Four on the floor

A Toyota was involved in a nasty crash recently in which the floor mat may have jammed the accelerator.

That’s bad. What happened next is a major overreaction.

Before we get to that however, it should be noted that a stuck accelerator is every driver’s nightmare.

I believe you are supposed to shift the transmission into neutral or turn off the engine when that happens.

Plan B would be running into something soft, or at least non-hard. A gently sloping pond or a wide expanse of desert comes to mind, but I know they aren’t always around when you need 'em.

Personally, I hope I never have to deal with a car going 90 mph and me and the passengers screaming like the front row of a Jonas Brothers concert. Driving on “the tunnel” on I-10 through Orange was adventurous enough.

Anyway, in this case Toyota is reacting to the problem by recalling the whopping number of 3.8 million vehicles. That is — drum roll, please — the largest auto recall in U.S. history.

Wouldn’t it be simpler for Toyota to mail owners a coupon for free mats, or ask them to drop by the dealer for a switcheroo?

Or, easiest of all, tell drivers to cut about 3 inches off their floor mats.

Whatever. By the way, with all the brilliant engineers at Toyota who have produced one of the finest automobile lines in the modern era, how come nobody noticed the stupid floor mat was too long?