[Nyororin]

I ask again: Where is this fear mongering you are speaking of?
Everyone should know how to control a car with a stuck accelerator but they don't. The media had to provide this little tid bit of life saving information, Toyota didn't because they didn't acknowledge the problem.

Fear mongering is jumping on the info that there is a slight risk, and presenting info as if the risk is much greater, the numbers much larger than they really are.

I am getting tired of repeating myself, but information on how to stop a car with a stuck accelerator is important. The things is ... It is not limited to Toyotas. It should not be worded "to stop a Toyota".

If the cruise control jumps you from 60 to 100 without the driver doing it, then its a runaway car plain and simple. This may be the case with Steve Apple's model. A software bug.

Apparently you missed what I wrote. It is easy to press the button more than necessary due to the delayed response and set your car for 100. The car is doing what it is told. The problem is that it isn`t easy to lower the setting (short of hitting the brakes), which is indeed a problem that should be fixed.

Your example is like a manufacturer not recalling bad yogurt they sell because they aren't sure the problem is from one particular style of yogurt of a certain brand. That fact being there are surely some yogurt is killing people but we aren't sure if it is Blue berry or Bannana. So we'll wait.

The key here is that the company knew that it was their yogurt in their own packaging that was at fault. There are so many things a driver could do, so many things that could screw up a car that aren`t the company`s fault, etc, that you can`t look at one or two accidents and say "Our cars are definitely causing this!!"
Someone dying after eating a yogurt is a little different than someone having an accident and saying "It wasn`t my fault! It was the car!". I don`t think there are many people out there who want to admit it if it was indeed their fault. People don`t want to admit their own mistakes. In this case it WAS the car, but it isn`t as clear cut as eating a yogurt and dropping over dead. You don`t get tons of people blaming any death on yogurt - however, you DO get tons of people blaming cars for everything. Sorting through a couple of deaths possibly caused by yogurt isn`t that hard - you might have a handful of reports with one or two that are bogus. With a car, you will have thousands of people blaming the car and only a handful of real ones... Hunting for those isn`t an easy or quick task. Especially if you say "there is a potential problem" - and everyone everywhere leaps to hopefully get a settlement by blaming every accident on that.

Corporations suck. They`re big and they`re slow.

I dug through Google news, and it`s impossible to find the articles as there are literally 10000+ items that fit the criteria. Skimming through every single one of them to find the ones I read would take MUCH MUCH longer than typing this up. Happily, it seems that eHow (One I can bring up quickly as someone who knows I drive a Toyota mailed me the link for my safety) has changed their "How to stop a runaway Toyota" into something a little more universal (the original is still cached on Google though)... No wait, they`ve changed it to this. "Anticipate a runaway situation whenever driving a Toyota vehicle" - sounds like all Toyota cars to me. (Nevermind that the article suggests doing something advised against by Toyota and pretty much every one else - pumping the brakes.)

Either way - I should have known better than to bother discussing this with you, as I`ve seen how close to talking to a brick wall it is when you`ve made up your mind on something. You`re out to crucify Toyota for this and nothing is going to make a difference.

The fact is, there is a 0.001% chance you`ll experience the problem without doing the recall fix (which everyone should) and a 0.0004% chance you will be in an accident because of it. Everyone should know how to stop a runaway car, but it is nowhere near the level of danger it has been presented as. As I have said SO MANY TIMES in this thread, painting a problem as much larger than it is counts as fear mongering - and fear mongering sells.

ETA;

New problem. Now complaints in the US and Japan.

It`s a sucky trait of ABS. When regenerative braking switches over to ABS, you have to push harder on the brake - if you don`t, it feels like the brakes suddenly weakened. According to Japanese news, they`ve already built a fix to even out the pressure levels in the brake which has been installed in the cars produced this year. It is not a new problem and was the same in the previous Prius. And yes, I`ve felt this one first hand. Press harder on the brake and it works normally.