Professionalism and Sudden Acceleration

Last week, it was determined that the problem with our car was not fixable. Since this was a new car, we were able to trade it in at a good price on a replacement. The cause of the problem was never determined.

The mystery problem was that the car would race unexpectedly even when the car was in neutral and there was no application of the gas pedal. Applying the brakes was not effective and the car would continue to fight the brakes and try to accelerate. This happened suddenly and repeatedly the last time we drove the car. We immediately took the car to the dealer and fortunately for us, it repeated this pattern in the service bay for the service manager. It was agreed that the fault was a dangerous one but it was not possible to replicate the fault consistently. For this reason, determining the cause was not likely. The best we could hope for was an educated guess and hope that the guess was on target. Since the last drive in that car had been one of the most harrowing experiences of our lives, we decided to trade in the car. The car is to be returned to Honda for review by the engineering staff (we hope that this is the case).

What impressed us most about this experience was how hard the Honda dealer worked to solve this problem. The problem was taken seriously; it was never implied that this was a floor mat problem or a confused driver problem. I realize that we had the advantage that the service manager had witnessed the problem but even so the temptation must have been great to replace a part and declare it fixed even though the problem has not be identified. In the final discussion, the service manager explained his best guess about the cause (possible electronic throttle issues) and told us that there was no way to know if this fixed the car. We would have to drive the car and if the problem did not reoccur then perhaps it was fixed. This uncertainly was not comfortable for us so after discussing all of our options, we decided to replace the car.

The professionalism in presenting the situation was memorable. Sometimes the real answer to a question is that the answer is not known. In many cases, this is the best answer. Knowing the real situation allowed us to make the decision that we could live with.

We decided to trade the car for the same model in this current year. After reviewing the statistics, it appears that this problem crosses brands and we hope that we just had a bad car. Sudden acceleration and similar problems appear to have been reported in a wide variety of models so it did not seem possible to avoid this issue for certain by changing models. Since our wide ride, I started reading everything I could find on this problem. At this point, I really think that there is design fault in the electronic control systems. I am not sure that we made the right decision but we do believe that we made the best decision given the known information.

We were very lucky. No one was hurt by our car; our dealer was fair and the service manager was an outstanding professional. At the present time, I think this is the best you can hope for.

If you are interested in sudden acceleration, you might find the following links interesting.

Doubt cast on Toyota's decision to blame sudden acceleration on gas pedal defect

Analysis shows over 40 percent of sudden-acceleration complaints involve Toyotas

Sudden Acceleration: It's Bad, and It's Not Just Toyota