NHTSA complaint: 2023 TOYOTA TUNDRA — POWER TRAIN
Greetings all, This is not my vehicle. It is the vehicle that came to a sudden stop on the [XXX] and I hit. The driver apologized and told me his wife was fiddling with the drive shift lever and accidentally pressed the Park button. Indeed, the 2023 Toyota Tundra driver had been stepping on the brakes (lights on the outside of the flip gate) and switching to reverse (small white lights towards the middle of the bumper) the times I found myself behind it (I had managed to move to the right lane to avoid it a few miles earlier). How does an automatic transmission switch from Drive to Reverse and Park while the vehicle is moving (yes, by then we were going slowly because the driver kept stepping on the brake)? This model does not have mechanical interlocks in the shift lever. It counts on electronic controls. Could it be a burned element in a circuit board? Could it be a defective control card? or a design/programming flaw? Could it have the same parking brake problem that resulted in the recent recall of 870 thousand 2021-2023 Ford F-150s? Could it be something else? Please consider requiring mechanical interlocks for shift levers. Electronics are too sensitive to temperature and humidity and controller failures may become more frequent. Thank you. [XXX] INFORMATION REDACTED PURSUANT TO THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 552(B)(6)
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration — Office of Defects Investigation