I purchased a used 2009 Corolla S with Manual transmission. Within one month of driving I experienced unintended acceleration. I was able to control the car by throwing the transmission into neutral and braking. I tapped the accelerator lightly while in neutral and the acceleration stopped. I took it to the dealership and they said they could not recreate the problem and that there was a recall for some part on the accelerator and it was replaced. A few weeks later it happened several more times and I noticed that the cabin of the car had higher levels of humidity than other days. I took the car back to the dealership and they kept the car for 3 weeks and had a tech from HQ come out. They said that unintended acceleration has never been reported on manual transmissions and that it couldn't be happening. The dealership blamed the floor mats getting pushed under the accelerator pedal. So the floor mats were removed and never used again. However, the accelerator began to stick again within a couple weeks during higher humidity levels in the cabin and proceeded to stick/rev/unintendedly accelerate consistently in more humid conditions through the rest of my ownership of the car. I am not the only one who experienced this. I had close family members drive it and it happened to them and they were scared.
I found that during the summer when the A/C was consistently on there were fewer occurrences of unintended acceleration. The one solution I did find to work in stopping the unintended acceleration was to put my foot under the accelerator pedal and pop it up. That always seemed to stop it but that really is not an acceptable solution for such a huge and scary problem for a moving vehicle.
I have been researching the issue for a long time and it looks like Toyota is still not accepting accountability for this issue. This is really horrible problem and I can understand how so many wrecks have been caused from this issue especially in automatic transmissions. I'm here to tell you that it happens with manuals as well and Toyota doesn't seem to be acknowledging the problem and is still making vehicles with this issue. There should be some better regulations in place to hold this company accountable for reckless manufacturing. Clearly they don't care and they just want to sell the product. What can we do about it?
A D V E R T I S E M E N T S
I purchased a used 2009 Corolla S with Manual transmission. Within one month of driving I experienced unintended acceleration. I was able to control the car by throwing the transmission into neutral and braking. I tapped the accelerator lightly while in neutral and the acceleration stopped. I took it to the dealership and they said they could not recreate the problem and that there was a recall for some part on the accelerator and it was replaced. A few weeks later it happened several more times and I noticed that the cabin of the car had higher levels of humidity than other days. I took the car back to the dealership and they kept the car for 3 weeks and had a tech from HQ come out. They said that unintended acceleration has never been reported on manual transmissions and that it couldn't be happening. The dealership blamed the floor mats getting pushed under the accelerator pedal. So the floor mats were removed and never used again. However, the accelerator began to stick again within a couple weeks during higher humidity levels in the cabin and proceeded to stick/rev/unintendedly accelerate consistently in more humid conditions through the rest of my ownership of the car. I am not the only one who experienced this. I had close family members drive it and it happened to them and they were scared.
I found that during the summer when the A/C was consistently on there were fewer occurrences of unintended acceleration. The one solution I did find to work in stopping the unintended acceleration was to put my foot under the accelerator pedal and pop it up. That always seemed to stop it but that really is not an acceptable solution for such a huge and scary problem for a moving vehicle.
I have been researching the issue for a long time and it looks like Toyota is still not accepting accountability for this issue. This is really horrible problem and I can understand how so many wrecks have been caused from this issue especially in automatic transmissions. I'm here to tell you that it happens with manuals as well and Toyota doesn't seem to be acknowledging the problem and is still making vehicles with this issue. There should be some better regulations in place to hold this company accountable for reckless manufacturing. Clearly they don't care and they just want to sell the product. What can we do about it?
- Erin M., Kansas City, US