Well, Toyota’s ‘fixes’ for the problem are absolutely absurd and pathetic. First it was floormats, then it was increasing the tension on the pedal return spring. Few people who looked at that who knew anything about modern cars thought that this was going to resolve the problems.
Also, Toyota has been caught out in a Ford Pinto moment; turns out that they wrote a memo last year bragging about the $100+ million they saved by avoiding a recall on these defective cars.
Now, I’m not saying that the Government isn’t persecuting them to protect their own interests and Government Motors - clearly, they are. The problem for Toyota is that the government has plenty of ammo to use against them, and it’s ammo that Toyota generated itself.
I saw one of the pedals they were fixing when I was at the shop getting my 90,000 mile checkup, and the fix made sense to me based on that specific problem.
Not that there can’t be other problems, and I am always nervous about fly-by-wire systems, but I know that when people are “looking” for problems, they think they find them. People are notoriously BAD at observation, but think they are very good at it. When you tell someone to look for something, they not only will find it where it doesn’t exist, they will also insist that what they are now experiencing is different from before, because they THINK they remember what it was like before.
It takes concerted efforts to overcome mass hysteria. Mass hysteria is real, and is a big problem.