It's hard to know how much of the Toyota thing is an replay of the "unintended-foot-on-throttle" problem Audi encountered, and how much of it is real. It's a cinch that many Toyota drivers are NOT at all aware of driving technique and pedal position. Drivers who are skilled in heel-and-toe driving are highly, highly unlikely to encounter this kind of problem. My own hunch is that it's much more driver incompetence than product failure. (Did you hear about the guy who supposedly had a runaway Toyota for a HALF-HOUR on the freeway while he couldn't get it stopped? If this ever actually happened, words do not exist to express the level of incompetence he exhibited.)
Not many people remember that the Nissan 300ZX was right behind Audi with the "unintended acceleration" complaints. My feeling has always been that the problems occurred when people who were mostly unskilled in driving and inattentive to their foot position bought "move-up/status" cars, which the Audi and 300ZX were at that time. Of course, since they were not attuned to driving, these folks bought automatics - and then proceeded to hit the wrong pedal because they paid no attention to what they were doing. (Anyone who would order a 300ZX sports car with an automatic transmission automatically falls into this category.)
I tend to lump many Toyota sedan drivers into the same category....possibly unfairly. Possibly not.
