On 3/2/2016, I had an accident with injuries and extensive damage.

I had just turned off a busy street onto a parking lot. Another car on my driver's side was at the edge of the parking lot waiting to turn onto the street that I was turning off of. As I eased passed that driver and was preparing to park, my car went into a sudden, unexplained acceleration. My car jumped the parking space curbing, hit a green utility box on the ground and then the back end of the car that was waiting to enter traffic. After hitting the other car, my car eventually came to a stop.

The other driver, an elderly lady, ended up going to the hospital by ambulance. This was a terrible, terrible experience. I had never had a vehicle accident before and I take the Driver's Safety courses for seniors regularly. My brakes and acceleration had done this once or twice before when turning. At those times, I wasn't sure what was happening, so I just decided to be extra careful. Even a few years ago, when going downhill or on uneven pavement, my car would skid before stopping. Either my brakes were new or in good condition, at those times, so I took my car back to the shop to be checked out. No problems detected.

Strangely no one can ever detect a problem after these incidents happen. Yet, after talking to my other friends who own Toyotas, they have experienced some of the same problems. Like me, they too assumed it was something wrong but there seemed to be no answer or solution. WHAT! NO RECALLS? THIS SEEM TO BE A COMMON PROBLEM. THIS IS JUST TOO MUCH! SOMEBODY WITH AUTHORITY NEEDS TO DO SOMETHING!!! ONE LIFE OR EVEN ONE INJURY IS ONE TOO MANY!!!

I was sitting in traffic at a long stoplight. The light was still red but cars were intermittently inching forward to close gaps. The car in front of me inched a few feet forward creating about an 8 foot gap. As I eased off the brake to roll forward, the car suddenly accelerated very rapidly as if the gas pedal had been floored----but my foot was still on the brake. The car bolted forward and I slammed on the brakes while steering quickly onto the left shoulder trying to avoid the car ahead of me. The car braked normally but was going so fast that my center front bumper hit the left rear corner of the bumper of the Jeep ahead of me before the car could be stopped. The plastic Jeep bumper did not dent but the flexing of the bumper caused paint to fleck off in several one-inch sections.

I have driven in freeway stop-and-go traffic in my daily 2 hour commute for a year and a half in this car and have done the brake foot-maneuver hundreds and hundreds of times a day without incident. Accident-free driving record. I've put nearly 30,000 miles on this car and never experienced this sudden acceleration problem. The experience was bizarre! I am the second owner of the car and it has been an absolutely superb car until this incident. I am astonished that Toyota is claiming 'driver error' for this sudden unintended acceleration. After this experience, I know it is NOT driver error.