Toyota recall to include 2010 Toyota Prius? Driver complaints are startlingly consistent.
Does the 2010 Toyota Prius have a brake problem? If you believe the 171 complaints Prius drivers have filed with the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA), it's hard to escape that conclusion. There's startling consistency among the reports even if there's no word on whether it will be added to the Toyota recall list that now includes 8 models.
Of the 171 reports, all but five relate to some problem with the Prius' braking system. In the vast majority of the cases, drivers wrote that when traveling at low speed and hitting a pothole or other small bump, they felt the Prius surge of its own accord.
A typical complaint, from Jan. 24., goes this way: "When I run over a bump or a pothole on the road, the car seems to accelerate or jolt forward. It happens while I brake to a stop sign and run over a bump or pothole.".
Two injuries are noted across the incidents, involving relatively minor physical harm but moderate damage to the vehicle.
One driver offered a possible explanation, allegedly gleaned from a Toyota technician when the driver brought the car into a dealership:
"If a wheel hits a bump or moves onto a surface that causes it to rotate at a different rate versus the other wheels, the car thinks it is going into a skid and the ABS system kicks in," the driver writes. You can read the NHTSA reports here. The system does not name or geographically locate driver complaints.
Just how bad is the Prius's NHTSA record? Compared with complaints on other popular 2010 models, the Prius' 171 figure is astonishing. The Ford F-150, Honda Accord, and Nissan Murano all have only one complaint apiece. The Nissan Altima has none. The 2010 Toyota Camry claims 21 complaints, several that are similar to issues in the Prius.
Complaints don't directly correlate with incidents (as some incidents are filed twice under different classifications). Nevertheless, in less than a year the 2010 Prius has garned nearly half of the 402 complaints generated by the 2005 Jeep Grand Cherokee over six years. Consumer Reports recently named the Grand Cherokee among its "worst of the worst" used cars in terms of reliability.
Other models on Consumer Reports' worst list also piled up many NHTSA complaints – the 2002 Buick Rendezvous (494 complaints), the 2006 Nissan Titan (158) – but over much longer periods of time.
One other striking difference between these models and the Prius is the diversity of mechanical problems. The other vehicles had everything from powertrain problems to engine-cooling issues. For the Prius, it's almost all about braking.
