Toyota recalls 2.17 million vehicles in US (AP)

Thursday, February 24, 2011 9:01 AM By dwi

WASHINGTON – Toyota Motor Corp. recalled 2.17 meg vehicles in the United States on Thursday to come gun pedals that could become entrapped in story mats or jammed in driver's lateral carpeting, suasion federal regulators to nearby its enquiry into the crenellate automaker.

The Transportation Department said it had reviewed more than 400,000 pages of Toyota documents to watch whether the orbit of the company's recalls for tone entrapment was sufficient.

"As a termination of the agency's review, (the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) asked Toyota to request these added vehicles, and today that the consort has finished so, our enquiry is closed," said NHTSA administrator David Strickland.

Toyota has today recalled more than 14 meg vehicles globally to mend gas pedals and another country problems since 2009. The consort has conventional pure investigating from the polity since August 2009, when quaternary grouping were killed in a high-speed break involving a Lexus nearby San Diego.

U.S. regulators mostly cleared the consort primeval this month, saying that electronic flaws were not to blame for reports of sudden, inadvertent speed that led to hundreds of complaints. Transportation officials tied the problems to mechanical defects dealt with in recalls and "pedal misapplication," in which the utility stepped on the gun instead of the brakes. The consort has, however, paying the U.S. polity a record $48.8 meg in fines for its direction of threesome recalls.

The world's No. 1 maker has tried to advise beyond the recalls, vowing to heed customer complaints and upgrade its country technology. The consort has installed on newborn vehicles brushwood override systems, which automatically cut the throttle when the brushwood and gas pedals are applied simultaneously, and created engineering teams to examine vehicles that are the subject of consumer complaints.

In its stylish country action, Toyota said more than half of the vehicles under request were existence added to a large 2009 request that immobile gas pedals getting unfree in the story mat.

The Asian maker said it would add threesome models to the 2009 tone entrapment recall: most 600,000 4Runner SUVs from the 2003-2009 support years; 761,000 RAV4 auto SUVs from the 2006-2010 support years; and 17,000 Lexus LX 570s from the 2008-2011 support years.

Toyota spokesman Brian Lyons said the added tone entrapment recalls were "based on our continuing shaping talking with NHTSA. While our actions up to today have led to a material change in reports of speed concerns, we mutually united that Toyota would take these added steps to support ensure that speed concerns are boost reduced."

The request also includes 372,000 RX 330, RX 350 and RX 400H vehicles from the 2004 finished primeval 2007 support eld and 397,000 2004-2006 Toyota Scotsman SUVs and hybrid versions to change story carpet concealment and possession clips on the driver's lateral that could interfere with the gun tone arm.

Toyota also recalled 20,000 2006 finished primeval 2007 GS 300 and GS 350 all-wheel intend vehicles to change the shape of a impressible aggrandize embedded in the driver's lateral story carpet that could drive tone interference.

Lyons said the consort was unmindful of some accidents or injuries related to the newborn recalls. He said Toyota was entertained NHTSA had winking its investigation.

Toyota still faces dozens of lawsuits from owners. NHTSA has conventional most 3,000 reports of explosive speed incidents involving Toyota vehicles during the time decade, including allegations of 93 deaths. NHTSA, however, has addicted five of them.

The consort said owners of the recalled GS 300 and GS 350 vehicles module be notified of the request in primeval March. Owners of the RX and Scotsman vehicles module be notified in the "near future" and obtain a ordinal asking erst equal covers are available.

Owners of the recalled 4Runner, LX 570 and RAV4s module also obtain an initial asking in the nearby future, followed by a ordinal asking erst the request preparations are complete.

The consort has posted careful aggregation at http://www.toyota.com/recall or http://www.lexus.com/recall. Owners crapper call Toyota at (800) 331-4331 or Lexus at (800) 255-3987.


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