More reports have come to light regarding Toyota’s recent recall that started in late 2009. You may remember our recent findings about acceleration issues known by Toyota back in 2002.
It would now seem that the large car manufacturer was also aware of an issue related to the accelerator pedals getting trapped under the floor mats of vehicles back as far as early 2007.
A report by AutoBlog states that an investigation was opened by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) back in March of 2007, regarding problems with the pedal entrapment on the Lexus ES350.
Although Toyota claimed that no issues were found with the mats or the vehicles, (and the case was closed by the NHTSA) Toyota recalled 55,000 Lexus/Toyota floor mats and released a Technical Service Bulletin (TSB) to all its dealers advising of the possible risk caused by fitment of floor mats on all Toyota models.
So with this new reports coming out it would seem that although Toyota was aware of a floor mat issue all the way back in 2007, they only managed to address the problem with their dealers, and on apparently finding no fault, failed to undertake any further investigations to discover the real cause. This can only go against Toyota and subsequently do more damage to their already tarnished reputation.
Source: Reuters
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