Runaway Tacoma

Two years ago, when runaway Toyota's were making the news, I have to admit I thought it was driver error or someone bunching up the floor mat under the gas pedal. You know, someone mistaking the gas pedal for the brake, or whatever.

Well, it's not driver error or the floor mats. I've got a 2008 Tacoma automatic work truck that I drive on a daily basis and yesterday on the way home from work, the truck decided it wanted to go somewhere. My wife and I were in traffic in Kernersville accelerating when the truck completely floored itself. Luckily its the 4-cyl. and is really slow, but I immediately got on the brake and put it in neutral before I rearended someone. The engine was just bouncing off the rev-limiter as a coasted into a turn lane. I went ahead and shut the truck off and coasted to a side street. I tried turning it back on while coasting and it just started bouncing off the rev-limiter again. I coasted in to a bank parking lot, turned everything off and put it in park for a minute. After restarting it again, everything was fine and it hasn't had any problems since then.
There are no floor mats or anything else that could impede the gas pedal. This is clearly a software issue or a mechanical issue with the gas pedal, but I'm voting on software since I didn't touch the pedal at all between starting attempts.

As a warning to anyone, just get it in your head what to do if this ever happens to you and be prepared. It'll likely never happen, but I can imagine what would've happened to someone that doesn't pay attention or doesn't know enough about cars to know what to do. With that said, I'm going to push hard to get rid of this work truck now since I'll never trust it again. Seriously, what happens if it decides to do it while I'm backing up in a parking lot of people? That extra second it takes to get on the brakes and shut it down is more than enough to run over some pedestrians. Unfortunately, there's no way to prove it and a dealership will probably say it was my fault somehow, but I'll see what happens.

Wow, that sux...glad you were able to bring it under control without hitting anything/one.

yeah....glad you are a quick thinker.

It may be possible that it locked in a message to the ecm. I would take it to a dealer & explain what happened. With all the past history Toyota has had they should look at this for no fee.

I know it'll give a rev-limiter code at the very least, but I'd be curious to see what else it shows. I'd love it if it had a log of when the limiter was hit since there'd be no input from the brake or the gas pedals.
I've worked on cars enough to know that intermittent problems are often impossible to diagnose or duplicate though.

WOW, that's pretty scary. Way to be an in-control driver and return the runaway to a 'safe' state without any injuries or damage. I wish I thought most other drivers would be so capable in that situation, but I don't think they would.

Yeah I agree with you, time to retire that one.

Well done again!

Glad you are ok speedrye. That had to be way scary. Not too sure what I would have done if the same happened to me.

dsbike wrote:

It may be possible that it locked in a message to the ecm. I would take it to a dealer & explain what happened. With all the past history Toyota has had they should look at this for no fee.

Good call on this, they're covering it for free and it'll go in tomorrow. I'll see if they find anything out or if they tell me I don't know where my feet were while the engine was racing.

Very good, I am glad you called them & hopefully can get to the bottom of what caused it & get it fixed. You & your families life is at risk if it happens again. Your awareness recovered your vehicle & prevented a very bad situation from happening. Kudos to you.

dude your lucky...i had a similar problem with my tundra...however it was the floor mats...but i will tell you as you know speedrye...its a scary situation when that sudden burst of power comes on and your behind someone...mine was a bit different...5.7L almost 300 HP...and hitting the highway going into Ft. Bragg at 6am...power braking at 60mph...interesting...after it happened the second time i had to take a look and realized it was the floor mats...out they went...but i feel ya bro..

That is crazy!! That is also why I love the MT. Out of the 17 vehicles I have owned 7 have been MT and all the MT's were my daily drivers, not my wife's. The AT's were hers. I am not a control freak by any means but that is one big reason to love the MT.

I'm completely with you! It might work out well since we're now thinking of trading the Tacoma in on a work FJ or 4Runner! Of course one of those would be an automatic so... yeah.