Brake Light On problems of the 2004 Toyota Sienna

The steering angle sensor, pn# 89245-08011 failed. The van can not be driven over 23 mph. The brakes come on automatically over 23 mph and the engine will not respond to accelerate. The steering seems strange (anti-lock brake light coming on) but I was able to keep the van in my lane of traffic. I am concerned that this sensor or others will fail and the van will automatically apply the breaks and loose power preventing me from maneuvering the van to the side of the road. I do not know what would have happened if I was travelling at highway speed. I consider this a major safety problem.

Starting from a stop and accelerating up to approx 20 mph, abs tracs vsc lights illuminated with beeping alert, and activation of brakes causing a sudden deceleration. The road was dry, level pavement, no ice, no gravel, driving straight and the brakes were not being applied. There were no conditions that would necessitate the traction control. As the brakes were not being applied at the time of the incident, the rear brake lights would not have illuminated. Therefore, any driver behind our vehicle would not have been alerted to the sudden deceleration which could have resulted in a collision. Fortunately this was not the case. This is the 2nd time that this issue has occurred with this vehicle. The first was in Nov. 2007 (46000 miles in the vehicle). Toyota service was not able to find a fault, no codes stored and not able to replicate at that time. They said that they would have a corporate contact get in touch with me. I never heard from them. Nothing was resolved. There are at least two tsbs related to the vsc issue (TSB br004-03 and br008-04). Neither was implemented.

The contact owns a 2004 Toyota Sienna. The contact stated that the vehicle would not shift out of park just after the ignition was started. After repeated attempts, the contact was able to shift the vehicle out of park as the anti-lock brake warning light illuminated. The vehicle was taken to an authorized dealer where the brake switch and the anti lock braking system were replaced. The failure and current mileage was 97,145. Updated 04/15/lj.

1. Events leading to the failure: my wife was traveling north on peebles rd in allison park, PA in our 2004 Toyota, Sienna. After my wife proceeded through the intersection with duncan avenue the driver of the vehicle in front of my wife suddenly stopped short and that person's brake lights did not come on. When my wife realized the situation she hit her brakes hard and the pedal went quickly to the floor providing no braking and resulting in my wife?s vehicle to hit the vehicle in front of her. While all vehicles were traveling well within the speed limit the damage was extensive as the vehicle in front of my wife was a Ford explorer. 2. The failure, frequency, and consequences: I have tried to replicate this failure and can readily recreate it. In a safe environment I have tried to suddenly and dramatically hit the brakes and the pedal quickly goes right to the floor. Some fairly limited braking does occur during these attempted re-creations but it seems to be too little and delayed. My wife's vehicle was significantly damaged requiring $7,083. 61 in total repair cost (documentation is available). 3. While the crash was the first time for such a dramatic failure, our concerns of the softness of the braking system had been previously reported to a local Toyota dealer and their response was "that is how those brakes are". So nothing has really been done to correct the failure and I believe all the parts in the braking system currently are original to the vehicle.