Thursday, January 21, 2010

Sticky Pedals for Toyota Means Big Recalls

I read an article on the New York Times website about how Toyota has made it's second major recall over accelerator pedals. In several new models there have been reports of accelerator pedals getting stuck and/or unintentional acceleration. The recall covers 2.3 million cars, both cars and trucks. This recall was separate from a previous recall of 4.2 million vehicles which was Toyota's largest recall ever.

The first recall was for floor mats that could get stuck under the gas pedal causing it to stick, but then a car sped off of the road and into a pond killing 4 people. When investigated it was found that the floor mats were actually in the trunk of the car, triggering the second recall.

I think that this article goes to show how important jobs can be, and how precise designs have to be with all angles considered, or else lives can be put at stake.
Posted by at

1 comment:

  1. AlexanderMarch 7, 2010 at 7:53 PM

    When I was driving home a few years ago I passed by Safeway. What caught my eye was a car that had driven through the side of the building. This is potentially an accident due to the same causes you are talking about...either that or someone to old, drunk, or confused to drive got mixed up between the accelerator and the break.

    It's definately very important that car's pedals don't stick. You'd think that if you spend the time building an entire car, you'd make sure that the pedal doesn't stick. This can occur however, when either the design is bad or workers do something wrong. When mass production happens, sometimes quality is sacrificed for quantity.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Followers

Blog Archive