Are you saying this because of the "stuck pedal" thing? Just pretend he means 90s Corollas then. They were properly robust in spite of cost minimization.

There was no "stuck pedal" thing. Not a single incident of "unintended acceleration" with Toyota was ever proven. Something like 70-80% of the incidents turned out to be intoxicated drivers, and the rest were driver error.

You're right that the government did a big investigation and ultimately didn't find a major problem with the software/electronic throttle control system, but mistaken about the other causes of unintended acceleration.

Ultimately Toyota recalled about 7 million cars (some twice). Dealers were installing the wrong floor mats, and these were trapping the accelerator pedal. This problem was well-documented as the cause of "unintended acceleration" incidents, including at least five deaths. Additionally, there was a lack of "brake override" system to idle the engine when the brake and accelerator were both applied (Toyota added one at the government's request), and some pedals manufactured by a supplier were well-documented as "sticky" (they recalled these cars and fixed this).

See the NHTSA report, pages 4-10 (PDF pages 15-21): https://one.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/nvs/pdf/NHTSA-UA_report.pd...

In summary, there were real "stuck pedal" problems with these cars that led to unintended acceleration and fatalities and, eventually, recalls and fixes. And, yes, some or many incidents were probably related to "pedal misapplication."

"Dealers were installing the wrong floor mats, and these were trapping the accelerator pedal. This problem was well-documented as the cause of "unintended acceleration" incidents, including at least five deaths."

This sounds like an illusory problem to me, not because I doubt the facts, but because it's all about framing. I got floor mats for an old car, with anchors to hook to the seat rails, and I couldn't figure out how to fasten them. So I took them to a dealer and asked them to do it. After a while, they came loose and the mat shifted several inches in the direction of the gas pedal. Now, it didn't especially matter, and I didn't crash, and eventually I repositioned it. But this is really about multiplying large numbers by small probabilities. There are probably only a couple hundred cars like mine on the road. If there were millions, perhaps it would be a major problem. But why should we all worry about Toyotas just because the floormat issues are mentally grouped together?

Non-floormat issues are different, but I think I would have to experience it to believe it when it comes to the brakes not being able to override the engine on a typical Toyota.

Uhhh.

https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/toyota-pay-12b-hiding-deadly-...

https://mashable.com/2014/03/19/toyota-lied-aceleration-reca...

https://www.rs-law.com/unintended-acceleration/

And here's an article by one of the experts who reviewed Toyota's code and found the smoking gun: https://embeddedgurus.com/barr-code/2013/10/an-update-on-toy...

You can't exactly prove it though, the design meant that we can't say for sure it didn't happen. However there isn't enough information logged to say it did either.

I was under the same impression for some time, but as you can see from replies, there's some disagreement about that.