has anyone had his happen. I went to brake, but the car accelerated. I had a bad accident.
No, I have not had it happen yet, but it is cause you accidently hit the gas and not the brakes, or both… Sorry to say that but it happens… I was rear ended in a drive through line once due to that happened…
6 Likes
A shop having the Toyota scan tool might be able get a clue to why this occurred by examining the drivetrain computer’s memory. Manufacturers are concerned about this too, what with their drive-by-wire designs (like yours is probably) & often have software running during every drive that logs the throttle and brake pedal positions. No harm asking in any event.
Often a case of pedal misapplication. Sorry about the crash. If it was totalled, you will likely never know the actual cause.
+1
Toyota was the first manufacturer to introduce Brake/Throttle Override, in 2010, so the OP’s car is programmed with this safety feature. If the accelerator is depressed beyond a certain low-power point and the brake is then depressed, the engine will return to idle speed as long as the brake is depressed.
an estimated 16,000 car accidents are caused by pedal errors every year .
There are 44 crashes every day in the county, and they are the result of what police call “braking bad”. This is in reference to drivers punching the gas, instead of tapping the brake.
Frequency of car crashes where drivers hit the gas instead of the brake - CBS Sacramento.
1 Like
+1
Back in 2005, I was riding in my friend’s Accord when we were T-boned while leaving a Shell gas station on busy US Route 1.
A wacko woman drove her Lexus RX over the curb at fairly high speed, drove onto the gas station’s property, and hit us broadside as my friend was driving toward the station’s exit.
I overheard one of the responding officers questioning the woman after the crash, and she kept saying, “The harder I pushed on the brake pedal, the faster and faster it went”. Very softly, the cop muttered, “Yeah, that’s what happens when you hit the gas instead of the brake”.
Because the impact damage extended into the roof panel, the car was totaled by the insurance company. I was only shaken-up, and because of the side airbag, my friend sustained only some bruising from the impact to both doors on the driver’s side of the car.
1 Like
A coworker ran into some gas pumps while pulling into a gas station with their Taurus.
It was a found that a faulty idle air control valve caused the engine to race as they were pulling up causing the car to suddenly accelerate.
But your Toyota doesn’t have an IAC valve.
Tester
1 Like
Toyota quietly fixed the software issue that caused the throttle to randomly stop responding or go to full throttle. The issue started in 2005 and affected most if not all of their non hybrid throttle by wire vehicles. It happened very rarely but when it did it could happen at any time, such as driving in a parking lot.
Toyota never admitted fault. They quietly updated the firmware while fixing the cars by chopping off some of the accelerator pedal.
It shouldn’t be happening today, but you never know.
There was or is a separate microcontroller in the ECU that monitors the main MCU in the ECU to make sure something like this doesn’t happen. Well instead of it actually monitoring the throttle position and other sensors directly and shutting off the engine if there was a mismatch, it just got the data digitally from the main MC, so it wasn’t actually a fully separate monitoring MC. It’s like following the letter of the law but not the spirit of the law.