Rio Linda widow berates Toyota on safety after crashes
- Sacramento Bee
10/12/2009 - A phone call brought Melodie Bohuchot news so improbable, she thought it must be a joke: Her husband had been killed when a Toyota Camry with a jammed accelerator rear-ended him at 120 mph.
"I freaked out in front of all my neighbors" the Rio Linda woman said Friday, recalling the shock that morning.
In the two years since, Bohuchot, 30, has stayed out of the spotlight and concentrated on raising the three daughters left without a father that day.
Friday, however, she spoke out, accusing Toyota Corp. of doing too little too late to notify customers that their floor mats might slip down and trap the accelerator pedal in the fully open position leading to a fatal crash like the one that killed her husband, Troy Johnson.
"If I'm not going to let people know, who is? They need to let people know this before somebody else dies," Bohuchot said in an interview at a house she rents near Rio Linda Boulevard.
Earlier this week, the auto company said it would send letters by first-class mail to 3.8 million owners of its Camry, Avalon, Prius, Tacoma, Lexus and Tundra brands, urging them to remove the floor mats on the driver's side until the company can devise a safer replacement.
The announcement was prompted by an Aug. 28 accident in San Diego County in which four people died, including a California Highway Patrol officer.
A Toyota spokesman Friday emphasized that the problem with the floor mats is rare and usually caused by improper installation.
Still, Bohuchot said sending letters isn't enough. She urged the auto giant to spend part of its advertising budget to publicize the problem more quickly.
The company should "notify people in every way possible," she said.
The crash that killed Bohuchot's husband bears similarities to the more recent accident that prompted Toyota's announcement.
On July 26, 2007, Redwood City resident Guadalupe Gomez's 2007 Toyota Camry mysteriously sped out of control on Interstate 280 near San Jose, careening 20 miles before hitting the back of Johnson's Honda Accord. Gomez survived. Johnson was killed instantly.
According to a report in the San Jose Mercury News, the California Highway Patrol found unsecured plastic and fabric pieces of the floor mat on the driver's side of Gomez's car, which the agency concluded may have jammed the accelerator down.
Toyota reached a confidential settlement agreement with Bohuchot that included financial compensation she received in April. Bohuchot moved on. But she was horrified, she said, when she heard about the more recent crash.
"I was in shock. It made me angry," said Bohuchot. "I thought after the whole thing with Troy it would be fixed, and Toyota would solve the problem. That didn't happen."
On Aug. 28, near Santee in San Diego County, authorities received a frantic 911 call from a loaner Lexus going 120 miles per hour on State Route 125 and unable to brake itself.
The car, carrying four people a family of three from San Diego and a relative visiting from Vallejo clipped a Ford Explorer. Dispatchers listening to the 911 call heard the Lexus occupants tell one another to hold on and pray. Then their car hit an embankment and went airborne, rolling several times.
Everyone in the Lexus, driven by an off-duty California Highway Patrol officer, died at the scene.
After the Santee crash, Toyota President Akio Toyoda offered a public apology. "Four precious lives have been lost," he told reporters in Tokyo. "I offer my deepest condolences. Customers bought our cars because they thought they were the safest. But now we have given them cause for grave concern. I can't begin to express my remorse."
In an interview Friday, Los Angeles-based Toyota spokesman Brian Lyons said the firm will "start a mailing in late October to all 3.8 million owners of potentially affected vehicles, asking them to remove any removable floor mat from the driver's side of the vehicle."
Eventually, there will be a recall of those vehicles, with dealerships installing improvements to prevent the problem. But, he said, it could take several months to redesign floor mat components and receive federal testing and approval.
Lyons said that he didn't "even have a rough timeline" for the recall. He added, however, that "this is very rare. It's usually the wrong mat or an improperly installed mat. Our vehicles have hooks that hold the mats in place, and what we mostly see is that the hooks are not being used."
But, Lyons said, "we are working on this as quickly as possible."
In addition to the letters, Toyota also has posted a warning statement about the floor mats on its Web site.
That's not good enough, said Ed Vasquez, a spokesman for the Mann Law Firm in San Jose, which represented Bohuchot in her lawsuit against Toyota in Santa Clara Superior Court.
"They simply can't rely on first-class mail and notices on their Web site," Vasquez said. "It's not unreasonable that they take a tenth of their advertising budget and dedicate it to the problem."
Lyons declined to comment on that suggestion, saying he had not heard it before.
While the global automaker deals with the safety issue, Bohuchot continues to deal with its most personal dimension.
"The hardest thing I have ever had to do in life is telling my girls that they're never again going to see their dad, and that it's nobody's fault," she said. "The girls, when they get really sad, we write letters to Troy and tie them to balloons and let them go into the air. It's kind of their way to be able to speak to him.
"It's our life now," she said. "It's something we have to deal with as a family."
If you or a loved one have been injured or suffered a loss due to a recalled Toyota or Lexus floor mat you may be entitled to compensation. Contact the Toyota Floor Mat Recall Lawyers of Ennis & Ennis, P.A. today by filling out the form on this page or calling toll-free: 1-800-856-6405. Nationwide Free Case Evaluations.
