I don’t believe that’s true. Before the press started reporting the supposed “issue” I’m pretty sure that Toyota had only gotten about 8 reports of unanticipated acceleration. A couple of them were actually a mechanical malfunction of some kind, but the rest were all floormat-jams of the pedal.
In the well-publicized case of the guy who called 911 and they recorded his whole call and crash... he was driving a loaner car that had mistakenly been outfitted by the dealer with floormats from an SUV model that didn’t fit correctly... and jammed against the pedal.
What’s a huge mystery is why he didn’t just hit the brakes, which would have stopped the car, or turned off the ignition, or popped it into neutral... any of which would also have stopped the car. That he didn’t try any of those things is unfathomable to me.
He did hit the brakes according to the NHTSA:
http://www.safetyresearch.net/Library/NHTSA_Santee_Inspect.pdf
“Rotors were discolored and heated, had very rough surfaces, had substantial deposits of brake pad material, and showed signs of bright orange oxidation on the cooling fins consistent with endured braking.”
“Figure 2. Rear Left Caliper and Rotor Exhibiting Signs of Endured Braking”
There is also the 911 recording in which he said, “There’s no brake.”
Braking did not stop my husbands Ford p/u. I was sitting right beside him and while he had the brake all the way to the floor the truck kept going.
NPR pulled the from NHTSA’s complaint database all the complaints that were recorded prior to the stories breaking, and there were FAR more than 8 complaints.