Page 96 - Toyota Under Fire

THE RECALL CRISIS

day, while merging into traffic on an area freeway, Bernard
punched the accelerator. Once he got up to speed, he took his foot
off the pedal, but the car kept accelerating to between 80 and 85
mph. Realizing that the pedal wasn’t returning, he stepped on the
brakes with his left foot and tried to use his right foot to pull
the accelerator back. But the pedal was stuck so firmly that he
couldn’t free it. Bernard applied the brakes and slowed the car to
50 to 60 mph. By continued braking, he was able to slow the car
to about 25 to 30 mph and move onto the shoulder of the high-
way. Once there, he shifted the car into neutral, brought it to a
complete stop, and turned the car off. According to Bernard,
freeing the pedal took a considerable amount of effort. He re-
moved the floor mat and went on about his business without fur-
ther problems with the car.
When he returned the car to the dealer, Bernard warned the
after-hours receptionist that there was a problem with the vehi-
cle’s floor mat and that it had dangerously trapped the accelera-
tor. He recalls telling the receptionist: “I think the mat caused
it, you need to tell someone.” His warning went unheeded. Ap-
parently the receptionist thought that Bernard would tell his
story to a service technician; Bernard thought that the recep-
tionist would pass the story along. Three days later, Mark Saylor
climbed into the car, still with the wrong floor mats, unsecured,
and drove off. Just before the crash that killed them, multiple
witnesses saw the Saylors doing much the same thing as Bernard
had done—they were driving along on the shoulder of the road,
going about 30 mph. The police report suggests that at some
point before Saylor could fully stop the vehicle, for whatever rea-
son, “the brakes possibly failed due to overburdened, excessive
and prolonged application at high speed,” and the car began its
acceleration again.

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