Toyota May Replace Accelerators in Recall

Four million gas pedals potentially faulty

Toyota is still working on a solution to the issue of floor mats causing its accelerators to stick, causing that pesky “unintended acceleration” that can really put a damper on anyone’s drive.  The automaker has been working closely with the National Highway Traffic Safety Association to come up with a permanent solution for the growing problem.  Toyota recently published a statement saying that it would “take a closer look at the potential for an accelerator pedal to get stuck in the full open position due to an unsecured or incompatible driver’s floor mat.”

Inside Line and Kyodo News are reporting that Toyota may be close to announcing that they will replace the gas pedals of the four million vehicles affected by the recall with shorter ones.

The fix would be provided by Toyota dealerships at no charge to the customer.  Swapping out four million accelerator pedals could prove to be a pricey solution, but Toyota claims it has saved up to $5.6 billion dollars in its recall funds over the years for just such an occasion.

Have you or your drivers noticed acceleration problems with any Toyotas in your fleet?

Photo courtesy of mary2678 under the Creative Commons License.

Tags: Inside Line, Kyodo News, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, NHTSA, Toyota

This entry was posted on Friday, November 20th, 2009 at 7:33 am and is filed under Industry News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.