The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, or IIHS, recently introduced a new test program that “rates the performance of front crash prevention systems to help consumers decide which features to consider and encourage automakers to speed adoption of the technology.”
They then proceeded in trying out several dozens of cars, and found Subaru and Volvo modes’ systems to be the best of the lot, achieving the best mitigation results. However, one car fared particularly badly, to the point where its crash mitigation system only shaved a “negligible” amount of speed off, before hitting the placed obstacle.
The car was the Toyota Prius V that comes with the brand’s Pre-Collision System (PCS), part of a $5,000 options pack, of which it accounts for about one fifth of what is asked. Now, owners have caught wind of this, and have proceeded to take legal action against Toyota Motor Sales, demanding justice and answers, according to Courthousenews.
“Of those 47 models, only the Toyota Prius V and one Infinity model failed to qualify as a crash prevention system,” the complaint states. “Despite the PCS [precollision system] being marketed and sold by TMS [Toyota Motor Sales] as an accident mitigation system that provides automatic braking in unavoidable frontal collisions, it provides no real safety benefit to consumers who paid for the option through either a sale or a lease.”
According to Tae Hee Lee, one of the lead plaintiffs in the suit against Toyota Motor Sales, officials representing the automaker responded by stating that the the company never said that its models include collision-avoidance systems.
“This false statement makes clear that Toyota knew that the class vehicles equipped with PCS did not provide any effective automatic braking in unavoidable frontal collisions,” the complaint reads.
The plaintiffs want $5 million for “breach of warranty, fraud, breach of contract, bad faith and other claims.”
We will bring you more on this, as it comes up.
By Andrei Nedelea
PHOTO GALLERY
