Toyota to pay $1.1B in 'unintended acceleration' case
2012 Dec 26, 6:42am 4,601 views 15 comments
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curious2
2013 Jan 7, 1:08am
Carpet has all but been abandoned in homes for a reason, it's nasty nasty stuff. Cars should have come with a washable, hard floor surface a long time ago.
I agree about cars but why homes? I really like residential carpeting, everywhere except kitchen and bath. As for cars, I don't know why anybody would want a floor mat anywhere near the pedals, and I agree that an easily washable surface would be much better at least for the driver's side.
zzyzzx
2013 Jan 7, 1:19am
Has anyone here been watching Toyota's stock price to see if this had any effect on it?
Tenpoundbass
2013 Jan 7, 1:38am
I agree about cars but why homes?
I did carpet for 15 years. Most new homeowners replacing their carpet for the first time. Were horrified what was under the carpet, and how dirty and discolored the jute backing was when I ripped up the old carpet. Regardless how new the carpet still looked on the top.
Ants bring in 100's pounds of sand under the padding, the oils from your feet collect and eventually make it to the backing. That is why carpet is black in high traffic areas. The Tackstrip busts up the slab around the perimeter of the room. As years go by, and the more frequently carpet gets replaced. Eventually there isn't anywhere to nail in the tack strip because of the pock marks left by the old carpet tacks, so they bring it back and start a new line of pot holes. Your pet might pee on the carpet and you never noticed but there are huge yellow stain on the underside.
People often said, had they known it looked that bad, they would have went with some hard floor instead.
I prefer a wood floor myself. Preferably a wood floor suspended off the ground on a wood framed house. The best floor in the world in my opinion. I never understood why assholes would carpet over them. Every time I showed up to carpet over wood floors it just felt wrong.
curious2
2013 Jan 7, 2:03am
I never understood why....
Thanks for the information about what accumulates under carpet, and what (re)installation does to concrete floors. I don't have experience installing carpet onto a wood floor in a wood frame house, but I can explain why many people prefer carpet at least in other settings.
For elderly people, a fall onto a hard surface can be lethal. The prognosis for a broken hip is within 2yrs the patient has a 50% risk of either death or permanent hospitalization in a nursing home. Carpet can make the difference between a debilitating fracture and a mere bruise, so in those circumstances it can save lives.
Also an apartment building is like the inside of a guitar: anything striking a hard surface creates a sound that carries throughout the structure, and in some instances the structure can even amplify the sound. Upstairs/downstairs neighbor situations are notorious, sometimes escalating to violence. Carpet can be taped down, or installed into a wood layer on top of a concrete floor. It reduces impact noise by more than 90%, and ambient noise significantly also.
I can see how pet stains and slab damage could become significant problems, especially in a single family home, but my experience (without pets) replacing my own carpets is that they're fine underneath. On the other hand I also see landlords in multi-family buildings, that prohibit pets, tearing out carpet to replace it with hard flooring because it's cheaper to clean/re-surface a floor than to replace a carpet. The consequences in those circumstances include higher turnover, higher risk of neighbor disputes, and lower quality of life.
Back to the original topic: I hope the $1 billion payout might encourage car manufacturers to reconsider driver's side flooring and floor treatment. An easily washable surface is much better than a floating mat over carpet.
Tenpoundbass
2013 Jan 7, 2:09am
For elderly people, a fall onto a hard surface can be lethal. The prognosis for a broken hip is within 2yrs the patient has a 50% risk of either death or permanent hospitalization in a nursing home. Carpet can make the difference between a debilitating fracture and a mere bruise, so in those circumstances it can save lives.
I once had to do a carpet repair in the Diplomat towers on Hallendale beach(long since demolished), back in the day. The repair was in the carpeted vanity area near the bathroom of the Master bedroom. It seemed the occupant(this was a senior only building at the time) fell and hit his had on the vanity cabinet, landing face first in the carpet leaving a bloody imprint of his face. It almost look like the shroud of tunic.
Most seniors fall in the bathroom or shower.
curious2
2013 Jan 7, 2:19am
Most seniors fall in the bathroom or shower.
I agree the bathroom is probably the highest risk area, but bedroom and stairs are also significant. Kitchens too, if little old ladies use stepladders to reach high cabinets.
Tenpoundbass
2013 Jan 7, 2:23am
but bedroom and stairs are also significant.
There's not enough padding in the world to soften a plunge down the stairs. They don't call them waterfall stairs for nothing.
AverageBear
2013 Jan 8, 6:22am
Has anyone here been watching Toyota's stock price to see if this had any effect on it?
ZZ, I think Japan's gov't's "race to debase" will affect Toyota's worth, rather than the 1 billion in extortion they are willing to pay.
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http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2012/12/26/toyota-unintended-acceleration-runaway-cars/1792477/
Toyota announced a $1.1 billion settlement Wednesday to resolve lawsuits alleging "unintended acceleration," instances in which throttles jammed open.
As part of the settlement, Toyota will create a fund for additional retrofitting of some cars with technology to make them easier to stop in a panic situation. For models that can't be retrofitted, there will be cash payouts to owners or former owners.
A Toyota spokesman says the company feels good about the settlement for having shown that the vast bulk of unintended acceleration cases were due to floor mats that jammed underneath accelerators, not because of electronic defects in the cars' engine computers. A jammed floor mat won't necessarily make the car go faster, but it can make it hard to stop because it keeps moving even when a foot is off the accelerator.
"We felt we achieved our objective, to defend the safety of the product," says spokesman Mike Michels. That having been done, the settlement is "a business decision and we turn the page on a lot of this."
The settlement comes three years after the fatal crash of a Lexus that killed an off-duty California Highway Patrol officer and his family near San Diego erupted into a full-blown scandal for the automaker. At first, Toyota said only that floor mats could become trapped under acceleration pedals, giving drivers the impression that their cars were trying to run away on them. Then, held a series of worldwide recalls involving millions of cars, including one for potentially defective accelerator assemblies.
Toyota executives were called to congressional hearings about the issue. Last week, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration levied a 17.35 million fine — the maximum currently allowed for a single violation — for waiting too long to report the issue that led to just one of the series of recalls, one involving 2010 Lexus RX 350 and RX 450h crossover SUVs.