10.0
really awful- Crashes / Fires:
- 1 / 0
- Injuries / Deaths:
- 0 / 0
- Average Mileage:
- 34,372 miles
About These NHTSA Complaints:
The NHTSA is the US gov't agency tasked with vehicle safety. Complaints can be spread across multiple & redundant categories, & are not organized by problem. See the Back button — blue bar at the very top of the page — to explore more.
I was driving westbound on I-90 (kennedy expressway) at approximately 9:40 am on Saturday, August 8, 2009, in my 2008 Toyota Tacoma. I was traveling at approximately 40 mph when I applied the brakes as a car in front of me slowed to exit the expressway. When the vehicle in front of me exited, I stepped on the gas pedal and my truck immediately began to accelerate at a high rate of speed. I slammed on the brakes but the truck continued to accelerate, eventually reaching 80 mph. I steered the truck into the far right lane and was now pressing as hard as I could with both feet on the brake pedal. I was able to get the truck down to approximately 25 mph, at which point I drove onto the shoulder and put the truck in neutral and then park, where the truck finally came to a stop. The entire incident lasted less than 30 seconds. Within 15 minutes an idiot truck pulled up behind me and towed me a short distance up the expressway to a safety area, where I waited for the aaa tow truck to arrive. I had the vehicle towed to the Toyota dealer where I had purchased it less than 2 years before. The dealer kept my truck until August 13, and I was told that the reason the truck accelerated was because the gas pedal got stuck under the heavy duty floor mats which I had purchased from the dealer at the time I bought my truck. I told the service manager there was absolutely no way the pedal had gotten stuck underneath the floor mat, because the floor mat was not positioned so far forward that the pedal could have gotten stuck on it. The service manager told me the only way they got the truck to replicate what had happened to me was when the gas pedal got stuck on the floor mat, but I let him know that I strongly disagreed with what he was telling me. I know the gas pedal did not get stuck under the floor mat in this incident. I told the service manager to remove my floor mats, because if this ever happened again I did not want Toyota to be able to use the floor mats as an excuse.
- Oak Park, IL, USA
- Casa Grande, AZ, USA