Toyota: Cruising Out of Control?

Toyota is drowning in bad publicity. And it results not just from reports of 'unintended acceleration', another of which splashed across the headlines this week, it's Toyota's inability to recognize and fix the problem that is causing greatest harm to the company's reputation.

Reports of runaway Toyotas - going both forward and in reverse, have been flooding in - and not just from recent models. A constant claim in these reports has been the cars were checked by local Toyota specialists and no defects were found. They couldn't even recreate the problem, leaving the owners frustrated and fearful.

Toyota can't afford for this situation to continue much longer. If nothing is done, and more lives are lost, people will stop driving their cars and demand compensation en masse.

My wife drives a 2006 Prius, which is not on any recall (I've removed the floor mats as a precaution), so I am definitely interested in the problem. And I think I know where Toyota should look to find a resolution, and it's not installing a kill switch (although I recommend it).

I will preface my next statement, as I usually do when I am about to say something on which I have no technical knowledge, by admitting 'I am not a mechanic and have no technical understanding of Toyota's cars'.

That said, I have a suggestion: Toyota - look at your cruise control system, both hardware and software. And look at the cruise control usage of the drivers who have reported unwanted acceleration. There have been reports of issues with Toyota cruise control systems, most notedly by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, but cruise control has not been noted as an issue in the unintended acceleration incidents featured in the headline news.

We almost never use the cruise control on our Prius, which has over 60,000 miles on it with no drivability problems. But what about the drivers of the cars involved in the incidents? Did they use it frequently? And if so, did they just leave it on all the time, relying on the auto-disconnect to return them to full control until they press 'resume'?

Perhaps the problems we are seeing are due, at least in part, to the cruise control system 'resuming' or 'accelerating' unexpectedly and incorrectly. In the latest reported incident, the 2008 Prius driver stated that while accelerating to pass his gas pedal did 'something funny' and moved without his intention. Sounds like cruise control to me.

At least, when a car accelerates on its own, cruise control should be suspected, since that's what cruise control does - allows the car to adjust speed without driver input.

But then again, I'm not an engineer. Toyota has lots of them. Let's hope at least a few are looking at cruise control for the source of this problem. Perhaps they should hire a consultant to help. I don't think Wozniak is busy ...