{"id":506128,"date":"2010-04-02T17:04:49","date_gmt":"2010-04-02T21:04:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.caranddriver.com\/?p=18238"},"modified":"2010-04-02T17:04:49","modified_gmt":"2010-04-02T21:04:49","slug":"toyota-recall-timeline-what-went-down-when","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/506128","title":{"rendered":"Toyota Recall Timeline: What Went Down When"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Toyota<\/a>Below is a timeline of the Toyota recall fiasco. In the (highly likely) event that there are more events, we\u2019ll update this post.<\/p>\n

For more about the recalls, see our roundup of information<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

August 28, 2009 \u2013 A Lexus ES350 crashes at over 100 mph and bursts into flames, killing an off-duty California Highway Patrolman and three members of his family. The cause of the crash is determined to be a throttle that stuck open. At the time of the crash, the officer\u2019s brother-in-law, a passenger in the car, is on the phone with police frantically reporting that the car won\u2019t slow down.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

September 29, 2009 \u2013 Toyota announces floor-mat \u201ccustomer safety advisory,\u201d saying the floor mats can become entangled with the accelerator and cause it to stick. The company advises people to remove the floor mats from their cars and says it will provide \u201csafe\u201d replacements.<\/p>\n

November 25, 2009 \u2013 Toyota recalls 3.8 million vehicles<\/a> for floor-mat issues. The company also announces that it will redesign its floor mats and install brake-override systems in its new cars. This functionality, standard across some automakers\u2019 lines, cuts the throttle when the brake pedal is pressed. This is helpful for people afraid of what will happen if they press the brakes hard, but our instrumented testing<\/a> proves that hard application of the brakes will overpower full throttle in pretty much any car, including a 540-hp supercharged Roush Stage 3 Mustang.<\/p>\n

January 21, 2010 \u2013 Toyota announces recall for non-floor-mat-related accelerator-sticking issues. This covers millions of vehicles.<\/p>\n

January 26, 2010 – Sales of models affected by the recall are suspended<\/a>. Fear begins to simmer in the psyches of thousands of Toyota drivers.<\/p>\n

January 27, 2010 – The recall is widened<\/a> to include Toyota-built vehicles such as the Pontiac Vibe, which doesn\u2019t need an official stoppage to not sell.<\/p>\n

January 29, 2010 \u2013 The recall is further widened to include European models, none of which have been reported as suffering from any problems. Their ability to find the appropriate pedal and do more than panic in a moment of confusion is the firmest evidence yet that the average European driver is superior to their American counterpart.<\/p>\n

\"Toyota<\/a>February 1, 2010 \u2013 Toyota announces accelerator-pedal fix<\/a>, which involves a shim inserted into the pedal assembly to prevent the throttle from becoming stuck open, and foolishly believes this will cap public paranoia.<\/p>\n

February 3, 2010 \u2013 Transportation Secretary Ray McCarthy\u2014er, LaHood\u2014tells Americans that they should stop driving their Toyotas immediately. Nothing like a good, old-fashioned government freakout to throw people into a panic.<\/p>\n

February 5, 2010 \u2013 Toyota president Akio Toyoda apologizes for the \u201cproblems,\u201d bows deeply.<\/p>\n

February 8, 2010 \u2013 Recalls for braking issues are extended to 2010 Prius<\/a> and 2010 Lexus HS250h because of \u201cinconsistent pedal feel\u201d under braking on slick or uneven surfaces. More than 437,000 vehicles are involved, bringing the total to more than 8.5 million Toyotas recalled. We get apoplectic<\/a>, readers accuse us of \u201ckissing Toyota\u2019s butt.\u201d We direct those readers to any article we\u2019ve ever written on a Toyota vehicle other than the RAV4.<\/p>\n

February 12, 2010 \u2013 Toyota recalls Tacoma trucks for prop-shaft issues; mainstream media latches onto another \u201cbroken Toyota,\u201d fails to notice the hundreds of thousands of vehicles recalled every year by every other automaker.<\/p>\n

\"Exponent<\/a>February 22, 2010 \u2013 A professor from a Podunk university looking to make a name for himself teams up with ABC News to dupe the populace into believing their Toyota has a ghost in the machine, a.k.a. an electronics glitch that can cause acceleration independent of pedal involvement. The process by which he rigged the car to accelerate is shown later by Toyota and a team of researchers from a real college\u2014Stanford\u2014to work on vehicles from virtually any maker.<\/p>\n

February 24, 2010 \u2013 Toyoda testifies at his own witchhunt in Congress, apologizes again, and gets scolded. The whole thing is a circus sideshow<\/a> with little to no value to the American public.<\/p>\n

March 8, 2010 \u2013A California man calls 911 from the freeway and reports that he can\u2019t stop his Prius. California Highway Patrol is dispatched and coaches him to a stop. In the following weeks, neither Toyota nor NHTSA can reproduce any of the problems he reported, and Toyota says the car\u2019s data logger shows the driver shifted from gas to brake multiple times during the incident. No one outright accuses the man of anything unsavory, and the cause of the incident remains a mystery.<\/p>\n

March 9, 2010 \u2013 Some woman in New York drives her Prius through an intersection and plows into a wall. She blames unintended acceleration, but her car\u2019s data logger shows she was on the gas the entire time and never pressed the brake.<\/p>\n

March 24, 2010 \u2013 CNN bites on reports that Toyota knew about Camry accelerator problems in 2002, which turns out\u2014surprise!\u2014to be false. While it is true that there were complaints about surging acceleration, the occurrences were caused by the torque converter, were fixed with a simple recalibration, and, taking place solely between 38 and 42 mph, had absolutely nothing to do with sustained, uncontrollable acceleration.<\/p>\n

Related posts:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Shift into Neutral, Dummy: The Toyota Recall Fiasco – Feature<\/a><\/li>\n
  2. Toyota Recall: Scandal, Media Circus, and Stupid Drivers – Editorial<\/a><\/li>\n
  3. Toyota Adds 1.1 Million Vehicles to Floor-Mat Recall, Now Includes Pontiac Vibe<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Below is a timeline of the Toyota recall fiasco. In the (highly likely) event that there are more events, we\u2019ll update this post. For more about the recalls, see our roundup of information. August 28, 2009 \u2013 A Lexus ES350 crashes at over 100 mph and bursts into flames, killing an off-duty California Highway Patrolman […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-506128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mobile","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506128\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}