Toyota is most trusted brand name and it is providing most reliable cars worldwide but still this company faced a huge lawsuit for its faulty mechanism.
Sometimes there is huge engineering error even after spending lots of money on research and development of some advanced features. And customers have to pay for the mistake with their life.
How it all started
So the same thing happened with a American family who lost their life in a very tragedic accident.
On the day 16 June 2009 emergency law enforcement team received a call on 911 where a person named Mark sailor was going on a loaner car from Toyota dealership, as his onw Toyota car was in workshop for some mechanical issues.
So family, his wife, daughter and brother in law. Now this brother in law called 911 from in the car.
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Brother in law informed to emergency service operator that they’re cruising on mission gorge highway on 120 miles and accelerator pedal has got stuck.
While brother in law was on emergency call and informing officers about their crucial situation, Mark sailor kept continuing hitting the brake pedal to slow down the car but everything was going ineffective.
But it was getting worse with each second and meter as freeway was ending and they were soon to reach intersection which was merging this freeway in a very busy road.
It was less than 10 seconds when car approached to the intersection, Mark hitted the car to the ravine to avoid any collision with other passengers on the intersection.
This resulted in the death of all 4 passengers being killed in this tragedic accident. The recording of this emergency call went viral and there was outrage against Toyota for this mechanical fault.
Relatives of this family blamed Toyota for their cause of death of the late family.
This accident was covered by global midea which raised a question of safety of people in Toyota’s vehicles.
Series of accidents started from here
This was just beginning of errors being reported in Toyota car which led more accidents due to same reason in particular car model.
In the next 5 years 90 people died from same error in the car which was a huge negative remark on well know global car manufacturing brand.
Toyota started recalling its specific time period cars from particular model within 2 years and number went to 10 million cars which were recalled in Toyota manufacturing plants
US government asked Toyota to pay 1.2 billion dollars fine for its faulty products which were causing death to its customers and Toyota spent another 1.1 billion dollars in compensation in lawsuit against Toyota due to loss of consumers.
Reason found behind these fetal accidents
Initially there was not found any specific reason in electronic or mechanical components in the car behind these accidents. So it was assumed that floor mat was stuck between brake padel and accelerator pedal.
As same loner car which Mark sailor was driving, was recently reported loosen floor mat which caused unintended acceleration.
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Toyota’s initials to this matter
It’s not that Toyota didn’t take any action to investing or identify the problem which caused the company lead a negative Mark on its reputation, although Toyota recalled massive cars to rectify the issue and to solve it.
After massive recalls, these mysterious acceleration didn’t get solved, even the replacing floor mat didn’t do any favour to stop these issues.
Various theories from automobile experts about this infamous cause in Toyota’s cars
A very well known American Automobile journalist Malcolm gladwell, did a very controversial podcast on this Mark sailor Toyota crash incident, claiming that if car suddenly mysteriously start accelerating then all you have to put your feet on brake pedal its because brakes beat the engine.
He didn’t only said it on his podcast even he did a demonstration test on a car by flooring the gas padel.
He slammed the brakes while flooring the gas padel and in the results of this car stopped.
And then Car and driver did the same test on a very powerful sports car which ended up stopping the car as it happened to Malcolm gladwell car.
In these both tests it was proved that if there’s any situation where driver is facing a mysterious acceleration then pressing the brakes pedal will overpower to engine and it will make the car stopped.
So if Malcolm gladwell was right about his theory of stopping the car with slamming the brakes then why Mark sailor was not able to stop his car with this method?
Mystery behind Mark sailor accident
After collecting data from Mark sailor crash, it came to know that Mark sailor didn’t hit the brakes pedal. He didn’t put his feet on the brake this whole time.
Reason for not engaging with brake
There’s simple action from people with their own car, they’re very familiar with the pedals of their own car so they build muscle memory with the functionality with car. Which make it very easy for them to make them use to that specific car.
So the same thing happened to all of those accidents which took place in the loner car, Al of them found they weren’t engaged with brake padels.
All this data was analyzed from the Blackbox device, where NASA conducted a research on all these mysterious acceleration cases in 2011.
When drivers were stepped in the unfamiliar cars they unintentionally pressed gas padel instead of brake.
The real cause behind Mark sailor accident case
At the first, it was looking like Mark sailor didn’t press the brakes, but indeed he was continuously pressing the brakes
Was Malcolm gladwell was wrong with his podcast and his live test on car?
Well it wasn’t the case, Malcolm gladwell didn’t perform that test on a vehicle equipped with power brake assist.
These features in the car are designed to draw power from the engine but it is only in normal condition. There’s a flaw in the Design and procedure of operating these brakes.
Conducting another same taste on power assist brakes equipped car
With the power brake assist car a user performed same test as Malcolm gladwell did previously
At the first experiment car slowed down and then stopped when driver kept pressing accelerator pedal and then pressed the brakes
They performed another test where driver kept pressing acceleration pedal and first he pressed brake pedal then released it, Car slowed down.
But when he released the brakes and again pressed them while accelerator was still pressed during this, then this time brakes didn’t work and car kept speeding up
So here Malcolm gladwell’s theory wasn’t applicable and it was working differently.
Conclusion
So Mark sailor was not victim of pedal error he was victim of loose floor mat and power brake assist.
Generally people pump brakes to get friction back in the case of brake failure which they try to apply same while mysterious acceleration cases. But this doesn’t work in power brake assist equipment so they loose the control and get into an accident