The sudden or unintended acceleration issue has always existed for older people. This is nothing new.
Back when Audi was getting roto-rootered by the networks for the same issue, completely unfounded, it was "discovered" that lots of older people back then who drove other brands also had their cars mysteriously accelerate while they were "applying the brake"....and of course, they were on the gas the entire time.
This Toyota issue has a bit more credibility than this same issue in the past.
if i recall, i read that the audi issue was , most of the people were old and a lot of them were coming out of buicks and caddilacs and it was their first european car as well.
supposedly a lot of the people who reported UA with the audis were either old, or very short or something like that.
Now I am not surprised that most of the people who report UA in toyotas are old people and that toyotas have a disproportionate number of old people reporting UA compared to other makes.
Why?
because toyota has probably the highest mean age of driver and they have a disproportionate number of buyers who are old. Toyota's also have tons of buyers who outright barely care about driving and just drive cars as an appliance, so they in my opinion probably have the least driving ability out of the entire driving population.
If you look at the lists of cars with the highest reported UA / sales percentage the mercury grand marquis and lincoln town car are on there. in fact the lincoln towncar is highest.
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/tag/unintended-acceleration-rankings/
how many young people even drive a towncar or a grandmarquis? Or for that matter a lexus ES? have you ever seen anyone under 50 buy an ES or an SC 430 for that matter. In fact I would be concerned if scion TCs and lexus ISes were suddenly crashing into walls , but if it is the cars on the list, then i think writiing it off as "people who cant drive / old" seems somewhat reasonable.
Toyota UA complaints are probably a combination of factors. probably the combination of crappy floor mats + their buyers being the least concerned about cars and driving in general, + having a very old customer base.
So it snot illogical to see . I mean if you took lincoln town car and crown vic and grand marquis owners only as evidence that ford's were death traps due to UA, you'd come tot the same conclusion OR realize that only old people drive those (and cops in the crown vic's case)
