NHTSA Complaint #11554644 — 2009 TOYOTA CAMRY

We (my wife and I) were driving our vehicle Sunday November 5th 2023 in the morning and experienced a serious issue. While on the highway, the car was stuck with the gas petal in the down position (we did not realize this until after we were able to successfully power down the car) and continued to accelerate in an uncontrolled manner. We were fortunate that our breaks were able to stop the car, and we navigated it to the shoulder of the highway. We then put the car in park, all while the engine was full throttled. We powered down the car and removed the keys. We waited a few moments and tried to power the car again - the engine however remained full throttled. We turned the vehicle off once again and then realized the gas petal was stuck in the down position. We were able to manually get the petal unstuck at this time. We have not driven the vehicle since this incident and consider it too dangerous to do so. Since this incident, we have looked up any potential recalls for this issue and have not found any. To answer the questions above: The gas petal/acceleration malfunctioned. The safety of everyone in the vehicle and other drivers on the road were at significant risk. The vehicle has not been driven since, and the issue has not been reproduced. No recalls were found for this VIN. The vehicle has not been inspected since the incident, but otherwise has passed inspection in our state. There were no warning lamps or messages on the vehicle before or after the incident. We believe the manufacturer is responsible for addressing the issue, even though there is not a recall for this particular problem. This is a known issue by the manufacturer, as they have released many recalls for similar models/years and have even created a video on youtube to instruct drivers how to address this issue, if it happens, while driving.