No flowers for my Toyota this Valentine's Day

I may have dodged a bullet. Or rather, a faulty accelerator on my 2007 Corolla.

The 2007 Corolla isn't among the multiple makes and model years affected by the massive recall of Toyota vehicles for accelerator pedal problems - yet. But I feel for my fellow Toyota nation brethren trying to get repairs. From our 2000 Tercel to the 2007 Corolla, I've loved these reliable and affordable cars. But the pedal debacle now followed by reports of drivers experiencing momentary loss of braking in the Prius is a definite reality check.

Fellow columnist and Toyota aficionado Burt Constable had this to say about his trusty 2007 Prius.

"I'm not really worried, but my wife and I both have run through the safety drill - stand on the brakes, put it in neutral, and maybe even hold the starter button in until it shoots off - several times in our heads. Most of my driving is the 25 mph to 55 mph stuff, so I'm hoping I could catch the sudden acceleration problem before I really got going.

"It does bother me that so much of the car is computerized. Every computer I've ever used has crashed or locked up at some point. If the one in my Prius locks up, does that mean I'll be the one crashing?" he wondered.

Toyota Motor Corp. President Akio Toyoda apologized for the mess Friday, saying the company should have admitted mistakes earlier. About 8 million vehicles have been recalled globally.

To recap, Toyota first recalled vehicles in October for accelerator pedals entangling with floor mats. In January, it issued a recall over accelerator pedals sticking when pressed down. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration confirmed five deaths have occurred because of the faulty mats.

As for the Prius, the NHTSA now is investigating 124 complaints from drivers about brakes, including four involving crashes.

What's a Toyota owner to do? I turned to expert Don Hillebrand - a mechanical engineer, former Chrysler research manager and director of Argonne National Laboratory's Center for Transportation Research.

He called it curious that seemingly unrelated problems involving parts designed and manufactured in different places across the world were occurring simultaneously.

"You could reach the conclusion that you've got another problem that's the root cause of all these things - the (electronic) throttle," Hillebrand said. "I have no idea if that is the case, but Ford previously looked at a similar electronic throttle and decided it wasn't reliable."

(For non-gearheads the throttle is a metal, circular paddle that lets the air into the engine. The more you open it, the more air goes in and the faster the car moves. The mechanical version uses a wire linked to a cam that makes the paddle rotate. The electronic version uses an electric motor to spin the paddle.)

If it's not the throttle, it could be EMC, or electromagnetic compatibility. When electronic units in cars operate, they send out electronic waves. A situation could arise where the signals for separate units interfere with each other if they're too close together.

Hillebrand said he hoped the issue was mechanical, because then it's something tangible to fix.

"I hope it's not EMC because if it is EMC, then you have a gremlin that could take a long time to find," he said.

The other culprit could be glitches in myriad software codes controlling multiple car functions, he surmised.

On the Prius issue, owners shouldn't panic about braking, Hillebrand advised.

When you tap the brakes on a Prius, the car goes into a regeneration mode where it's trying to recapture the kinetic energy and turn it into battery energy. When you hit the brakes hard, the computer realizes it's also got to apply the mechanical brakes to stop the car. The multi-tasking is why braking in a hybrid gives a different sensation than non-hybrids, Hillebrand said.

"Toyota is proud of themselves for producing some of the most complex vehicles the world has ever seen - but complexity comes at a cost," he said.

For more information, check out the Web sites nhtsa.dot.gov or Toyoto.com/recall/.

Flotsam and jetsambull; Another high-level and unexpected departure from the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority. Trudy Steinhauser, who served with the agency since 1988 and for about 19 years as secretary/administrative assistant to the board chairman, left Jan. 29. Her resignation was for personal reasons, tollway spokeswoman Joelle McGinnis said. Steinhauser worked recently with former Chairman John Mitola, who exited last summer. Two executive directors also have departed in the last 16 months.bull; The Chicago Auto Show starts Friday and runs through Feb. 21. For details, check out Chicagoautoshow.com.bull; On Monday, you'll be able to pay for Metra tickets with credit cards at stations with an attendant.bull; The tollway holds an open house from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday at Cove School, 350 Lee Road, Northbrook, on summer reconstruction and bridge work on the Edens Spur.