Kommentare zu "Toyota Rückruf nun auch in Europa"

Ich glaube aber nicht, dass niemand auf die Idee kommt zu bremsen, wenn das Auto ungewollt immer schneller wird?! Das ist doch das erste, was man tut.
So einfach scheint das nicht gewesen zu sein.

Ich glaube, das wir Deutschen so reagieren würden. Bei den Amis bin ich mir da nicht so sicher.

Vielleicht waren sie auch einfach nur geschockt von dem Geschwindigkeitsrausch und konnten deshalb nicht mehr reagieren ...

The most obvious impulse for any driver experiencing sudden acceleration is to apply the brakes. But when an engine goes to full throttle and is speeding at 120 mph, the brake might not stop the car.

The ES 350 and most other modern vehicles are equipped with power-assisted brakes, which operate by drawing vacuum power from the engine. But when an engine opens to full throttle, the vacuum drops, and after one or two pumps of the brake pedal the power assist feature disappears.

As a result, a driver would have to apply enormous pressure to the brake pedal to stop the car, and if the throttle was wide open might not be able to stop it at all, safety experts say.

"I don't think you can stop a car going 120 mph and an engine at full throttle without power assist," said Ditlow, the safety center director.

Indeed, a 2007 study by federal highway safety officials showed that braking distance and force on a Lexus ES 350 increased fivefold when the throttle was wide open. And evidence introduced in sudden acceleration trials suggests that it can take up to 225 pounds of pressure on a brake pedal to arrest a runaway vehicle, far more than most drivers can muster from a seated position, said Edgar "Hike" Heiskell, a Charleston, W.Va., attorney who is suing Toyota over a fatal acceleration accident in Flint, Mich.

But once the vehicle is moving, the engine will not shut off unless the button is held down for a full three seconds -- a period of time in which Saylor's car would have traveled 528 feet. A driver may push the button repeatedly, not knowing it requires a three-second hold.

The other common defense tactic advised by experts is to simply shift a runaway vehicle into neutral. But the ES 350 is equipped with an automatic transmission that can mimic manual shifting, and its shift lever on the console has a series of gates and detents that allow a driver to select any of at least four forward gears.
The arrangement of those gear selections could make it difficult to shift from a forward gear directly into neutral in a panic situation, Toyota spokesman Lyons acknowledged.

Toyota nun auch mit Problemen bei Bremsen

Dem erfolgsverwöhnten japanischen Autokonzern Toyota steht neuer Ärger ins Haus: Nach dem Debakel um Gaspedale sieht sich der weltgrößte Autobauer nun auch mit Beschwerden über Bremsen bei der neuen Generation seines Hybrid-Verkaufsschlagers Prius konfrontiert.