Fit Floor Mats Can't Kill You
 

YouTube - Honda Fit Floor Mats Can't Kill You

This is my very flawed and unscientific simulation of how that tragic accident involving the CHP officer and that lexus might have happened.

I tried and tried but I just can't see how a floor mat kills people (at least with the Fit's). In our cars, the brake pedal is high enough that even though the floor mat mysteriously unlatches itself and rides under the brake, it won't touch when pressed all the way down (mat is also touching the accelerator, so braking would cause simultaneous acceleration)

And when the floor mat is touching accelerator and you get off the accelerator, the floor mat is too flimsy to hold on to it.

This leads me to believe that perhaps there's a toyota conspiracy? Perhaps the e-throttle is messed up and accelerates randomly?

It was real unfortunate that something like that happened really. Maybe it all depends on the weight of the mat? I had this happen to me once in my focus when it came undone from the clip where it locks the mat down, trying to pass a vehicle and some how just slid up and caught the pedal. They where all weather mats that came stock that year(Kona Focus).

When I used to have my CB7, something was wrong with my throttle cable and the throttle would get stuck. I literally had to put my foot under the gas pedal and lift it up to keep the car from going forward. Scary shit.

It was a heavier all-season mat. The problem isn't that the brake pushes the mat which pushes the gas (try stepping on the gas and the brake together and see which one wins). The mat weights the pedal alone.

If it's truely just the accelerator panel, can you shift it to neutral and hit the brakes?

The media gets it wrong more often than not. Its a lot like the uncontrolled acceleration of Audis and the fuel tanks on Chevy trucks.

The Fit has hooks at the back that prevent the mat from inching fiorward to interfere with the pedals.
There are cars that do not have latches to hiold thefloor mat. Concieveably they could sliop forward and interefere with feet getting to the pedals though we couldn't get it here even by manually scooting the mat into places where we thought interference could occur. Its like the Audi unintended acceleration, no matter what we did we could not get the engine to overcome the brakes..
Just as in this case I suspect panic was the cause rather that actual interfernce.

There are lots of floor mats that are stiff enough to interfere with the brake and accelerator and Lexus has one. However, we have a Lexus here and could not get the mat to interfere with the brake pedal no matter how we arranged it, I suspect panic had more to do with it than actual interference. Even rolled in a loop under the pedal didn't keep from pressing the pedal. Maybe if you rolled the whole mat ito a tube that could interefer but com'on.

Wow...crazy stuff! I actually just purchased the carpet floor mats for my fit and am waiting on them to get here!

Anything that gets in the way of the controls operating the way the driver expects them to operate can kill you.

Right now number one on my list of hazards is the damn stereo head unit (non-nav).

Speaking of floor mat, I am a bit nervous about cutting the hole for the latch on my new Fit for the all weather mats. Does someone have some pics of the process? I saw a dealer made vid on youtube, but that was for the '08 which has a different latch.