we become a nation of imbeciles that can't figure these things out on our own.

http://www.caranddriver.com/features...tion-tech_dept