Does anybody know if the 2014 ES 300h has been implicated in any unintended acceleration incidents?

 

No, that was an old issue prior to this gen.

 

You can't step on the gas and brake at the same time anymore. If you do, it defaults to brakes, therefore preventing unintentional accelerations.

 

That entire debacle was a creation of trial lawyers and the dishonest media.

They never really did find any evidence of unintended acceleration, the NHSTA asked NASA scientists to do a study and after going through everything, found zero evidence of a malfunction.

All sorts of test have also shown that just simply applying the brakes will bring a vehicle to a dead stop, even if the accelerator is held to the floor.

 

What's even more sad is that the regulators and the media will get away with a story like this and convince everybody that there was a problem when there was none and force the company to pay penalty for that. Strange world we live in

 

In San Diego, California, an off duty California Highway Patrol officer, his wife, and brother in law were all killed when their loaner ES accelerator stuck wide open because of the floor mat issue. The settlement to the minor child of the officer and his wife was $10 million.

 

Are Toyota/Lexus the only brand of cars that had floor mats? I think any car on the road could get a floormat wedged the wrong way.

Also, it has been shown over and over again that simply pressing in the brakes will bring the car to a complete stop, even the accelerator pushed all the way down. Or just shift the car into neutral or turn the car off.

That incident you cited sounds like operator error, but everyone wants to play the victim instead of taking responsibility.

 

As mentioned, during the height of this issue Car and Driver did a test with a Taurus and a Camry. They applied full throttle and then did full braking with throttle floored. In each case the brakes overrode the throttle and stopping distances weren't too much longer than normal.

 

Just because a suit ends in a settlement doesn't mean one party is actually at fault, its just a business decision.

 

I think the off-duty California Highway Patrol officer knew how to press the brakes or shift the car into neutral but probably did not know how to turn it off by pressing the button; this was when the button was new in the ES. His passenger brother-in-law was on the phone with the police before the crash and described what was happening. After the settlement, each time I brought my car in to Lexus for service they checked the floor mat placement.

 

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/mar...lor3-2010mar03

 

I know a bar manager where a cop sued the bar for "over serving" him when the officer got a DUI. The fact this guy in question was a off duty officer means very little to me.

This was operator error even if it was a floormat issue. How many of these issues happened? So because .00001% of Toyota owners wrapped a floor mat around their accelerator pedal, it's a design defect?

Toyota decided to settle rather than risk a ridiculous 9 figure lawsuit in California and they were tired of the bad PR.

Other countries marvel at how stupid our legal system is.

 

There's no question that the loss of lives was tragic. Even after this long some questions still remain unanswered. What about the brakes overriding the throttle and putting the car in neutral? One good thing came out of this and that was Lexus (and Toyota) adding the throttle override which some other cars already had at the time.

And then there was the incidents of outright fraud with some drivers claiming the unintended acceleration happened to them accompanied by big legal claims etc.