Oh please, don't start this stupid male chauvanist crap again. The man's wife was involved in a car accident, how about being supportive instead of calling her an idiot? What a jerky thing to say.
Ignore this guy joon, if he does it again I'll suspend his account. Rudeness isn't tolerated at the LOC.
The topic here is not women drivers it is uninetended acceleration. Any posts otherwise will be removed by me.
Anyways, all of the research into the Lexuses and other vehicles accelerating unintendedly has shown that its ALWAYS driver error. The NHTSA did a complete investigation of the LS430 and found that there was nothing inherant to the vehicle that causes unintended acceleration. There is currently a similar investigation of the ES, Camry, Sienna, RX, Highlander, and Solara. I'm confident the response there will be the same.
There are a couple things that could have happened. What is inherant in Lexus or any other vehicle with an electronic throttle is a slight lag when beginning accelration, from a stop or at speed. If you overcorrect for this lag as it sounds like your wife may have done once the throttle kicks in it will accelerate at whatever position the pedal is at, which can be quite startling.
Another possibility is your wife may have hit the gas before the truck has successfully shifted into drive. I see people doing this all the time, they back out of driveways and shift to drive before they've stopped and let the car ride back on the transmission and then ride forward and they never actually stop. Aside from being really hard on the transmission this can be very dangerous. If you apply the gas before ther shift is complete it will hesitate, and when it shifts again, the acceleration will be wherever the gas pedal is placed, if its placed too far down again you can loose control.
The main cursor for me is when your wife said "it hesitated a minute". If her foot wasn't on the gas there would be no hesitation to feel. Not saying she's a bad driver, at this point in our lives so many things we do when driving are simply automatic when something traumatic happens like an accident, we don't remember exactly what we did because we do it beneath the level of conciousness.
I'd bet money they're going to find no problem. Glad everyones okay!