After owning three successive Dodge Dakotas, we bought a new Toyota Tundra last May. It is a 2009 4-wheel drive pickup truck with the full-sized backseat. We asked the dealer to make three modifications as a condition of purchasing the vehicle. They agreed, then did none of them. No wonder car dealers have a reputation for “say anything to make a sale.”
Anyway, our Tundra was one of over four million Toyotas recalled last summer because of a reported problem with the driver’s floor mat slipping underneath the pedals. Our mat is secured by a big plastic clip and it can’t be moved even with force, so we filed the recall notice in the “if it ever becomes a problem” folder.
Now Toyota has begun a recall of over one million vehicles – again ours is on the list – because the accelerator sticks. An advocacy group, Safety Research and Strategies, has said that since 1999 Toyotas have had 2,274 incidences of “sudden unintended acceleration” leading to 18 deaths in 275 crashes.
We haven’t received the recall notice yet, but even when we do there is no hurry to get out Tundra back to the dealer. Toyota hasn’t yet come up with a solution to the problem. It’s some sort of multiple problem concerning interconnected linkage. It’s not just spraying it with WD-40 or replacing a single part and everything is okay.
Our Tundra is our third vehicle, so we don’t drive it often. We use it to get from our home in Cape May County, New Jersey to our vacation log home in mountains of Pocahontas County, West Virginia. It’s 396 miles each way.
We needed the 4-wheel drive in case of snow or ice going through the mountains, and the large size gives us plenty of room to bring along all the tools, supplies, etc that we always seem to need. But other than those trips (about 12,000 miles a year), our Toyota stays parked under cover in New Jersey. We each drive smaller, more economical vehicles in our everyday New Jersey life.
Toyota has put out some warnings of what symptoms to look for in advance of your gas pedal sticking. They say the pedal may gradually become harder to depress, and there may be a roughness or chattering when pressing or releasing the gas pedal. It that happens, call your Toyota dealer.
If the pedal does stick at full acceleration, follow these steps: Brake hard, but don’t pump the brakes, just depress the brake pedal enough without going into a skid. Then throw the engine in “neutral”. While the engine will still be running at excessive RPM’s, it won’t be pushing you along anymore. Don’t turn the engine off until you’re safely stopped and off the road. Got all that?
We’re sure Toyota will figure out a solution to the problem soon, then we can all take our vehicles to the dealer for the repairs. We’re just sorry that we have to go back to the incompetent dealer that we bought it from.
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