Slashdot Mirror
A Car With A Mind Of Its Own
mindriot writes "When Hicham Dequiedt, driving on a highway between Vierzon and Riom in central France in his Renault Vel Satis this Sunday, was overtaking a truck, his car began accelerating to 120 mph on its own, apparently due to a defect in the cruise control system. Stomping on the brakes proved pointless and, having a magnetic card for a car key, he could not cut the ignition. After calling the police from his cell phone who then attempted to clear the streets of any danger to him, in what he described as the most fearful event of his life, he raced down the highway for another hour before finally managing to stop the car. Read about the incident here or, in more detail, in this article by the German 'Spiegel' (translation). The case is still under investigation. Are we putting too much trust in the increasing number of electronic systems that our lives depend upon?"
Maybe it's just me, but if you buy a car you can't handle if the power assist systems fail, you bought the wrong car. It's like these tiny women on harley-davidson motorcycles, how the fuck are they going to pick those things up if they drop them? Just ignorant.
If you can't steer and/or stop your car with the power off, you need less car. Of course, soon we're going to see cars that eliminate all the hydraulic systems on the vehicle, and even the steering linkage will be gone - if the car loses power you won't be able to do anything. That ought to be interesting - look for it to happen in the US in 2006. I believe there's already at least one production auto which is completely drive by wire in terms of throttle and steering, but I'm not sure about that one. It might just have electric power assist steering. The brakes are going to be going electric soon as well, which is pretty reasonable when you consider the unreliability of automotive hydraulic systems. Using electric brakes with metallic pads means no brake fade, ever, up to the point where you warp your rotors. There's no brake fluid to take on water and boil, not necessarily in that order.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The emergency brake may help to slow or stop a vehicle if the normal braking system goes out, but it can't fight the force of the engine -- especially if the cruise control makes the engine rev higher when the vehicle slows down.
Don't mean to offend anyone, but is there anything actually backing up the driver's story? Personally, I wouldn't mind having a sort of cannonball run through the highway with police clearing path for me, and then explain "officer, there was something wrong with my cruise control".
Every one of these stories about "uncontrolled acceleration" and "out of control" cars is exactly one thing... A driver who doesn't know what the heck they're doing. No brakes? They're stronger than the engine. How about just shifting into neutral? Even an automatic transmision has that option.
Sorry. I just don't believe these stores as anything other than driver's fabrications to cover their own ineptness. It would take a multiple simultaneous failure of unrelated systems to make this happen.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
For a car with cruise control, there should be an emergency lever that shuts off the hoses supplying fuel to the engine. The driver would control the lever manually just as he manually controls the parking brake.
You're right, but for the wrong reasons.
Have you ever driven a car without power steering? You won't notice a difference at higher speeds, actually the difference between manual and power steering becomes negligible as soon as you're going faster than 20 kph or so. Losing power brakes is bad, but the brakes do still work, and you'll slow down quicker than by just going into neutral.
The dangerous thing is that you might LOCK your steering by pulling off the ignition key!
Besides, your warrently doesn't cover "embedding oneself into concrete."
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
You ever had the steering wheel lock on you when you have the car in the off position? Could you imagine if you had turned the ignition all the way off and had to avoid an object in the road... You overcompensated and locked the wheel. What happens now?
Don't think you are so high and mighty.
Ok - now I know nothing of Renault cars, but do they brake by wire? Every car has a braking system that is stronger than the engine. (Slashdotters - this is not flame bait - though it is a blatant overgeneralization it is in most cases true)
Unless the car brakes by wire instead of having a master cylinder, there should be no way that it could not stop. An ABS system that malfunctioned would not affect the brakes' capabilities.
Brake fade due to boiling of the fluid could be a problem going from 120 to stop with a wide open throttle, but given the amount of air passing over the brakes I would still think it possible to stop.
Using the e-brake (hand brake)(parking brake) might help, in addition to hte fading main brakes. If the rear brakes are disc brakes, they usually have a smaller drum brake for the e-brake because drums lock up better (so your car doesnt roll down the hill)
Also if this person was really fearing for his safety... life is more dear than property. screw the engine - either shift to neutral and hope it has a damn good rev-limiter, or (worse) downshift and use the engine+rev limiter as a kamikazi-style brake and hope it doesnt go boom!
or reach under the dash and pull fuses randomly.
Power steering and braking is provided by a cylinder of fluid. You've got enough for probably 4 or 5 hard 'full brake' depressions and at least 3 or 4 good wheel cranks.
Shutting down the car forces it into a 'reboot' of the system. Shifting it into neutral while the engine is at full power is a good way to blow it.
Downshifting the car is fine, but all thats going to do is blow out your clutch or tranny- remember,if the pedal is fully depressed it's probably redlined at 6500 RPM.
So first, in order-
Hit the breaks.
(failing that)
shift to neutral/ kill the engine / restart
(if the car immediately revs the engine back up then...)
kill the engine / SLOWLY depress the break to come to a stop.
So yes, a mechanical switch is needed- it obviously would not have helped the driver in this situation (I guess; I don't have nor have I used a magnetic key for ignition).
if all, absolutely all, fails, hope to god you have a good drive somewhere in front of you that is willing to match speeds and sacrifice his rear end (semis work great). Using the back end of the vehicle, his braking power should probably be enough to bring your racing car in, and shifting into neutral would cap it. Pop the hood and kill the battery. (probably would need bolt cutters from the police).
So in conclusion, you've plenty of power / pressure in your breaks after you kill the engine. Test it some day- turn the car off, in neutral let the car roll, feel the pedal become soft... after about the 4th 'pump' you're down to your own mechanical leverage 'pumping' the fluid into the brake cylinders.... so no more 'assist'.
If you turn the ignition 'part way' off (so that the engine stops - most cars will still loose power steering and brakes. They are generally powered from the engine, and are not electric. Some more modern cars do have electrical power-steering, I think.
-James.
OK, this is disturbing. So, the car was started without the ignition key. Great. How does that stop you from turning it off? How do you turn it off normally? Do you just wait for the fuel to run out?
This same thing happened a few years back with some woman in a Volkswagen. Turns out she never tried to turn the car off, or take it out of gear.
This driver should get cited for failure to maintain control of their vehicle. This whole story stinks of someone complaining about the car when, in fact, they are a moron.
I suspect this problem is mechanical, not electronic. The cruise control connection to the throttle or the throttle linkage itself can bind and stick the throttle wide open.
I just had the accelerator get jammed to the floor on my Mustang when it got held down by the floor mat. Luckily I have a manual transmission and could just put int he clutch and let it the engine get cut off at red line. After trying pushing on the accelerator to get it to bounce back, I unstuck the throttle by pulling the floor mat back. I could have killed the engine with the key and coasted to the shoulder.
This guy might have freed it up by pushing on the gas.
Just like with the "unintended accelleration" stories, I think we're not hearing the whole story. One Audi dealer offered $10,000 to anyone who could make the car take off while he had his foot on the brake. There were no takers. Every car made has better brakes that overpower the engine. The engine will die. The car will stop.
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
Here's a little news flash for you. On most automatic transmission vehicles (I can't speak about those produced in Lower Elbonia) you CANNOT shut the ignition entirely off (thereby locking the steering wheel) if the car is in gear thus preventing your little "locking the steering wheel while rolling" scenario.
Seems the guys who designed the vehicles gave that scenario a little thought and decided it was not desireable and put safeguards in place to prevent it from occurring.
Don't be so high and mighty yourself.
I've seen a 110 pound woman pick up a Fat Boy that weighed 600 pounds dry. Knowing the technique is half the battle.
Not to mention, the smallest harley, an 883 Hugger Sportster, is light enough that even without a good technique most people can pick it up. My sister, who has chronic back problems and is about as strong as a six year old, managed to pick up her Sportster no problem. You seem to be of the impression that every Harley is a monstrous oversized beast suited only for giant musclebound bikers. Who's the ignorant one here?
There are large touring bikes out that that are virtually impossible for ANYONE to pick up. Does that mean they shouldn't be ridden? The difference is, you shouldn't be riding a bike like that unless you are experienced enough to PREVENT it from dropping. Little woman or big burly fatass, you should buy a bike within your skill range that is comfortable to ride, weight be damned.
It's a PICNIC. Problem In Chair, Not In Car. ;-)
It's amazing to me that this guy had the presence of mind to call on a phone, but for an HOUR didn't think of downshifting.
Probably he, like most other drivers, is only concerned about going FASTER, not slower.
Downshifting isn't going to do a damned thing if the shifter isn't connected physically to the gearbox, and is all under electronic control by a fuxxored control box.
Subaru sent me a recall notice 6 months ago about a potential problem. It was mechanical, though, not electrical. Apparently a retaining clip for the cable for the cruise control has broken in some models, causing acceleration to 'stick'. Dealers are replacing defective clips at no cost to drivers.
As it has already been said many times, the best way is to shift into neutral, sound the horn and use hazards. That's what the recall letter said, as well.
its taught at least in the massachusetts drivers license handbook.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
Yeah, but if you shut off the ignition, it engages the steering wheel lock, so you won't be able to turn the wheel anymore, even if you have assist.
At least this is true for cars sold in the U.S.
No one got beat up more often than the mimes of the old west!
1) If you kill the ignition in this situation, you're not going to immediately lose power steering and power braking. The engine is still going to be turning over (at least a little bit, even in an automatic transmission) since it's in gear and the tires are spinning. As long as you have the engine turning, you have power steering & power braking; these systems (for most cars) don't rely on electronics.
2) You can control a car without power steering or power braking.
3) You have 2 options.
a) Run the car at 120mph until you run out of gas.
b) Kill the ignition and try to handle it.
4) This guy was probably just out having some fun. He managed to stop it before he killed himself by hitting a toll booth. I don't believe one word of it.
I am sceptical about this story, however it reminds me of an attitude to software, expressed before by a French engineer, that I disliked :-
An Airbus avionics programmer appeared on a documentary about the Airbus crashes (this was in the UK so was at least seven years ago). He was quoted as saying something like "we take the attitude that, with software, if we test it well enough, then it will work".
This scared me. If you don't know why, I don't want to ride in your plane or live near YOUR nuclear reactor, either.
i wouldn't try that at well over 100+. those runaway areas are for trucks with failed brakes, not fast cars at wide open throttle.
The top of the line Vel Satis has 245 hp. Brakes can easily out power the engine. It took him an hour to decide to push hard enough on the brakes to stop the car. Of course, with the proper pressure on the brake pedal, he came to a halt.
Learn to love Alaska
My first car was a Ford [car model removed due to owner's embarrassment]. I came to a light and as I hit the brakes to slow down the engine started revving like mad. I had to put all my weight onto the brake pedal to keep it still at the light, it was like trying to hold back a crazed horse. I didn't want to go through the light obviously and I didn't want to kill the engine there either. I managed to control it until I got to a parking lot on the other side of the intersection where I put it into neutral and killed the ignition. The engine dieseled for almost 5 minutes until it used up what was in the carburetor (yes, old car). Fortunately there was a mechanic across the street who walked over and checked the throttle line and noticed that it was frozen open. He loosened it up and I was able to get it to the shop the next day safely.
NOT FUN!
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Would be bad for the car ;)
LETS DECOMPOSE & ENJOY ASSEMBLING
How fast do you think the runaway truck is going?
What is wrong with her brakes if she couldn't stop a car with a fast idle in 5th?
It's like these tiny women on harley-davidson motorcycles, how the fuck are they going to pick those things up if they drop them?
The same way tiny men do: straddle the bike, and use leverage to shift the bike on the natural fulcrum provided until both handlebars can be grasped. I've seen 4-foot sub-100-pound women manage this easily with extremely heavy bikes. It isn't about how strong your arm is in this situation, it's about your understanding of physics.
If you only lift bikes while standing off to one side of them, you are doing it wrong.
Just ignorant.
Yes, that sums the first portion of your comment up nicely. You'd fail the buyer test in my local Harley dealership. They take you out back where they have a rusted-out chopper. The owner tells you he won't sell you a bike you can't pick up, so you must demonstrate that you can pick up that old rusted bike. Standing to one side and pulling, unless you are extremely strong, will not help you. If you don't straddle the bike, you probably aren't going to move it. He'll show you the trick, though, if he likes you.
http://xkcd.com/386/
magor differences, aircraft are constantly maintained by professionals, while an automobile is "inspected" at most once per year, and power assist systems in cars are operable even when the power assist fails, while a control-by-wire system you are fuxored when the computer locks in 100mpg hard Right turn mode due to buggy core or "cosmic rays"
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Try a Dodge Ram 250 without power steering (pump failure) at 55mph, and post again.
It isn't a matter of being experienced enough "to prevent dropping" - as any truly experienced rider will tell you, it isn't if you will be going down, it is when you will be going down. It doens't matter how good, how quick, or how smart you are, at some point you will hit a patch of gravel or a slick of oil and you will be down before you know what happened. If you think otherwise you are merely fooling yourself.
As far as automatic transmissions go, Rovers can do some pretty strong engine braking. When off road, I never use the brakes, just shift into first and I will crawl down the hill.
Actually, it should be "All your brake are belong to us." Brake should be singular.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
Wait, you're driving a Ram 2500 as a commuter vehicle and are touting the improved gas mileage of a manual trans?
Dumbass.
Destroying your car is preferrable to maming and/or killing others and yourself (let's not even talk about law suits). You hardly did the wrong thing.
Why bother.
When you downshift from, say, 4th to 3rd in an AOD transmission, the lever may go into the 3rd slot but the system will not actually shift down until it's "safe" to do so. It's the same premise that the system uses to shift up. You can hold the car in 2nd gear and it won't go over, but it also won't shift up to 3rd immediately if you push the lever into third gear. In an AOD, you more or less have to look at your gear lever as a nice suggestion that the car USUALLY follows.
I don't really know how you could safely stop a modern AOD if you lose control of the throttle unless you've removed the rev limiter. The car will not shift down or into neutral if doing so would throw you over the rev limit and you can't gun the engine further to try and blow it either.
As a sidenote, you can get a shift kit that will let you shift up and down in an AOD at your command. If you had something like that and you were going that fast, you MIGHT be able to override the rev limiter simply by throwing the lever back into first gear as hard as you can. Rev limiters aren't perfect and you can rev the engine to explosion if you do something stupid enough.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
So, what you're saying is, this guy couldn't have some form of arthritis in his clutching knee? Tendonitis? Multiple breaks?
Think before you speak, thanks. My girlfriend drives an automatic, it boggles the mind. At least it still has a hand break.
I think you're right.
I'm trying to understand why applying the brakes didn't help at all. What in the world could have prevented the main brakes to operate correctly?
Why didn't he stall the engine or press the clutch? No power to the wheels or stalling the engine - either way it should have stopped the car with much less trouble. An automatic transmission would probably be finished after that, but it had been safer for him.
I'd stomped on the brakes or even scratch the roadside crash barriers, but no way I'd keep on racing through heavy traffic. No chance to tell insurance "my car kept on accelerating so I had to ram sideways into the barrier to decelerate", but hitting a truck is presumably worse.
Conspiracy, driver a nutcase or marketing ploy from a competitor, who knows?
Since the vehicle was carburated, and (I haven't owned one, so I can't say this for certian) probably doesn't have an RPM limiter like most fuel injected cars do, shifting to neutral could have been just as life threatening as not maintaining control of the vehicle.
A blown engine can send parts in all directions, including through the interior of the vehicle. FWD vehicles with transverse mounted V6/V8 engines means at least three pistons are pointed towards the firewall...
Take into consideration that the braking power you have when not accelerating (deccelerating from 50) is enhanced by the vacuum assist in the braking system. When your car is under full throttle, there is no vacuum in your intake system - therefore, you only have limited (based on the size of your vacuum reservior) brake assistance. After that, you are entirely without power brakes.
Try this sometime - get in a car with turbos and put it into acceleration such that you are generating boost. Now press the brake pedal without stopping accelerating. You will have 3-5 seconds of power assisted braking. This is obviously an exaggerated situation with being under boost but that allows you to feel the affect in a more pronounced manner.
Full-Featured GPL Web Hosting Control Panel
The Audi 5000, and many other cars over the years, have had reported cases of "unintended acceleration", often resulting in deaths. In most (if not all) cases, it turns out to be driver error, wherein the driver BELIEVES they're stomping on the brakes, but instead they're pressing the gas. The truth is, in all modern automobiles, the brakes can bring the car to a halt even with the accelerator floored.
Historically, this usually occurs when something else malfunctions and causes the driver to get distracted. In the case of the Audi 5000, it was an idle control that went awry, and when people shifted into drive with their foot off the brake, the higher idle would make the car lurch forward. They'd slam on the brakes, but accidentally hit the gas, and keep their foot to the floor until they hit something. They found this out by inviting a number of people who experienced this "unintended acceleration" to a parking lot, and had them drive engineers around for two days in front of cameras while the engineers played with the computer to force errors.
On the second day of this testing, a woman putting the car into reverse went tearing across the parking lot at high speed until the engineer reached over and shut the car off. She jumped out of the car, and on camera, shouted something like "It happened! There's your proof! The car is at fault!" -- but the cameras inside the car showed she had been hitting the gas, the cameras outside showed no brake lights, and the engineer riding with her bore witness as well.
As a result of this study, and all of the fallout surrounding the related lawsuits, the US requires an automatic transmission interlock on all cars sold here. You MUST have your foot on the brake to shift into gear.
- - -
Now, to the case at hand. I am fairly certain that this was the course of events:
1. The driver recently purchased the car, or it was a rental, so he was relatively unfamiliar with it (the Audi 5000 incident found that the vast majority of people having these incidents were drivers for whom the Audi was not the primary vehicle, or whom had just purchased it);
2. The driver was cruising along on cruise control, and pressed the gas without manually disengaging the control.
3. When the driver lifted off the gas and pulled back in, the car either didn't slow down as quickly as he thought it should (remember, we're assuming he was unfamiliar with the car), he accidentally hit the button to reset the cruise control to the newer, higher speed, or there was a genuine malfunction that reset the cruise to the newer, higher speed.
4. In the next few seconds that followed, he panicked and went for the brake -- but instead he hit the gas. Having done this, and firmly believing that he was hitting the brake to no effect, he continued to floor the gas. The car continued to accelerate.
5. Between trying to shut the car off, calling the police and swerving around traffic, it never occurred to him to look down and see if he was actually hitting the brake. No shame there; none of us would have, either.
6. As he approached the tollbooth, he made another attempt at the brakes (probably using both feet this time) and brought the car to a stop.
So, is the cruise control at fault? Possibly, but not definitely. Either way, similar past incidents suggest that it was a relatively minor issue until he hit the gas by mistake.
For what it's worth, with no witnesses in the car and no instruments monitoring, we'll never know for sure. Also, unless he realized his mistake just before stopping the car, he may well spend the rest of his life believing it's the car's fault -- and if he DID realize his mistake, there's no way he's ever going to admit it.
... like cars without traditional ignition keys should have a kill switch wired to the emergency brake pedal. Hit the emergency brakes, power is cut to the computer.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Really? So you're saying the steering wheel in a ~1990 Jeep Cherokee is not physically connected to the wheels?
I find it hard to believe that a car manufacturer would design a car that would not steer under loss of power. Over here in New Zealand, we call that illegal.
My guess is you lost power assistance to the steering, and "being young", you panicked. That's ok. It happens.
This is why I think driver education should be more like flight training, armed forces training, etc. You should (in a controlled environment, of course) be forced into situations where things fail, and you have to react.
Any cars' brakes can stop the car at any speed, even with full throttle.
This is ridiculous.
I'm not saying it doesn't happen (because the driver is too scared to push the brakes hard enough), but it shouldn't happen and is easily avoidable.
Some car TV show tested Audis when they were having the 'sudden acceleration' problem. Stopping distance only increased by a small percent with the throttle wide open.
Nothing to see here; Move along.
"Manuals are just FAR superior to automatics in every way possible."
Wow. I never knew that one thing could be better than another in "every way possible". But if a Slashdotter says it, it must be true.
Just like "Linux is better than Windows in every way possible", or "Kerry is better than Bush in every way possible", statements like your own only show your ignorance.
There are situations where automatic transmissions are far superior to manual transmissions. There is a reason that most people drive automatic transmission vehicles, and it's not that "they're stupid".
So, the next time you feel like telling me that RPN is better, that assembly beats Java, that building a computer is better than buying one, or that "vi" is for wusses, Don't.
He started out passing someone at ~90mph, so it was pretty much too late for that before he even lost control. Besides, haven't you ever found out that you were driving around with the emergency brake on? I'd never risk my car by experimenting with it, but I don't have much faith in it in an actual emergency. Of course this kind of thing will never happen to those of us with manual transmissions, or even a typical automatic.
As an automotive engineer I can say it sounds like a hoax to me as well.
1. Brakes are designed to be stronger than the engine transmission combination. But if misapplied can heat up and become not totally effective, but still.
2. I remember Chrysler had similar problem, but it was meerly lunging forward, no consistent acceleration. Note, stepping on the brake deactivates the cruise control.
3. parking brake will not be more effective than main brake, but its not hydraulic so its redundant (but not additive). But it definitely will not stop the car, especially a front wheel drive. Its a "parking" brake after all...
As for the ignition, even passive "authorization" systems like cards and RFID and FOBs typically have manual ignition control. So I don't believe it for one second.
Of course turning off ignition switch causes steering wheel lock, so you better be damn careful to turn to accessory.
Most likely cruise got stuck on acceleration, and he let it go to see what would happen.