My wife visited her doctor’s office, and as she pulled up to the parking space putting her foot on the brakes, and the car took off jumping the barrier in place to stop cars. The car continued into the building before getting stuck with the wheels off the ground. How can you tell if there is a problem with the brakes or excellaration system? Give me something.
There really is no easy/gentle way to put this but----
Hate to break it to you but this is a problem with mixing up the gas pedal with the brake pedal, and the faster the vehicle acerates the harder the wrong pedal is pushed trying to stop the vehicle… Meaning your wife was hitting the gas thinking it was the brakes…
This has been happening for a very long time and is nothing new…
How common are pedal error crashes and who do they generally happen to? A NHTSA study shows that these crashes can occur up to 16,000 times per year in the United States – that’s almost 44 incidents per day. While these crashes can affect all drivers, the study shows that drivers under the age of 20 or over the age of 65 experience pedal error crashes about four times more frequently than other age groups.
Don’t make the mistake of ACCELERATOR for brake! | Three60 by eDriving.
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Suggest as the first step to use a flashlight to carefully inspect the area around the foot pedals, brake and accelerator. There should be no debris, bunching up carpeting, or , anything else that could interfere with the pedal’s operation. The next step is to take your Altima to the dealership shop. They’ll use their diagnostic tools & skill to determine if there’s some sort of systematic problem. Remember that it is possible there’s absolutely nothing wrong with your car, and your wife just made the mistake of stepping on the wrong pedal.
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The police and/or insurance company might do that.
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Retired firefighter here. Responded to many unintended acceleration into a building. Never saw a defect in the car. One car had soda cans and other litter on the floor by the pedals. Typical story from driver was ‘the harder I pressed the brake the faster the car went’
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I checked NHTSA.gov for recalls, investigations, and complaints for a 2022 Nissan Altima. There are none for unintended acceleration. I also checked carcomplaints.com and they show no similar complaints either. Your wife’s car could certainly be the first, but as others have said, it’s likely that it is driver error.
Move shifter from drive to neutral?
+1–on all points.
I will add that it is very important to check the position of the floormat–assuming that there is one. Following the allegations of unintended acceleration with Toyota and Lexus models, Toyota changed the design of their floormat, to include small “latches” to keep it in the proper position.
Toyota/Lexus factory maintenance schedules now include checking that the driver’s side floormat is properly secured.
Those are the exact words that a woman used after she T-boned my friend’s Accord sedan.
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The police or your insurance company can look at the Event Data Recorder in the cars computer to determine what the conditions were just prior to the incident.
Tester
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Interesting that newer cars have hooks on floor mats to keep them from sliding forward. How did we get along without them in prior years?
My 2006 Corolla had them on the drivers side… Don’t remember if the 2002 did or not…
All other things being equal, make sure your wife wears proper driving shoes. No heals, no flip-flops, no bare feet, same goes for you. I’ve had friends have similar incidents when their flip-flop slid part way off and got tangled up in the gas pedal…
Another one’s wife complained that the brakes did not work properly, it turned out that here spike heels hit the floor before the brakes were fully applied.
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As previously stated, probably no problem with the car. Problem is with the driver. Hit the wrong pedal the wrong things happen.
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I dont disagree but i still think it is a possibility with all the software and electronics. Likely human error but still it is pretty hard for even a lab to prove an intermittent failure. Do I putb100% faith in the government and car manufacturers? Nah. The California highway patrol driving over the cliff and bruce Williams suggest it may happen. Your wife would never admit it though so drop it and pay for the damage. Maybe she’ll never drive that car again.
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Has the Nissan dealer looked at the car yet? Anything’s possible but similar cases have proved to be something causing the pedal to stick (slush in the winter for example.
Years ago a Jeep Grand Cherokee owner was concerned enough about the unintended acceleration to contact his local news and the camera crew was on hand when Jeep sent out an engineer along with the PR chief at the time. In less than 30sec the engineer found the problem and showed the owner. It was a floormat along with road slush sticking the pedal to the floor. The people from Jeep just wanted to figure out what was going on and the owner was a little ashamed for causing such a fuss.
My daughter’s 1996 4Runner has them.
It happens. One of the employees at a tech company where I was working accidentally drove their car into the lobby of the building, right through two glass doors, through the lobby and into a row of work-cubicles. Fortunately no one was injured.
Sheddricks probably will not return but it would be interesting if he did give the results of the investigating police and the insurance company.
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Well ok, a story. Like I said I can believe both sides. At about 88 my dad had a condition known as drop foot which means sometimes control of you feet I limited. I got a call from the police to please come and pick up my dad. He was at a bar/pizza place, had driven in a circle two or three times maybe touching or coming close to a couple parked cars. He said his foot got stuck between the brake and the gas. Didn’t know how to untangle his foot so drove into a snow bank to stop the car and thus killing the transmission.
He said he had one drink and the police verified it. Turns out he lived separate from my step mother but still visited every day. Before he left, she had fed him a calm down pill of some kind. That mixed with a little alcohol probably was the reason. All his life he had one beer after work and never more. I knew it but never blabbered about it. Figured a German that worked hard all day could have one drink.
So I took him home and went down to get the car the next day but the trans was shot. $2200 for a new transmission. No one put 2 and 2 together except me. Don’t trust dumb but well meaning step mothers. Don’t mix pills and manhattans. When kids become dads to dads.
So yeah I believe hitting the wrong pedal but I also believe in computer glitches. The police were very nice, just didn’t think he should drive home, even if they didn’t know the car was disabled.