Citroen announced it will recall over 20,000 C3 Picasso models sold in the United Kingdom for a rather unusual reason. It seems that the car's brakes can be activated accidentally by the front passenger when pushing their feet into the footwell! The discovery was made by a BBC TV show called Watchdog that was alerted about the problem from a cleaning company owning three C3 Picassos.
The reason for this malfunction is a manufacturing flaw occurring in France during the right-hand drive assembly of the C3 Picasso for the UK market. Even though the brake pedal is switched to the right, it remains connected to a mechanism on the left passenger side, BBC's Watchdog explained. It was discovered that the mechanism was covered only by a thin piece of felt, and that it could be easily activated by the passenger’s feet.