Sudden Acceleration: A Case Study

Toyota Products Liability Lawsuits Regarding Sudden Acceleration

An automobile accident involving a Lexus (subsidiary of Toyota) vehicle resulted in the deaths of four people in California on August 28, 2009. Mark Saylor took his car into the Bob Baker Lexus dealer in El Cajon, CA to have it serviced and they provided him a loaner 2009 Lexus. While Saylor was driving the Lexus loaner it suddenly accelerated and he couldn’t control the car. One of the three other occupants in the car called the police on their cell phone to report that the car’s accelerator was stuck. The Lexus rear ended another vehicle before going down an embankment and bursting into flames at the bottom of the San Diego River killing everyone inside the car. According
However, the Toyota accelerator problems were not fully investigated until the high-profile crash involving the Saylor family in August 2009 gained national media attention. Also, federal regulators in 2007 asked Toyota to consider installing software to prevent sudden acceleration in its vehicles after receiving complaints that vehicles could race out of control, company documents show. Yet the automaker only began installing the safety feature, known as brake override, in January, 2010 after a widely publicized accident involving a runaway Lexus ES that killed four people near San Diego. Since Toyota knew about the sudden acceleration problems and did not do anything about it that is a breach of duty of care resulting in negligence. Toyota had a duty to act in fixing the problem when it was first found out and not years later after a high profile automobile crash. The general rule is that a person is under a duty to all others at all times to exercise reasonable care for the safety of the others’ person and
“The early results suggest that some drivers who said their Toyotas and Lexuses surged out of control were mistakenly flooring the accelerator when they intended to jam on the brakes”. Did the drivers who were mistakenly flooring the accelerator commit negligence and as a result are partially to blame for the accident? If it can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that it was driver error that led to the accident, yes they can be at fault and thus have comparative negligence. This will have to be taken on a case by case basis as each accident will have to be looked into and determined if there was driver error. If there was driver error, it does not mean that Toyota is totally off the hook as their negligence will be determined as well. It will be up to the courts to decide the percentage of negligence against Toyota and the percentage against the