"Before the crash, a passenger in the car had called 911 and told dispatchers that the accelerator was stuck and the car had reached 120 miles per hour (193 km per hour).<p>The recall will cover the Camry and Avalon sedans, the Prius hybrid, the Tacoma and Tundra pickup trucks and luxury Lexus models, the IS250 and the IS350 as well as the ES350."<p>Yikes that's tragic. I am not familiar with floormats in Toyotas and what they might look like in comparison to the accelerator pedal, but I was taught in driver's ed and at the racetrack where I run my car that should you ever run into a situation where your pedal gets stuck there are a few things you should do (which I know might not be apparent during a panic situation):<p>1) put your foot under the gas pedal and try to lift it up. never attempt to crawl down there to figure it out<p>2) turn off the ignition. you can safely brake and steer to safety without power. just takes a bit of force as you don't have power brakes/steering..<p>3) worst case scenario put it in neutral. engine will rev to hell without load and potentially get damaged but at least you can control the car safely and get to safety/pull over.
I'm sure it's bad and all, but don't recalls happen for car models all the time? BMW "recalled" my car a bunch of times; what it meant was, if I didn't get the car to the shop for a free repair, I'd have a harder time suing them if the (I think it was the) gas pump caused the car to explode.