Slashdot Mirror
Car With A Mind Of Its Own -- Part 2
An anonymous reader writes "As a sequel to the previous Slashdot story where a car 'began accelerating to 120 mph on its own', Renault (the car manufacturer) has examined the supposed faulty car, and as many of us have suspected, no anomaly has been found (google translation). Renault will initiate a court action to discover the truth about the matter. Read more about it here (translation)."
He just wanted to get to work on time.
Was the name of the car KIT? :)
WTF, even if the brake pedal (hello, aren't we still on hydraulic brakes???) wouldn't stop the car, couldn't he have shifted it into neutral?
terpmotors.com
No anomaly found? Of course not. This guy is full of shit, plain and simple. A similar problem almost put Audi out of business in the 80's because of a "story" on 60 Minutes. These people were just as full of shit as this guy.
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How many people actually know someone that is a competent driver that has had this happen?
Linky to the Audi story here (google's first result): http://www.auto123.com/en/info/news/news,view.spy
Let's get away from this old paradigm of automobiles.
The future is one of helicopters, motorbikes, and small 1/2-person pods.
Anyone remember the Audi disputes in the 80's where people kept claiming they randomly accelerated when the brakes were appled? I think it turned out that the accelerator and brake were too close together and people were hitting the gas pedal instead of the brake.
This way to the egress...
This is a fancy way of saying "The guy is lying".
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
I have actually had that happen in an old car of mine. The engine suddenly raced with the result being the car surged ahead. It apparently had something to do with the carburator the mechanic said. //did not RTFA
In Holland we had a similar case, a drunk driver who killed a pedestrian in a parking garage (while driving drunk) claimed his cruise control malfunctioned and he couldn't stop the car.
Whenever people need to lie to protect themselves, they'll try to blame something they don't understand, expecting that the recipient of the story will not understand the stuff either, and thus believe them.
Ofcourse this is rather stupid, but it's just the way people are wired.
Oh great, a car going on rampage. As if drunken and irresponsible humans didn't make the streets unsafe enough already.
Do you expect that if he was making it up he would have offered to have the car inspected by the auto maker? He could have taken it right down to his local mechanic.
The quicker they can cover it up the better, or in this case maybe burry it in the court system? Talk about a recall to end recalls.
Just my 2cents.
She escaped with only burned out brake calipers.
The fault was a bit of grit or buildup preventing the throttle from closing properly.
Keep your air filter clean and don't buy junk gas.
...the power of one lying bastard when given media attention. Once upon a time, when I was young and foolish, my best friend and I contrieved a scheme to get out of a speeding ticket. We figured that if we were caught roaring past a speed trap, we could just continue, and call 911 to get them to clear the road. Then we could get to a safe area, spin out in a huge cloud of dust and praise be to god, we'd be OK. Of course, this would hinge on us being able to convice the cops and investigators, that we weren't actually maniacs. Like I said, when I was young and foolish.
...doesn't mean there wasn't a problem. Anybody remember the Therac-25 radiation machine? After a few incidents it was examined and the first couple of times no fault was found. However, after much closer inspection they found that under just the right circumstances, if things were done in just the right order, bad things would happen. And this is a Renault we're talking about.
Of course, I still think it was user error...
There is clearly nothing wrong with the vehicle. Anyway, how could the company that brought you LeCar ever do wrong?
It is possible that the gear shift is nothing more than an switch. Look at paddle shifters on many cars today... those are not directly linked to the transmission except by wire.
And like any normal person, I put it in neutral and turned the ignition off...
This sig is in Spanish when you're not looking....
A French surrender joke. How innovative.
Brakes of a car can always overpower an engine, even at full throttle. This is just a rehash of the Audi 5000 myth that gripped the media's attention some years ago. There was even a 60 Minutes segment on it. Audi, nor independent researchers ever found anything wrong with the cars.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
IANAM (I Am Not A Mechanic), but could the problem have been in the car's computer? Perhaps a bug that is temporarily fixed by rebooting? If that's the case, it could be very hard to track down and would also explain why they didn't find anything.
It seems a bit unrealistic that he would endanger his life for this. Wait.. not unrealistic. Irrational maybe. Oh, and he's a human. Nevermind.
1. Reckless driving and speeding
2. Lying to police officers
3. Filing a false police report
Civil charges:
1. From Renault, defamation & fraud
2. from everyone else on the road at the time, ???
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
granted credibility of the driver doesn't seem to be the greatest...
but should the manufacturor really inspect their own vehicle?
if they found something that could cost them billions in lawsuits, then well, naturally they would say "oh there's nothing wrong--case closed!".
-judging another only defines yourself
Mmmm, car porn. Young, dumb, and full of hi-test.
If you remember that Airbus that crashed at an airshow a few years back when it's Die-By-Wire flight-controls refused to give the pilot TOGA power.
That accident was put down to pilot-error by Airbus and the French (Government) Investigators. The case has now been re-opened on the merit that the CVR and FDR data seems to have been played with.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
Every full moon my friend lives in fear of his life as his Were-car tries to kill him.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
FYI, from their media site:
After one of its vehicles is incriminated
RENAULT TAKES LEGAL ACTION
Under the control of an independent court-authorized expert appointed by Renault and with the
consent of the customer, Renault evaluated the Renault Vel Satis 3L Dci automatic, registration
number 218 TH 18, in static and dynamic conditions on Wednesday October 6.
According to the driver's comments as reported in the media, the car was jammed at high speed
on the A71 motorway on Sunday October 3, due to a faulty cruise control. The driver reportedly
said that it was impossible for him to stop the car after trying different possibilities for almost an
hour.
The evaluation covered all the vehicle's electronic, mechanical and hydraulic functions. The
data collected and the facts as established reveal no malfunction. The braking system, which
shows no sign of abnormal wear, the gearbox control, the powertrain and the cruise control all
worked perfectly. A full detailed report is expected very shortly.
Given the findings of the evaluation and its concern about the impact this incident might have on
its product image, Renault has decided to take legal action in the form of a summary
proceeding, without prejudice to other actions taken in compensation for any damage suffered
by the company.
It's funny cause its true!
First something would need to break that would be applying more throttle than intended. That could be electronic malfunction or the throttle cable could get stuck.
Next your transmission would need to get stuck. As someone stated a couple articles up, why can't you just shift into neutral and coast to a stop?
Even if those two items broke simultaneously, your brakes would need to fail to keep you from stopping. These are hydrolic systems that are controlled by some form of electronic assisstance so that could theoretically just stop functioning, or you could get a fluid leak, master cylinder could die, etc...
Now even if all those three items happened, what about your emergency break? I don't know about you, but mine is a nice little cable that bypasses any kind of hydrolics and squeezes those calipers.
So in order for this to happen all these different kind of systems would need to break at the same time.
I put better odds on me winning the lottery and I don't even play.
DOUGAL: Can I stay up tonight to watch the scary film?
TED: Ah, no no no. The last time you stayed up to watch a scary film, you ended up having to sleep in my bed. I wouldn't mind, but it wasn't even a scary film.
DOUGAL: Come on, Ted. A Volkswagen with a mind of its own. Driving all over the place and going mad. If that isn't scary, I don't know what is.
The accelerator spring can come loose in the carbie.
It happens to a friend of mines car all the time.
You can simply shift into neutral or put the clutch in (and blow up your engine.) You can turn off your car with the ignition (might have trouble with brakes and steering with new cars.)
You can ride the brake hard and stall the car if it's a manual, or make the stall converter slip if it's an auto.
For people in the software business, I'm surprised at how quickly people are jumping to the conclusion that there was indeed no problem. It is of course perfectly possible, but it would not be the first time that software required some peculier and hard to reproduce set of conditions to replication a problem.
Maybe a vehicle blackbox should be a requirement for this cars with cruise control, so that a proper post mortem has a proper chance of being carried out in future.
As absurd as it this problem sounds, it's also quite absurd to imagine people causing this amount of trouble "just for fun", despite it having happened in the past.
It just should be properly investigated rather than dismissed out of hand. Though I can understand the manufacturers inclination to want to come to a quick conclusion. I bet that despite the quick conclusion they will be also embarking on an extended investigation into the possibility.
I remember reading about a similar case several years ago.
IIRC (and this was a long time ago, so take all of this with a grain of salt), the car was on a US freeway. There was a woman driving, the accelerator got stuck to the floor. She tried to shut off the engine, and the key broke off in the ignition, so she tried to shift into neutral and the gear-shift failed in some catastrophic way. She called the police on her cell phone, and they tried to clear a path for her. Eventually she caught up to traffic and decided that she didn't want to hurt anyone else, so she intentionally went off the side of the road at over 120 mph. I remember that she survived more or less unscathed. If memory serves the car flipped and landed upside down in a large haystack.
I remember this pretty vividly, as this was when cell phones were still newish, and they made a big deal over how if she hadn't had a cell phone, the police would probably have tried to shoot her off the road. They also had a spokesman from the car company, who had some interesting numbers with respect to the odds of all of those components failing simultaneously, and it was pretty unreal.
Suing your customer might not be the smartest thing to do, but Renault might need to make an example. The Vel Satis is its flagship, and while it does have its share of software bugs (like every recent code-heavy embedded system), Renault cannot let any random joker build up a mad car story.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
Anxiety \Anx*i"e*ty\ - n ; finding yourself behind a pinto and in front of an Audi 5000
I seem to remember reading an AutoWeek article about 2 years ago about the time that DaimlerChrysler's Jeep divison introduced the Jeep Liberty small SUV.
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I opened my mail, and I saw this full page cover photo on this weekly auto magazine showing a Jeep Liberty tipping over during a slalom test. An inset picture showed the friggin' car flipped over on its side, if I remember correctly. I'm posting from work, so read for yourself:
http://www.autoweek.com/article.cms?articleId=333
Turns out, AutoWeek testers were doing their standard lane change avoidance/slalom test that they do with everything from Hyundais to GMC Yukons. I'm pretty sure it was a production Jeep Liberty -- nothing pre-production -- that flipped over twice (???) and landed on its side during this relatively commonplace automotive review test.
The driver, thankfully, only suffered a sore neck (nearly broke it, if it had rolled one more time), and AutoWeek devoted their entire issue to this vehicle which had been designed to put an affordable small SUV Jeep into the hands of consumers.
DaimlerChrysler balked and basically claimed that THE TEST WAS NOT A REAL WORLD TEST. AutoWeek called bullshit and basically said, "Uh, yeah it is -- if a driver has to make a quick lane change and or dodge something in the road, it's as real world as it gets."
http://www.autoweek.com/article.cms?articleId=416
I seem to remember that DaimlerChrysler continued to balk at the test, but in fact they ended up making center of gravity changes to the vehicle (suspension and ride height, perhaps?) over the course of the next model year.
Sounds like the same crap that Renault is doing here.
It's funny -- the automotive press gets touted all the time when they LOVE a car and try and hype up the manufacturers' products, but heaven forbid that they also try and save the manufacturer a little legal trouble by finding out these sorts of dangerous rollover issues and what not in pre-production cars. Only the GOOD NEWS, right? Bullshit.
IronChefMorimoto
They have had a reputation for making outrageous cars like this..
They got a featured article for it as well!
There's already been a car with a mind of it's own. Any of you old enough to remember?...http://www.tvparty.com/recmothercar.ht ml
Just another day in Paradise
I bet the cruise control has a hidden program to accelerate constantly when Sammy Hagar's "I Can't Drive 55" comes on over the speakers.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
But I just can't help it!
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Maybe its an issue with the google translation, I didn't look, but thats not how I read the article (admittedly my french is rusty)
Anyway:
<<Au vu de cette expertise et préoccupé par l'impact de cette affaire sur l'image de ses produits, Renault a décidé d'engager une action en justice>>
I read that as: "In view of this expertise, and the impact that this has on the image of their products, renault decided to begin legal action"
So this doesn't sound like a court action "to get at the truth", it sounds like a suit for making false claims about their product to protect their image.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
IIRC, it was a renault. A women was crushed in that accident. For the locals, it was by I-25 and Arapahoe in the tech center.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
For discussion's sake, just assume this was an obscure bug in some onboard software and this bug is hard to replicate (most bugs are). Then: Is the driver now due to demonstrate that he is right? This may well be impossible, even if he is right.
This is quite an interesting thing. You can't prove any halfway complex piece of code to be bug-free and this is true also the other way round.
IF he had used his hydraulic brakes as hard as he could, and the engine was still being told to go WOT (wide open throttle), there is some chance the car could still keep going forward, but not before the calipers and rotors would be pushed beyond brake fluid boiling point, and lose his brakes entirely. Even so, it certainly would have slowed him down considerably.
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From pictures I found on the web, this thing has an automatic transmission, and a lever to control it (like most cars). Neutral could probably have been used. The engine might have blown, but he would have stopped.
From reading, this car does have a motorized throttle valve, which could be a culprit. It would still require dodgy panic thinking on the part of the driver not to realize his options and/or he is full it.
http://www.ultimatecarpage.com/frame.php?file=car
How about an uninterested third party does the inspections? Renault has a motive for not finding anything, and for burying it deep if they do.
emt 377 emt 4
You can't shut a plane off and have it safely stop in the middle of the air. You need to be able to control it and land it first, and only then can you turn it off. However, with a car you CAN turn it off and have it coast to a stop whereever it is, no matter how screwy the computer acts when it's on.
Of course controls can stick, computers go haywire, etc. But at least with a car when everything screws up, you can turn it off or manually take it out of gear.
What is there to find? If there was a bug in some of the software on the car computers how would they find it since it's probably in every other Renault?
"This car is exactly like all the other ones - no anomolies, nothing broken - it's fine."
Chances are the computer would have auto reset like most do and any chance of software evidence being left is gone.
This is why cars should have black boxes.
The Vel Satis has a drive-by-wire automatic gearbox which locks into 'drive' over 80mph IIRC (A down-shift at that speed would cause engine damage).
As for the brakes; they could possibly be computer controlled but that fact remains that braking a (comparatively) light car against 225bhp will burn the pads out on the first attempt. - Of course Renault is currently saying there is no sign of abnormal pad-wear but that wouldn't be the first time a corporation has attempted a cover-up - Perhaps even changed the pads when they inspected it.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
Something similar happened to me but with my computer instead of with my car. I was attempting to use my computer in a responsible manner when all of a sudden it decided to download porn incessantly. In my panic I didn't think of pulling the power cord, and I had to download porn for many hours.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Honestly Officer, I didn't hit him, It was the car(dramatic music).
The Cruise control buttons (on, set, and resume) we beneath the 5 speed shifter and the computer remembered the last speed used even after the car was turned off and on.
One day, I decided to play a trick on my wife, because she hated the car. In the morning, I set the cruise at 110 mph. Later that day, we were on the Turnpike driving somewhere (she was driving) and I casually hit the resume button and the car acclerated at full throttle from 75-80 mph to over 100, with her freaking out the whole time.
I was actually quite surprised how much she freaked out. She's a very intellegent person and all she had to do was step on the brake or clutch, but she just flipped out as it accelerated.
On the way home I did the same thing and her reponse: to pull the car into neutral. I watched the engine spin to 9k rpms (quite rapidly). Not so good. At which point I freaked out and told her about the "trick."
In summary, I was very suprised that someone as intellegent as my wife completely lost it as the car accelerated, so I can easily see how others would react in this situation. Hiiting the breaks/clutch/etc... may not be easy for someone to comprehend at the time of unwanted acceleration.
In the mid-eighties my wife was driving home and the car kept accelerating. She shifted into neutral and called me.
It turned out that a squirrel had hidden a nut in the engine compartment and it got lodged in the accelerator linkage.
It drove fine around town, but when she got on the freeway, the nut dropped into place and jammed the accelerator.
The Vel-Satis has a key-card ignition and a 'start' button.
With the car in motion, the ignition cannot be shut-off. In theory, forcibly removing the key-card *would* stop the engine, unfortunately it would also engage the solenoid steering-lock which would be a Bad Thing(tm) at 125mph.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
mine is a nice little cable that bypasses any kind of hydrolics and squeezes those calipers.
So is mine, it also goes only to my rear brakes.
If you lock up your rear wheels you lose stability and might spin out.
I tried it for educational purposes last winter, going about 30km/h (20mph) in a large radius turn on ice I jammed the brake. I didn't know my car could spin that fast.
I wouldn't want to imagine what would happen if you did that at 200km/h.
...diesel, that had a sticky gas pedal. The first couple of times on the highway, it freaked me out, as it stayed down and kept accelerating. I'd have to pump it a few times before it would get unstuck. At least since it was a Rabbit, as it could only accelerate to about 80. God help whoever bought that car from me...
Floor accelerator, then release to free throttle cable (won't work on throttle by wire, usually). If this doesn't work ...
Shift into neutral.
Apply service brake (or parking brake if service brakes fail) and GENTLY stop the car.
Do NOT turn off the key until you have stopped moving, as this will cause the steering column to lock.
Fortunately, I have only had my throttle stick once, about halfway, and I didn't have to go past step one. It was very cold weather and I imagine it could have been some ice in just the wrong spot.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
That model probably hasn't the usual lever but two buttons on the steering wheel, and, you guessed it, the gearbox is electrically actuated with an electronic control.
BTW, the hand brake is also electrically actuated. I know it because on a Renault Scenic I got stuck in the rush hour because the main fuse blew. Of course the manual override is in the boot, and the boot has no mechanical way to open it, only elecrical, so it was impossible to open.
BTW2 the speed control has at least a bug: while the nominal increment is 2Km/h (i.e. you can preset 30, 32, 34 and so on) under some circumstances (i.e. not always) it wouldn't let you set the speed at 50Km/h: it's either 48 or 52.
Due to these facts I tend to believe the guy more than Renault.
Did we really expect them to say, "Our defective car nearly killed you, we are sorry, here is a nice fruit basket?" And remember kids, when you hire an 'independent expert' and pay them yourself, they are not necessarly indepent any more. Renualt sueing the driver is great, you'd think this happened here in the USA.
I am suprised the police did not impound the car and find someone truly independent to run the tests. The black box should have a few minutes of data on the state of the vehicle (accelerator, brake etc.) unless the manufacturer wiped it. If the driver was not lying, the brakes would be usless to stop the vehicle from those speeds and overusing them would warp the rotors and make it even more dangerous.
From what I can find the Renault Vel Satis has more tech in it than a small server room. It is the "flagship" of Renault's car offerings. Quote, "As part of its vision of the top-range car, Renault gives high priority to advanced technology, while at the same time refusing to permit futile complexity or to "show off" with over-obvious technology. However sophisticated and complex, technology must be simple and easy to use." Any wonder why they reaced to CYA.
SD
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
Growing up, my parents had a huge Chevy Caprice Classic two-door. Family trips were a blast with the runaway cruise control! Get on the interstate and set the cruise to 60-whatever MPH, then sit back and relax. Before long, you'd be doing 70, then 75, 80, and so on.
My dad was great. He'd look at me in the rear view mirror, wink, and quietly point to the speedometer. After a while, mom would say something like: "It seems like we're going kind-of fast. How fast are... [glances to dash] OH MY GOD! SLOW DOWN!!!" I love family vacations.
This one gang kept wanting me to join cause I'm pretty good with a bo staff.
"Renault decided to take action in justice in the form of a procedure of summary procedure which will lead in particular to a contradictory expertise, without damage of other actions in compensation for the damages that the company would have undergone", according to an official statement of the manufacturer.
Maybe they need a different spokesperson...
There's definitely truth to the phrase "lost in translation"...
"Truth is not decided by majority vote" consensus gentium -- Norman Geisler
Its like it went into "Maximum Overdrive"...
A few years ago the throttle regulator air intake got stuck open on my Saturn. Result? When my dad took it in for service he'd go 60 mph on the highway with his foot off the gas. He had to turn it off when stopped at lights.
-- i am jack's amusing sig file
Back in the mid 1980's just before the Audi 5000 thing was in the news, a schoolmate's father bought one of those cars and was able to repeat the symptom by engaging the cruise control, then lightly double-tapping the brake pedal, which is supposed to disengage the cruise. The accelerator pedal would suddenly drop to the floor and the throttle would go wide open due to the cruise control servo pulling it and not releasing even if you turned tried to turn off the cruise. The brakes were not very effective at WOT since the engine was quite strong. Placing the transmission into neutral or turning off the ignition switch was the only way to stop it. He took the car back to the dealer to be serviced and two days later he got a call to come down to the dealership, thinking that the car had been repaired. When he got there, there were two suit-wearing bigshots from Audi, who offered him a check for the full purchase price he paid for the vehicle. He signed some kind of non-disclosure agreement, took the check and bought a different brand of car.
Anyone using the heavily overused phrase "I for one, welcome our new _______ overlords" will be banished from Slashdot for life. Preferably the person will also be flogged with their keyboard.
If it bothers you hire some independant experts to do their own.
In any case the defendant should be permitted to do their own analysis.
I think the key point is that there was no abnormal break wear, Unless the cruise control system disconnected the brakes this seems really really fishy doesn't it?
Everyone's talking about using the brakes or going to neutral.
Just open the door and use your feet like the flintstones...and make sure someone is video taping it.
I'm not a doctor, but I play one in bed.
I drive an '84 GMC Vandura, and am glad and safe, knowing that some computer driven, prone to mysterious fuckups system is not controlling my relationship to my throttle, braking system and gearbox. I think sometimes mechanical solutions are the most reliable and the eaisest to repair.
Ahh the memories, My old Chevy Silverado used to have a short in the right blinker that would activate the cruise control. "Don't forget the turn signal" I would always remind my friends as we pass a car, their face would go white as gas pedal magically would drop to the floor.
I wonder if his accelerator pedal got stuck under the carpet? e.g. early Lexus IS200s were recalled for this - recall notice
Same thing happened to me about 10 years ago..
Popped it into neutral, pulled over, and turned it off. Then got out and fixed it (the throttle body stuck open - a light tap with a screwdriver took care of it.)
What kind of reputation do renault cars have anyway for those of you who own one?
Skynet.
The z4 is steer by wire jerk-off. Offense intended. The Z4's wheels is connected to an electric motor, thus removing the hydraulic system that you know as power steering. But the point was that all the technologiy in the cars today make this possible. Just go the Renault website and read about the car that the guy was driving. They espouse all the technology that is in the car. Also, the braking systems that control spin can also apply brakes.. I know, I mess with the DSC system on my BMW all the time. It can apply brakes and remove throttle, totally ruling out my inputs. READ: http://www.autosite.com/buyersguide/2004-bmw-z4.as p
or this:
"An electronic throttle system--a.k.a., drive-by-wire--is utilized. (Speaking of drive-by-wire: there is also an electric power steering system used that replaces the conventional hydraulic pump with an electric servomotor. In other words, steer-by-wire.)"
Or perhaps this:
"The Z4 marks the first time BMW has fitted electric power steering to one of its cars. Claimed benefits include easier tuning of the steering and reduced fuel consumption because the electric motor works only when the wheel is turned"
found here:
http://www.automobilemag.com/reviews/0212_bmwz4/
You opinon is quite colorful and reminds me of the bright colors of the spring festival in Kobe. But the bitter aftertaste of the automaker's decit is in disharmony with my mouth. I think you would have done better to follow the example of the other posters and incoperated some sort of dig against the french in general. Yes, the le Car was quite humerous and any refernce to it leaves me quite happy.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
She shifted into park? While the car was moving?
I did that in my mother's '73 Ford wagon once ( engine died while driving ), got the worst kind of noise as the retaining pawl tried to seat to hold the car from moving ( I was on the freeway doing 60+ ). Thank GOD nothing was damaged, I put it in neutral, got my restart, and continued driving.
What happened to your car when it was put into park? Or did she just put it in neutral?
emt 377 emt 4
welcome our intellegent mechanical overlords!!!
...)
(Had to be done. Never done it before. Feel a bit dirty now
The Anti-Blog
This sounds similar to an incident that happened a few years ago on the M1. Turned out to be a lorry driver with an attention seeking disorder:
http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/misc/print.php? artid=65604
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/363407.stm
... nearly ruined Audi in the 80s, thanks to a few issues with the SWI*..
Turns out folks were ham-footin' the small brake pedal and hittin' the gas at the same time with their big fat American feet. That's why automatic cars have shift locks now. OTOH, you will never hear the FedGov call a voter/taxpayer what they really need to be called: a dumbass. P. J. O'Rourke wrote up a really good commentary on this in one of his books that I can't recall right now, but it was pretty spot-on and funny, as most of his stuff is.
* SWI: Seat to Wheel Interface.
you: haha! why don't I play a trick on my wife that will put her, myself and the others around us, on the freeway, in grave danger. It'll be great.
WTF is the matter with you?
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
That could be electronic malfunction or the throttle cable could get stuck.
why can't you just shift into neutral and coast to a stop?
Some modern cars are "drive-by-wire". There is no physical connection between the shifter and the transmission, and there is no throttle cable to get stuck. Everything is under computer control. GM's HyWire concept car is a good example of this. Even the brakes are under computer control on the HyWire.
I don't know of any production cars are entirely drive-by-wire, but this may become a concern in the future. One would imagine that engineers would ensure these systems are each handled seperately, so that any single systems failure doesn't end with your car flying off the side of the road, but one can imagine all kinds of things which aren't true.
Now even if all those three items happened, what about your emergency break?
Here I CAN tell you that the Vel Satis is "drive-by-wire". The Vel Satis parking break is automatic, engaging when the car is turned off. The car has a small lever on the dash, which can be used to instruct the computer to manually engage the parking brake (Renault even notes that the ABS will engage, so the parking brake can be used as an emergency brake to safely bring the car to a halt... Mind you, if the parking brake lever engages with full ABS, it probably uses the same hydraulic system as the plain-old-regular brakes, so its use as an "emergency" brake is questionable at best. I suppose in a "loss of foot" emergency it might come in handy...).
That link to the Renault page even makes a big deal about the lack of a hand brake. They put it in bold: "Since there is no handbrake lever, there is space for a large storage compartment between the seats."
Okay, what follows is one of my most embarassing driving moments.
I was having a bad morning, and on my way to work, someone cut me off. In a foul mood already, I thought, I'll show this guy, and slammed on the accelerator. To my shock, after I removed my foot from the accelerating, the car was still accelerating. I checked the accelerator and found it was stuck all the way to the floor! I eventually stopped the car by turning off the engine(which I guess was the wrong thing to do).
Upon inspection, I saw what the culprit(aside from my poor judgement) was. When I hit the gas HARD, I got the accelerator lodged under the floor mat, which kept the pedal pushed to the floor.
I still have the car, and the floor mat is still on the driver's side; I realized it was my reckless action that led to the unsafe condition. I can only recreate this condition by SLAMMING on the accelerator, which is easy enough to avoid.
My other sig is extremely clever...
Does nobody have any freakin' common sense left anymore? Is it not obvious that you're not supposed to be making abrupt manuevers in any high center-of-gravity vehicles? Just because it's a four-wheeled motor vehicle does not mean that it is automatically capable of performing the same manuevers as other kinds of four-wheeled motor vehicles.
If I'd use that same kind of logic, then I could also claim that a Lincoln Contenental is also a faulty design because it'll get stuck and leave you stranded when you try jumping sand dunes in the desert with it.
despite the typos, and incorrect word usage, it looks like a real pick me up of a song.
Read some of the other posts below, then search google. *sigh*
If there's a fault in your car that the computer catches (and there are a lot to catch--they can often detect anomalous sensor readings when nothing is noticably wrong to the user) then it will be stored so it can be read out by the on-board diagnostic computer. I don't know what the rules in Europe are, but in the US ever car has a connector for an OBD II scanner, and you can pick up a relatively simple scanner for $100 or so (more expensive scanners can do a lot more than read out trouble codes). The trouble codes are stored through on/off cycles, and can be cleared either by a certain number of cycles with no fault detected, or actively by a mechanic with an OBD scanner. It't quite entertaining, and if you can afford to own or borrow one, you can at least double check on what the mechanics are telling you.
Probably the first thing anybody did was plug in the scanner and ask the car "What's up?" I'd imagine that any sensor fault that might cause a car to get in a funny control loop would set a code.
Anyone remember the story 60 Minutes, or 20/20 or one of those "news magazine" tv shows, about pickups with exploding gas tanks?
The complaint was that the gas tanks were outside the frame (or something like that) and that they'd explode on side impact crashes.
They even showed a nice convincing demonstration by crash testing a few trucks for the nice TV cameras.
And then, after the fact, the truth came out -- while explosions COULD happen given the right circumstances, it wasn't that easy to do. In fact, the news people couldn't duplicate it in front of the cameras. So they placed a charge and DETONATED the gas tanks at the time of impact.
Or how about the rollover stories about the Isuzu Trooper started by Consumer Reports? We happened to have one, and I know how well they handled. They were NOT easy to roll over UNLESS YOU WERE TRYING TO ROLL IT OVER. I was following my wife down a mountain highway at 65+ and she had to make an emergency lane change, just like the consumer report "story". It handled just like you'd expect a trunk based vehicle to handle, and she never lifted a wheel off the ground. I also took the same vehicle off-roading (serious off-roading in the Rockies) -- it was a very capable, well-rounded vehicle. And not prone to tip-over.
Moral -- "news" organizations often have an axe to grind for whatever reason -- and they will do anything to (1) bury that axe into the person, company, side of the story they want to hurt, or (2) whatever it takes for ratings. End result - Can't Trust Them!
. 62,400 repetitions make one truth -- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
I used the clutch and brake to manage my speed while I fiddled with the cruise control (which was my first suspect). When I couldn't figure anything out, I pulled off the road and turned the key.
At worst, I could have just put it in neutral and let the engine spin out of control. A burnt car is better than a dead me.
In my case, it turned out the accelerator pedal was stuck under the lip of the floor mat (the little catch that holds the floor mat in place had popped out). I felt more than a little dumb.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
"But we're French, we don't even have a word for victory!"
http://xkcd.com/386/
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0922042speed1 .html
god if you can hear me, please let my car's accelerator malfunction.
Anybody remembers "BJ and the Bear" episode when at the end of a chase, BJ sends Bear to cut off the truck's brakes?
Oh it's never happened to me so it doesn't exist.
Oh yeah the guy was lying from the start because blah blah blah and you blame something you can't understand because it can't malfunction this way it's impossible.
How about you all just shut the fuck up talking as if you could prove this negative.
IT HAS HAPPENED TO ME MORE THAN ONCE.
Yes, I drove a POS ford mercury and not once, not twice, not three times.. FOUR times the car accelerated out of control on me WIDE OPEN THROTTLE.
The first two times it happened both on the same 30mph side street (on separate occasions) and then while I was trying to park the car it happened again both times. Scared the piss out of me. I had to lay my 210lbs fairly muscular body on top of the brake pedal to get the car to slow down, then throw it into neutral where it revved to redline and then died down back to normal.
The last two times it happened on the highway but I already knew to throw it into neutral and let it hit the redline and die down.
So if you want to say this particular story is bullshit, go ahead. Do not for FUCK SAKES start saying that this never happens or that it's impossible.
Also, I later found out that this tends to happen to ford cars with a certain type of cruise control. People all round the country are/were getting into unexplainable accidents mostly in parking lots. But apparently FORD are attempting to hush it up just like they do with all the other flaws their cars have.
I get a 20% discount on any ford/mercury car because of family ties. I will never buy one again, that car was a death trap.
Liberty.
Only in a much less technical way, stupid gas pedal was stuck to the floor. Had to kick it a few times to get it unstuck...sort of scary at the time.
One month ago BMW called back worldwide 580 X5 3.0 with manual transmission.
l _i d=6924
When touching the clutch slightly, the car accelerates at full throttle, even is the gas pedal is pushed only a little.
http://www.autobild.de/suche/artikel.php?artike
What braniac thought it was a good idea to let the business with the most to lose from it being bad test the car? The results are hopelessly contaminated now, I bet they have switched out any potential damaging part at this point.
How could such sloppiness ever pass in a court case?
Self-determination if they have liability? Sheesh.
Let me know when I can self-determine if my programming is defective or not.
...able to stop close to Riom (Puy-de-Dome).
I love listening to people who speak French, but when I read it phonetically I can't help but think of Inspector Clouseau.
"Is that your minkey?"
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
The term is "Could NOT care less"! Saying you "Could care less" implies that you do indeed care.
The phrase "I could care less" is sarcasm. As in, "I could care less... if I tried really hard, but it's not worth the effort".
I had the exact opposite problem happem in a 300ZX. My mechanic had done some work but forgot to tighten the bolts holding the throttle cable down. It came loose on the interstate, causing the car to drop back to an idle. I hopped out, took a look, and put the throttle cable back where it was supposed to go and hand-tightened the bolts.
These days I know that pretty much any vehicle with a mechanical throttling system is not 100% trustworthy, but I also know how to deal with situations where the linkages get stuck so it doesn't tend to be particularly inconvenient when it happens.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Exactly what's that supposed to mean? No circuits TAMPERED? No blown fuses? No burnt chips? What do they mean with no "anomaly"? I'd like to check that the car's circuits are functioning completely well. Also, i'd like to check out if the interface electronics are sensitive to EMR. You know, whether this guy was making it up or not, there should be a rule in motor engines stating that the acceleration pedal should be PHYSICALLY, and not ELECTRONICALLY connected to the engine. Just like old cars. Think about it. If the metal wire in old cars breaks, no problem. The car doesn't start. However, if the electronic system breaks in new cars... there we go. Innocent people killed. What's wrong with engineers these days?
I drive an automatic, but there are *still* reasons to want the gas and the brake close together. First, it should reduce braking time. Second, there are times on hills - say stopped at a light - where I don't want to put the stress on the tranny, if I keep inching along and stopping. To do that, I either want 1) the pedals close, so I can use both with one foot, or 2) far apart, so I can use both feet. I wouldn't advocate 2), however, as you already have enough morons riding the brakes while hitting the gas.
The best part about that 60 minutes stoyis that the report from the NTSB (if I recall) got totally whitewashed - no one had the balls to tell these drivers they're idiots.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Because non-US corporations aren't evil, moneygrubbing capitalists, out to minimize costs and maximize profits. Non-US corporations are concerned only with helping the poor, paying their employees as much as possible, giving 8 weeks' vacation and buttfucking each other. I think it was Bush's fault.
An important goal of human interface design is to understand and reduce the probability of these rare-but-inevitable human errors.
> Shift into neutral.
You forgot to suggest trying the brakes first.
According to the horribly mangled translation of the article, it appears that Renault examined the car and found no wear on the brakes. Assuming they don't find anything that would prevent the brakes from working, that suggests the driver didn't really try to use them to stop the car.
I wonder where runaway acceleration is more likely: a new car or an older car.
My own runaway acceleration story:
I used to drive an old beat up VW Rabbit diesel. It was my dad's car which he let me use while I was in college. It used to accelerate uncontrollably after driving for 20-30 minutes. It only happened during highway driving.
There was nothing visibly wrong with the throttle cable. Immediately after stopping (by applying brakes), trying to start the engine would immediately result in the same problem. If it was allowed to rest for about 20 minutes, it would drive OK again. Dad's analysis was that my big feet were just getting caught (thanks, dad).
When it started accelerating, the only way to stop it was to pull over and push down on the brakes until the engine stalled.
It took about a year before we found a mechanic that knew the answer. There was an exaust line which would allow motor oil to blow into the engine. The motor oil/diesel fuel mixture would burn hotter and faster than just the diesel fuel, causing the engine to race. We pulled the exhaust line and the problem went away.
The clouds of smoke pouring out from the hood caused it to look like the car was on fire every time I stopped at an intersection, but it never took off again.
The reason we went to that mechanic and finally discovered the truth is once while on the highway it *really* took off. There was less time to think than usual because of heavier traffic. I forgot myself and hit the clutch. That did stop the engine, but in a far more spectacular way than I would have preferred (motor oil spraying out of the hood).
The car also used to cough big globs of used motor oil out the exhaust pipe. Nobody ever used to tailgate me.
breaking prolonged and at high speed will cause severe reduction in breaking power and even a LOSS of breaking power.
Well, there's the rub, though, isn't it? If a car goes full throttle and out of control, who's going to let that continue for a prolonged period? A sensible person would shove the brake pedal to the floor and immediately bring the car to a stop rather than continue tooling down the highway applying partial braking force until the brakes overheated.
So, the poster was very, very right.
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
My parents recently had something weird happen in their Jeep Grand Cherokee (last year's model). They were parked in a parking lot, got into their car, turned on the ignition and switched the car into reverse to back out of the spot. As soon as the car was shifted from park into reverse, the engine gunned to full throttle. Fortunately, my father still had his foot solidly on the break so the car simply made a hell of a noise but didn't go anywhere. My father was able to turn the car off and immediately brought it to a garage. They were told that the garage could verify that something had gone wrong with the internal computer, but couldn't explain why or what it had been.
Appartently, after further research, my parents found that there appears to be a design flaw with some jeeps where shifted from park directly into reverse will occasionally cause this to happen. If you don't have your foot solidly on the break, you'll go careening backward at full speed.
It's not outrageous to claim that a car has a major design flaw. Whether or not the car has one in this situation I have no idea, but it certainly deserves attention.
--
RumorsDaily
You posted a link to Geocities on Slashdot ?!? Did you honestly think anyone would be able to see that ?
What the heck have you been smoking, dude ?
--LordPixie
I love this comment posted at the bottom of the last article:
:-P
"Speed 3: It was not Ben Affleck and Sandra Bullock in Vel Satis of the times? (Paris)"
I would have expected such a comment on Slashdot
Send/track messages to 100K people: www.xPressAlert.com
Renault doesn't have to find any speficic fault with their car, really. Regardless of anything that the car may have done, the driver should have applied the brakes. After driving for an hour at 120mph, either he didn't try to apply the brakes to stop the car, or the brakes couldn't handle it and wore out. Since they found no abnormal brake wear, he must not have really even tried to stop. Trust me, if he had tried to brake from 120 and the brakes couldn't take it, they would definitely show it.
Odds are the guy's a moron and thought he was slamming on the brakes when he really had the gas pedal floored, but the fact remains that in spite of anything wrong with the car (since it's a Renault, that list is probably long), he never made any serious attempt to stop the car during his hour-long joyride.
aQazaQa
Come on, do you know how much energy brakes can dissipate? Often they are rated in horsepower, and the number is usually over 1000.
150hp engine vs 1000hp brakes is not something that is going to heat them up and wreck the calipers. The rotors may warp after you stop and you leave your feet on the brakes (the rotor cools at a different rate between where the pads are pressed on the rotor and the uncovered part), but that can happen after a freeway stop.
If the vehicle was maintained poorly enough that the throttle will stick due to dirt, I would suggest there were existing problems with the brakes before this episode.
Not that I'm one to speak - during a deathmarch this summer I let my brakes wear down to the cooling fins in the rotors.
it hung the controller attempting to write an invalid error code, etc.
Without more information I'd say:
a) The guy needs more training to handle emergency situations in a vehicle
b) Renault is trying to prove that something doesn't exist. Good Luck.
c) Sueing your customer, because he claimed to have hand a dangerous situation in one of your vehicles, is not a good long term business strategy.
But I'll reserve final judgement till I have seen more primary sources.
The brakes on any production car are far stronger than the engine. Demonstrate this for yourself with a rental car---full throttle with right foot, apply brake with left, and the car comes to a stop. That's why the car maker KNEW that the driver was full of it. The cruise control might have some weird bug, but who cares? The car can be easily stopped. Any number of folks have mentioned the US Audi debacle in the 1980s, but this sort of thing comes up a few times a year also with elderly drivers running over a bunch of kids. "The car just accelerated. I pressed down the brake as hard as I could."
Hmmm, I realized after posting I should check my facts, and the evidence seems to be ctrongly in favor of "Roving Robot". I distinctly remember "Robot Rover" but my brain must be fried from TV radiation.
Hey, here's a link to a bunch of examples of this occuring in jeeps.
--
RumorsDaily
The very useful sentence would determined the cause. The police would say it was OverSpeed without any investigation, like always. You know it's never gonna be the company's mistake.
And what if it happens again, it's going to be a crusade against Renault?
I'm a very disappointed car's owner, cause it was new and I went more than 20 times to garage with several and very dangerous mistakes such the windscreen wipers suddenly stopped in a heavy rain.
If the isn't lying then I'll very, very worried.
There's a group buy going on at www.audiworld.com. Check the B6 S4 forum. They will probably fit your VW. If not, you can call the vendor and find some that fit your car.
Show me a car that can't stop from any speed in under two minutes and I'll show you an engineer or two in the unemployment line.
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
Ah, I thought it was you could remove the key in Lock, but it locked in lock, key or not.
Although, we had a car that was fscked, and let you take the key out in any position (even On)...
... while I guess there's a pretty high probability that the guy did lie indeed, I was not expecting either of Renault to make such an announcement: "Hey! We've inspected the car and guess what?? This guy is right all the way! Most electronic systems are dysfunctional and, that's the best part, we've come to the conclusion that it could potentially happen at any time on any of our cars! That's so funny! Have a nice day."
(Now, all I'm saying is that maybe it's not 0 or 1. Maybe it's more fuzzy logic.)
The problem with Slashdot memes is that YOU INSENSITIVE CLOD!
...It does have a rack and pinion... I think we are talking semantics.
I define it as "by-wire" because of the control that these electronic systems have over the system.
Thus going full circle, it is totally possible that the driver of Renault could be telling the truth, with all the electronic, computer driven systems that 'enhance' the driving experience.
The term is "Could NOT care less"! Saying you "Could care less" implies that you do indeed care.
I could care less, but it's not worth the hassle.
The book is "Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government".
In it he explores the "how the admirable Audi 5000 sedan came to be the favored bait in the Sudden-Acceleration Media Hack and Liability Lawyer Bottom-Feeder Tournament"
A great read, he has a lot of sympathy with the "generally inteligent" staff at the department of transportation who investigate "Sudden acceleration syndrome" and generally conclude that acceleration occurs when you press the gas rather than the brake pedal.
This is possibly his best book, although "Holidays in Hell" and "All the Trouble in the World" are also excellent reading.
As a liberal (although not American) I find it a great shame that the best the American Left get is Michael Moore and the Right get P.J. O'Rourke, 1000 times more funny and more intelligent.
I still don't believe the story, but here's some interesting tidbits found in a review at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/main.jhtml?xml =/motoring/2002/01/25/emfvel26.xml
Favorite paragraphs:
"An unusual feature is the automatic, self-adjusting parking brake, which is activated whenever the ignition is switched off (there is a manual control for hill starts) and deactivates when the clutch is released. The absence of a conventional handbrake lever allows space for a capacious centre console between the front seats."
and
"I did encounter a potential problem with Brake Assist, which ensures the full effectiveness of the rear brakes when it senses an emergency application of the pedal; a brief distraction behind a suddenly slowing truck on the busy and fast-moving Paris Peripherique prompted a quick dab on the brake, and for a moment I found myself in full emergency stop mode, to the consternation of close-following traffic. On balance, Brake Assist is a valuable safety aid, but its ability to give tailgaters a heart attack is something to be aware of."
Just food for thought on how many electronic systems are really on board this thing.
A bit more on the Parking Brake:
"Seated comfortably, the driver inserts the card into the reader, presses the start/stop button and sets off straightaway without giving a second thought to the handbrake. This is made possible by a new, innovative feature: the automatic parking brake has completely replaced the traditional handbrake. Entirely automatic, this is unlocked when the engine is switched on and locks again when it is next switched off."
- This car has no key, so he couldn't just cut the motor that way. Especially since it's a contact less rfid like key, you must step out of the car, which isn't easy at 200 kph (~160mph)
- Tt's automatic gear model. It's a robotized gear system. It won't let you change the speed if it'll blow the motor. Switching to 1st gear at 200 kph to stop the car isn't an option. Switching to neutral may not be possible if the computer is postal
- It's not a matter of pressing the accelerator while you try to break, it was on cruise control. You don't have to press any pedal to keep the speed.
But all of this is uterly suspect- Cruise control is switched off as soon as you hit the brake. The switch is redondant (2 independant switches on the pedal), and even with the motor still trying to keep the car at this speed, if he hits the brake, the car won't be able to maintain that high speed, maybe it wont stop, but it will slow down.
- If he had pressed the accelerator instead of the brake, the car would have first accelerated, but since that too stops the cruise control, the car would have stopped as soon as he would have stopped to accelerate.
- The inspection of renault showed the brake weren't burned or melted. Not even a sligth abnormal wearing. I would have stand on the brake myself !
- The guy is full of shit : He just had his driving license back after loosing it for speeding and driving drunk
Have your personnal opinion, but imho he was caught speeding and didn't want to carry the responsability and so blamed the car...Comment removed based on user account deletion
A) They could have a bug that only comes out under particular cirumstances that weren't reached in the test.
We all know that.
B) It can take a long time to smoke out weird car problems. I had a problem with my steering lock engaging that wasn't correctly diagnosed for like two years because it was a very specific set of actions that caused it to happen. It eventually caused an accident; fortunately it just put me into a guard rail when I was making a turn. They didn't believe me until one of the mechanics was buzzing around the shop and it almost put him into the wall.
THEN they believed me.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Yeah. He drove with 200km/h over an hour, then he decelerated for 20 km... and all the while he didnt run into a toll-station (those things are literal readblocks. i wouldnt dare drive through one with 100km/h even if its cleared, with 200 ist suicide), didnt face 2 trucks overtaking each other, could call with his cell phone (one handed driving at xxx kmh).
Plus an automatic can be set to neutral (a stick shift car the gear can be releases), so he could slow down (even if the engine would fuck itself up).
Or he could try breaking. even f1 cars can break faster then accelerate....
This story has SO many holes in it it stinks...
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
DOUGAL: It's got a bit of a dent there, Ted.
TED: I'll just tap it out with this.
(hours pass)
TED:No, it's just no good. We can't give that as a prize...
Or, perhaps more appropriate to this thread:
(TED wakes up, stretches, grabs the steering wheel)
TED:That was close. Almost nodded off there for a second.
"Linux doesn't exist. Everyone knows Linux is an unlicensed version of Unix"- Kieren O'Shaughnessy
I own a 1991 200 Quattro 20v turbo, which with the updated engine and modified engine computer I have, produces about 120 more HP than you "schoolmate's father's" 5000, assuming it was the 5000 turbo.
So, I can conclusively say you're full of shit. At full boost and hard acceleration in 3rd gear, the brakes will most certainly stop the car- hard.
The cruise control is deactivated by "vent" switches on the clutch and brake; the brake switch is also used for the brake lights. If the brake switch was damaged (an idiot who hasn't read the repair manual won't know they must be replaced if removed), then yes, braking would cause the cruise control to open the throttle because it would only see the car slowing down.
a)put in the clutch b)switch off cruise control on the control stalk c)stop the car firmly d)take the car out of gear e)shut off the ignition (yes, the brakes will continue to work, the car has a hydraulic pressure reservoir). Any of those will stop the acceleration.
Oh, and cruise control doesn't turn on below about 30mph, so it's impossible to have it cause cars to go through garage doors etc.
Please help metamoderate.
I've had my cruise control accelerate beyond its setting several times. Even had the logic module replaced twice to no effect.
I'll have braked to slow down for other traffic, then passed that traffic, and hit Resume. The car accelerates to the previously set cruising speed as normal, but then suddenly decides it has to go floor it to reach another, higher speed.
Tapping the brake pedal once has always disengaged it, and the one time when I had enough clear straight road to allow it to run (the technician that worked on it wanted the data), it would go up to 95 MPH, slow to 90, then back to 95, repeating. Probably a limitation in the vehicle that prevents it from going faster.
Unfortunately I have been unable to reproduce the behavior on demand, and I always wonder if it is going to go crazy again the next time I hit the Resume button. I'm thinking it must be some combination of the cruise controls used to adjust the cruising speed pressed long before the triggering event that primes the event.
The only way I'd accept a black box in my car would be to diagnose this problem and get it fixed, and then I'd have the black box removed.
Mine is a Honda Civic with aftermarket cruise control (not a standard option).
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
A driver was on the motorway when his cruise control got stuck. He rang the police and they cleared the motorway enough so it was safe for him to turn the engine off.
As such this driver's story seems eminently possible.
True, but if you held the brakes on (Say for a minute) and noticed absolutely no change in vehicle speed - Would you even bother to try any more? I know I wouldn't - I'd be more interested in concentrating on the road ahead / finding other options to make sure I didn't waste someone. This could of course explain why his brakes weren't left as smoking metal strips at the end of it.
I'm getting the feeling with this one that we'll never really know what happened.
People that believe in their opinions don't post AC.
Many years ago my brother and I were using the cruise control on a 1978(?) Chevy wagon. Life was good until the car began to accerate! (fairly slowly) Now since my brother who was driving happened to be very familiar with automotive electronics (Wrote section 8A) of many GM manuals etc.. We found this fascinating. In any case we let the car accelerate to about 80 from ~55 (Mom was in the car otherwise we would have let this go further . We just disengaged the cruise when we had enough. It never did happen again.
Yes, that's a quite common situation. To avoid that, never use Outlook, Outlook Express, or Internet Explorer.
Oy vey. Chances are your car is fuel injected- in which case, fuel quality has nothing to do with your problem, since fuel injection happens after the throttle (some cars are throttle-body-injected, but that system hasn't been in use for over a decade, and even then, the fuel is injected after the throttle vane).
Second, there's not really any such thing as "junk gas". 87 octane is just as "high quality" as 93. 93 just has octane boosters- that's IT. Common myth perpetuated by gasoline companies by advertising the highest octane gas only.
The problem was most likely oil residue from the crankcase breather. As your filter became more clogged, it increased the vacuum in the intake system. Crankcase gasses (including an oil mist) are sucked back into the intake for emissions reasons, but the oil gums things up. With the clogged air filter, more and more crankcase gasses were sucked in than they were supposed to be. Make sure the dipstick and oil fillter cap seal properly.
Proper maintenance is to buy a can of throttle body cleaner and wipe down all the edges of the throttle and the surface of the throttle body it mates against. You often only need to remove one or two hose clamps on older cars to get to this area- newer cars might require removing covers etc. Cars with electronically controlled throttles shouldn't be touched unless you know what you're doing.
Please help metamoderate.
Didn't Daimler Chrysler learn anything from the famous Moose Test ? This is where some Swedish journalists easily put an A-class on it's side in their standard Moose (called an Elk there) avoidance test.
Chip H.
will you kindly cite from the 2nd article where you've read this? I would appreciate a reference to the French original, in which I have found no such thing.
VKh
Sorry to tell you this bub, but the emergency brake in most cars is significantly weaker than the main breaks powered by a master cyclinder.
I've tried it in many cars, including my '04 BMW M3.
Emergency break is pretty weak even pulled all the way up, on a dozen brand new cars I have purchased in my life time.
Modesty is one of life's greatest attributes
It is still common for people to think that the higher the octane rating fuel you put in your car, the more performance you get. Perhaps in older cars with mechanical/distributor ignition and carburetted engines this was true, because there was no computer, sensors and little in the way of control feedback loops so the behaviour of the engine was fairly constant. In the old days, car buffs would switch to premium fuel for awhile if their engine started knocking (lower grade fuels burn slower and could leave more carbon deposits in the cylinder--these deposits collect further unburnt fuel which ignites at the wrong time and causes the knocking sound).
Modern cars have no mechanical points or distributor and are fuel-injected. Ignition and fuel delivery are computer controlled, and the behaviour of the computer depends on quite a number of sensors for feedback signals such as manifold air pressure, exhaust oxygen sensors, throttle position, fuel pressure etc.
In these newer cars, the recommended octane rating isn't a minimum recommended rating, it is the ONLY recommended rating. Unless you have a high end car you are wasting your money on premium fuel. The computers are tuned to expect a fuel with the combustion characteristics of the recommended octane rating (87 in most cars) when it sets the correct air/fuel ratio.
Because higher octane fuel burns faster and more thorougly generally less fuel and more air works best, however there is no way the computer knows it is using permium fuel (there is no "octane rating" sensor that I know of). Consequently it continues to deliver more fuel and less air (burns richer than needed for premium fuel). The result is no added performance or fuel economy and increased carbon/particulates.
Prolonged use of high octane fuel in a vehicle designed for regular could have numerous effects...it MAY shorten the life of the O2 sensors, it will cause more carbon deposits in your exhaust, and could cause your catalytic converter to become plugged. In some cars, an early warning is a nasty rotten egg smell in the exhaust. Eventually, the deposits will bung things up so much that you'll have too much exhaust back pressure and a drastic loss of power--it's like driving around with a potato jammed in your tailpipe.
So, tell your friends with their tricked out Civics and Neons to save their money because premium won't help them at all. Unless of course they've already spent a pile of money on a new computer and/or firmware tuned to work with premium fuel.
Father Ted Crilly is an Irish priest who lives in a parochial house on possibly the worst place on Earth, Craggy Island which is situated off the west coast of Ireland. He doesn't live alone though. Living with him is Father Jack Hackett, an old priest with an alcohol problem and a particular liking for the words: arse, drink, girls and feck. The third and final priest who lives with him is Father Dougal Mcguire, a relatively young... and very dim priest. How he got into the priest hood is a mystery. And of course, every priest needs "a nice cup of tea" so they have a housekeeper, Mrs. Doyle. She's unique in every way and a one off, (which is probably a good thing). what she lacks in a life, she makes up in tea.
From Tommy Boy;
Chris Farley: "Oh my God, killer bees!"
Get your Unix fortune now!
I have a renault scenic, one of the first ones and must admit it's a piece of sh*t. My car cuts out completely (power steering goes, lights go, electrics go, gas goes), this happens often enough (when car is cold 10mins after starting although sometimes after hours of driving also) It usually happens on roundabouts too, I've no option but to slam on the brakes or go into some pedestrian on the side of the road.. without power steering it's a hard card to drive. I brought the car to renault to analyse many times and they couldn't find anything wrong with it. They just asked me to leave it with them for a week so they could test it. Yea right. You could be sure that should one of my cutouts have caused such media attention, renault would be the first to sue me. So what do you reckon I should do now??
I wonder if any legal action from R. is possible now that the car has been tampered with by them, the interested party. How does the court know they didn't remove some evidence during their initial testing, by accident or deliberately?
VKh
Not related at all to what's going on. My wife was with me, and thinks it's a funny story.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Probably a vacuum leak somewhere. A lot of aftermarket cruise controls use a vacuum sensor to guage engine speed.
In the Aston Martin Vanguish, there is no physical connection between the steering wheel and the pedals and the gear shift paddles. It's all short-range wirelessly transmitted. You get the same fly-by-wire precision (and no feedback) that fighter pilots get but.....hmmmm. Think about that for a second.
I have an '02 civic, and have noticed some weirdness in the cruise control (factory installed) at lower speeds. In particular, I used to live on a long stretch of road that had a speed limit of 20 mph. The temptation to speed was too high, so I tried the cruise control. The speed wouldn't fluctuate much more than 3-5 mph around the target, but the RPMs would bounce around alot. Could be that it just happened to be near an automatic shifting speed/load, but it always irritated me to feel the car accelerating then braking over and over for no good reason.
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer." -Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear
The maker of the vehicle has found that they weren't at fault! And, of course, it lends so much credibility that they are going to that modern bastion of truth, the court system, to "prove" it!
How can any engineering organization claim so quickly that there was no problem? Unless their recording system has a lot more breadth and depth than I imagine, there really is no way. What they've done is run diagnostics on the vehicle and found no known issues.
The probelm with that is that the question is likely not "what was broke in the system", its probably "what design flaw in the control laws allows for a rare sequence of events to trigger infinite acceleration".
In other words, OF COURSE THERE WAS NO PROBLEM WITH THE VEHICLE! IT WAS WORKING EXACTLY AS DESIGNED! That's probably a true statement about 95% of the bugs I've seen. Most bugs are design bugs.
DODGE - Dig Out of Ditch, Gas Empty
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer." -Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear
Although I can't actually remember what the truck was called, or if it even had a name of its own.
That was the episode that confirmed Kubrick was right -- damaged AIs speak in very slow, simple sentences about three octaves below their normal range.
-- Old Man Kensey
Floor accelerator, then release to free throttle cable (won't work on throttle by wire, usually). If this doesn't work ...
I believe this car was throttle-by-wire.
Shift into neutral.
I believe this car had a sequential gear box. If it is anything like BMW's SMG that means it is electronically controlled => push button/paddle/lever to shift and (if electronics are out) nothing happens.
Apply service brake (or parking brake if service brakes fail) and GENTLY stop the car
Agreed, that should help in this case. But in a powerful car that may be, um, exciting.
Do NOT turn off the key until you have stopped moving, as this will cause the steering column to lock
Pretty much any modern car won't let you put the key in the "lock" position unless the car is in gear. Also, I beleive this car also had a "magnetic" key (e.g. smart card, rfid, etc.) so it's functionality is again tied to the electrical system.
I do think there is more to this story than the driver is letting on, but on new cars there is certainly more potential for strange things like this to happen.
!hoD
"Turn left!"
"Sorry, Dave, I can't do that."
--
Try Nuggets , the mobile search engine. We answer your questions via SMS, across the UK.
I am in the camp that believes critical software-mechanical projects can be successfully managed. But we got to be extremely careful as NASA, Airbus, etc. have learned.
My guess is they went and used Embedded Windows as their computer OS in the car....
Mercedes actually introduced brake-by-wire in their SL series starting in 2003. IIRC it has been discontinued already because, well, it sucked. A google search on "mercedes brake by wire" will provide you with all the info.
Most factory cruise control will not engage below a set speed, typically 30 MPH.
The fundamental problem with this story is the same as every other story from the past about "unintended acceleration". A car has the ability to *accelerate*, and it has the ability to *decelerate*. Every car on the road has more *deceleration* power in it's brakes, than it has *acceleration* power in it's engine. In other words, a car's drivetrain cannot overpower it's brakes. And of course there are also the previously mentioned common sense things like turning off the ignition, or putting the transmission in neutral.
with a mechnical cruise control. I worked with Ford investigating "run-awy" vehicles in the early 80's. Turns out there was a real problem. There was an aluminum linkage that rubbed against a guide such that it could eventually wear a notch in the linkage. The notch could get large enoguh to eventually catch on the guide, and the cruise control was stuck. No way to turn it off other than shut down the engine. However, the notch would form at the location corresponding to your mostly commonly driven speed, so say here in Houston you would get the cruise typically stuck at about 90 mph.
----- There are two kinds of people in this world, my friend; those with loaded guns, and those who dig.
Actually it's funny that you experience this with a Civic and aftermarket cruise, because my Civic used to do something similar with the factory cruise. Usually it would accept my cruise setting, then raise it by about 2mph every ten seconds or so until I backed it down with the decel button, but I had to keep my eye on it.
I'd wager that it's a fairly common problem, but a lot of people are probably like me and just didn't see it as a big enough deal to report to the dealer- it's just not worth it to me to have to take it in, get a ride to work, worry about it all day, and then get a ride before they close...
That just means it worked as it was SUPPOSED to. They intended for it to do that.
IAOADPC
I Actually Owned A Demon Possessed Car
It would speed up and slow down, especially when we wanted to go very slow, as when in a parking lot.
The gas pedal would move up and down by itself and the car would accelerate and then coast, matching the pedal motions.
Two years it took the manufacturer to find the problem. The ONLY reason they kept looking was I could reliably demonstrate the problem AND I never gave up.
The cause: the main computer unit was defective. When they plugged in the their diagnositic equipment, the cpu ratted out other systems at random.
So I happen to actually believe that the car is a menance in this case.
Wow, Renault denies responsibility. Who didn't see this coming?
http://www.edmunds.com/ownership/howto/articles/45 792/article.html
In the US, most on-board diagnostic computers only store emissions-related faults. If the fault isn't emission-related, it won't be there (unless you've got a true black-box car).
And, of course, if it's a fault in the computer system, well, the chances of it showing up in a diagnostic are low.
First I've heard that he was I-N-T-O-X-I-C-A-T-E-D If true, then screw him......anything was possible. Without proof that his vehicle was screwed up, I'd say throw the book at the driver!
it was already in the shop because of this (is where i saw it. my car was there for a clutch replacement). whenever the engine got to the normal operating temperature it would start revving like crazy. it was, according to the mechanic, the computer setting a too rich air/gas mixture, which would cause the acceleration and overheating enough to make the exaust to glow red.
lucklly for the owner, the truck was manual shift (as almost all the brasilian rangers), so it was possible for him to move it to neutral before braking.
i didn't stay there enough to learn the reason of the problem, but let's speculate: since ford ranger V6 is an old and tested design (so let's suppose it was not software related), it could be:
a stuck cable;
a broken sensor;
a sensor missreading air intake;
a short in some wire;
etc.;
the story of this french guy is kinda suspicious, as several posts here point out, but a computerized car going bezerk _IS NOT IMPOSSIBLE_...
my humble sugestion:
an ignition switch like the ones found in motorcicles.
I ride a Honda 125cc on a daily basis, and trust me: the switch is handy to avoid gas driping over the hot exaust in an accident or to stop the chain from slashing a leg. fly-by-wire cars should have one too.
What ? Me, worry ?
This is exactly the same line of thinking that gets people killed. For example, airbags are now mandatory in automobiles, and yes, they have done a lot to save idiots who couldn't be bothered to fasten their seatbelt before they drove drunk. And unfortunately, this profile does represent a lot of people.
However, the side effect of that cars are now more dangerous for those who wear seatbelts. Prior to the airbag, a conscientious driver who wore a seatbelt stood a low risk of injury in a low to moderate speed impact. But, thanks to the airbag, children and elderly have been killed in minor accidents because the airbag went off. Worse yet are the cases in which people have been burned to death in vehicles after having a minor accident because an exploding airbag broke their wrists and were unable to exit the vehicle.
The problem is that the majority of people choose to drive in unsafe ways. But, we shouldn't reward their negligent behaviour by installing a "safety device" that will mitigate the consequences of their unsafe actions at the expense of making cars more dangerous for safe drivers. Safe drivers are being punished for the folly of reckless ones.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
I know what this guy's feeling right now as I went through something similar.
I was driving my car down Wisconsin Ave. in Washington DC. I was just north of Georgetown, or possibly just in Georgetown, when I was coming down a hill at about 40 m.p.h. I hit the brakes to slow since there was a red light ahead. The car didnt' slow more than about 5 m.p.h. I put the car in neutral (manual tranny), let off the brakes and hit them again with no braking resulting from my actions.
I pulled up the emergency brake and made a quick right turn at the bottom of the hill just as the light changed to green. At this point, the brakes worked fine.
I went directly to the dealership and had them check the braking system. They weren't able to find any malfunction at all. The problem hasn't happened again. It took nearly three years for it to happen the first time. I certianly hope it doesn't happen again.
Nevertheless, I know what the guy is going through. I know my car wasn't braking. I'm certain I had my foot on the brake. I know the car was put into neutral. I know the car didn't slow and that the brake pedal didn't go all the way to the floor.
I suspect theere was a malfuction in the ABS. I think the bumps in the road caused the wheel to think it was about to slide so the braking system dropped the pressure to the wheels. The ABS didn't recalibrate after that during this harrowing experience. Had it functioned properly (in my opinion), it would have noted the first bump, adjusted the braking force, recalibrated with the new speed, adjusted the braking force as necessary. It failed at that task.
The car is a Mazda Protegé5 in case you were wondering. I plan on taking any car I test drive down that section of Wisconsin Ave. to see how the ABS works.
Plant a tree in a developing country.
> Most factory cruise control will not engage below a set speed, typically 30 MPH.
I've experienced this, but many times you can get around it by setting it to 30 & using the coast function (geez, I am a geek... "button") to lower the speed a bit. Mine just auto-disengaged around 15mph or so, but who needs CC that low speed anyway?
Cocaine.
It was the eighties...
I can't sure. Double check that with Steve King...
"We found the loose screw, tightened it, and now we're suing the victim to shut him up because a court is epistemologically unable to determine what really happened."
I was driving along on a highway on a Sunday morning when my main ABS unit with all the actuators, solenoids, and such blew a seal. Since it ties to all the brake lines, there was a sudden complete loss in brake pressure. I was stuck with a car going 55mph and a brake pedal that sank straight to the floor. Having an automatic, it wasn't easy for me immediately downshift, but I got it and was able to slow down enough to use the cable-actuated parking brake to come to a stop. Needless to say, the drive to the garage was a slow one.
Subaru just had a recall on the 2002 WRX (and probably other models). They have to install a plastic bracket on the trottle lines, because some people's CC was getting stuck and accellerating.
A lot of people are making comments w/o knowing that facts, based on their experience with US cars. I'm sure I know less than the European drivers, but having just spent 3 weeks driving in Europe with a Renault would like to point out a few interesting facts.
..
My Renault (not the same model) used a keyless start system. The Renault representative told us to PUT the card key in a slot and press the start button. Good advice, but as we found out later, the key didn't have to be in the slot. When the key was anywhere near the car, the car could be started - no insertion was required. I would imagine a lot of drivers wouldn't know this - the Renault rep didn't - so if you pulled out the key in a panic and the car didn't stop, well .
My Renault didn't have a conventional parking brake. It was a fully automatic system that turned on when you turned the car off, and disengaged once the car was moving forward under power. To manually engage it you have to push a button on the dash and a LED would light up.. The Renault representative couldn't explain to us how it worked ("I never think about it - it's automatic"). It was not obvious to me if it could be used for an emergency stop.
The car would unlock whenever the car key was nearby. You couldn't tell if the car had been locked, because when your hand was placed on the door latch and the key was nearby, it unlocked. If you wanted to make sure the car had locked, you have to toss the key a few feet away, then goback and test the door.
I hard a hard time finding out how to turn the electrical system off - everything ran even with the key removed, and the engine turned off (lights, windshield washers, radio). Opening the door seemed to shut everything off. I couldn't find a manual way to do it. I also couldn't find how to turn the electrical system on w/o starting the engine - that is, there was no "accessory" position. I had to start the engine if I wanted to roll up a window I'd left open.
I couldn't read the French manual, but how many drivers read the manual anyway? This car just wasn't obvious to me.
Now, I had a 6-speed manual, but I wonder what an automatic transmission would be like in a car like this? Maybe some push button on the dash? Maybe neutral is automatically switched to under a certain speed?
In short, don't make the mistake of thinking that the subject car operates anything like an American car, and don't expect even a Renault rep to understand how it works. If the car has been designed to be fully automatic, the driver may not know, or may have forgotten, how to do certain things manually. Do you want to read the manual at 120 KMH?
...it would go up to 95 MPH, slow to 90, then back to 95, repeating. Probably a limitation in the vehicle that prevents it from going faster.
That sounds very much like what happens when you hit a vehicle's speed governor. It will momentarily cut fuel to the engine, causing the car to slow down. Although, I am surprised that it happens at 95 on your car. I've had my own Civic well in excess of that speed (on a track, of course), but I guess you may have one of the non-Vtec engines with lower power... or an older model. I guess my car really doesn't apply to any other cars than 7th generation EX Civics...
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
Good point!
In my case as soon as you backed up the steering unlocked and the "evidence" was gone. I finally had the presence of mind to stop and leave everything exactly as it was, and found I couldn't move the steering wheel at all.
(It's easy to get rattled when your car makes a hard right toward the curb!)
The actual problem was a ball bearing from the steering head had fallen down the shaft and into the lock mechanism. When turning right and under a load like pulling into traffic it would engage the bloody steering lock!
This only happened like 4 times in 4 years, including the test sessions. Pretty easy to miss that.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Sorry, I missed the original story, but I distinctly remember this happening to me when I was a kid. The driver was my dad and I was maybe 12 or 13. We were driving my grandmother's car, I believe it was a Buick. This would have been, say, a 1979 Buick or something. Maybe later -- it was when cruise control was quite new in the mainstream market.
Anyway, we were on an interstate journey (interstate, in this case, referring to both the type of highway and the fact that we were traveling from one state to another). My Dad put on the cruise control... and they're off! We were up to 80 in no time. And this was back before people drove 80 all the time. The national speed limit was 55 and 60 was about as fast as we ever went in a family car. The car showed no sign of slowing until Dad turned off the cruise control. He turned it back on and there it went again.
Eventually, I guess the car was serviced and it was OK. But I for one am all set to believe out-of-control cruise control stories, because it happened to me.
RP
But how then do you explain his final stopping by laying into the brake pedal with al his might?
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.
With ABS being almost universal in most modern cars, people forget that they might get killed in an otherwise controllable event. When you spin with locked brakes, after you hit a 90 degree (your side of the car is facing the direction that you are going) ABS will cut all power to ALL wheels. When the car keeps on spinning, your car effectively will not have any brakes because ABS takes its time to recover, and repressurize. As the spin continues, the cicle is repeated, and the only stopping power left is a great big boulder by the side of the road. Without ABS, the wheels would always be locked, so when you spin, and go backwards, those wheels are still providing some measure of stopping power (although if you are spinning, that is reduced) A though now that winter is coming... Unplug your ABS fuse....
For sure, but we really don't know if the systems had rebooted by that point allowing him to put the car in neutral, change gear, stop engine etc. Which then of course would have allowed him to stamp on the brakes (and for them to have effect).
But like I said, only he'll really ever know what happened. Maybe if we had black boxes, but I get the feeling that's decades away. I'm just looking at the possibilities, and at this stage there's no way of definitively saying that he really was, or was not at fault.
People that believe in their opinions don't post AC.
This happened in my 1971 VW Type 3 fastback. It's a UK model. When VW were converting them to RHD they ran a bar from the accelerator on the left across to the right hand side. The LHD linkage was still there and covered with a thin, removable, steel plate. When a passenger pushed on this with their feet they were able to move the linkage and make the engine race.
It took me a while to figure this out. I would drive to a friend's house and when we set off together the engine would be racing even though it had been fine when I had arrived. I cleaned the linkage, footered with the return spring all to no avail.
There had been a VW recall in the UK but apparently mine had been missed.
aedan
I'll have a look at the hydraulic layout of typical ABS systems and see if there are any in which that could happen.
I'm inclined to think not, most still use two independent circuits, as that is a LEGAL requirement in most large markets.
Here's the quote from the Bosch Automotive Handbook "Legal regulations stipulate a dual circuit transmission system as mandatory"
By my reading that implies that there should be no single point of failure in the hydraulic system that will disable both hydraulic systems.
Sorry mate, I can't believe someone bothered developing an ABS system for your jurisdiction that broke that rule.
I had the throttle wire snap on my 1987 VW Cabriolet while i was cruising down my road at about 65mph.. Thing is the tension on the cable is such that if the cable snaps its like not pressing the gas at all.. Actually even less since you tighten the cable to adjust idle speed, so my car immediately started slowing down until i stopped it. At which point the compelte lack of tension on the wire resulted in the car sputtering a bunch about to stall until i turned it off.
Now a similiar system could be worked witht he brake so that if the cable snaps the break immediately goes on fully :) I however do not recommend this and instead recommend the old beetle method.. which had the master cylinder(this is the object that pumps the brake fluid out to the wheels forcing your drums or discs to apply pressure and stop) mounted directly behind the brake pedal. The brake pedal was a piston on a hinge that had a foot pad, you pushed on it and it went into the master cylinder forcing the fluid towards the brakes. Nothing can go wrong there unless you forcibly break the pedal(very hard) or your master cyclinder or brake lines go(no matter what system you use this is always a danger).
I said the aircraft refused to apply TOGA power.
In the premise of the re-investigation, this is exactly what happened when the pilot first attempted to spool the engines by extra back-stick input. In the Airbus fly-by-wire design, this is meant to spool the engines automatically and hence allow the aircraft to climb at a constant or increased pitch while maintaining minimum neccesary airspeed for the manouever
However, the Airbus didn't respond to the stick movement and the pilot then tried stick + full selected throttles.
The next major point here is that the FDR and CVR don't match up in timing and there is a big question about the actual time lapsed between the selection of full-throttles and the actually computer response. This is where the investigation centres.
Your description of the event is correct to the point of the 'official' line.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
Aftermarket cruise controls are notoriously flaky. Your experience is typical.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
In brakes vs. engine, brakes always win.
paintball
"In the US, most on-board diagnostic computers only store emissions-related faults. If the fault isn't emission-related, it won't be there (unless you've got a true black-box car)."
No, that (probably) isn't true. In general, it will store data about ANY sensor that is out of spec (for instance, my 1995 neon). It just so happens that most sensors are for engine management which are directly or indirectly dealing with emissions.
Now if there is no appropriate sensor for this fault or nothing was too far out of wack, then no fault would be stored. It IS possible for the car to run poorly and not throw a code.
"When the car keeps on spinning, your car effectively will not have any brakes because ABS takes its time to recover, and repressurize."
Hello? Anyone home? Brakes, even those with ABS, work perfectly fine without ABS. ABS prevents brakes from LOCKING the wheels. It doesn't prevent the brakes from working.
ABS is great for most people because most DON'T know or CAN'T brake properly, especially in panic situations. For everyone else, I suggest buying a vehicle that has an on/off switch for the ABS.
If you are stupid enough to pull the ABS fuse and get into an accident, guess who is going to be in a LOT of legal trouble...
Gee, maybe non-mechanics shouldn't jump to conclusions until more details get fleshed out.
Renault probably had the worst contemporary car designs and quality control I ever saw when I was a mechanic in the late 80's, early 90's. If there was a way to design something that would be a REALLY bad idea in the real world, these rocket scientists manage to do. Master Fuckologists. They make late 80's VW/Audi look good, and that's no small achievement.
This was a 1991 Ford Escort (the USA one). The manual specifically stated that the key does not come out unless it is in lock, but one could take it out in any position.
Always Leave Finance Available
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
I for one, welcome our new sentient automobile overlords.
Ah, yes, but the Audi 5000 "sudden acceleration" was caused by drivers who stepped on the accelerator pedal instead of the brake pedal. P. J. O'Rourke's Parliament of Whores has the full story, which is cited in numerous articles on the Web.
Attack its weak point for massive damage!
Plus, you could use a thing like that to get out of a speeding ticket. All you'd have to do is show up in court with documents proving that the car's been diagnosed by a certified mechanic with that problem, and then make up some excuse as to why you haven't been able to get it fixed (can't afford it, not covered under warranty, can't find a mechanic qualified to work on it, etc). You'd only have to convince the cop that you were using cruise, and from there on out it's a slam dunk case. Just don't show up in front of the same judge twice.
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
I've never had this happen, but I've heard if you don't break a car in by varying the speed frequently, the engine can "set a memory" around a certain speed. (I suppose this happens because of wear in the cylinders that cause the car to drift up or down to whatever speed you were doing for a long time?)
My dad told me of his 72 Plymouth Fury that he broke in at 72mph, and then whenever he was within about 5mph of 72mph, either way, it would drift towards that speed. I *think* he said he had cruise and the same thing would happen, but I'm not sure if I'm remembering it correctly. Anyone out there know if 72 Furies even came with cruise?
Not sure how relevant this is nowadays, though. Manufacturing processes have advanced to the point where tolerances in engines are 1/10th or better what they were back then. Cars nowadays may not even be able to set memories at all.
(Then again, everyone seems to be complaining about crappy foreign cars...so who knows.) =)
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
This problem is a poorly designed breather hose that allows blowby gasses from the crankcase to be sucked into the intake and burned. On a gasoline car they use a PCV (Positive Crankcase Ventilation) valve. In both cases it's there to reduce emissions.
In the case of the Rabbit, though, VW foolishly put the hose intake right over a cam lobe. This allows oil to be splashed up into the hose and into the intake manifold. There it pools up until there's a puddle big enough to start getting sucked into the engine... uh-oh.
The runaway problem is easily solved. Go to any VW dealer or foreign auto parts place and buy a $10 plastic oil baffle. This fits over the camshaft and prevents oil from getting flipped into the breather tube by the cam lobe... no more oil in the intake, no more runaways. On later models, like mine, you'll see that the valve cover has an integrated baffle. I installed the second baffle anyway -- cheap insurance.
DRM 'manages access' in the same way that a prison 'manages freedom'
Nope. In the US the cars can and often do report all kinds of faults. My low end 1998 Saturn has only ever shown non-emissions related codes (and not very often). A complete (or nearly so) list of codes for GM cars is here http://www.capricess.com/technical/obd/obd2.htm . The list is specifically cadillac, but any cars with the same features are likely to share codes. It will even report if there's something wrong with the lumbar control switch on the seat. If you have OnStar and traction control they can probably call you and tell you one of your tires is underinflated. I'd be surprised if Ford and Daimler have much less information from their OBD systems.
Here are a bunch of the cruise control related codes:
DTC P0565 Cruise Control On Signal Malfunction
DTC P0566 Cruise Control Off Signal Malfunction
DTC P0567 Cruise Control Resume Signal Malfunction
DTC P0568 Cruise Control Set Signal Malfunction
DTC P0569 Cruise Control Coast Signal Malfunction
DTC P0570 Cruise Control Accel Signal Malfunction
DTC P0571 Cruise Control Brake Switch Circuit
DTC P0573 Cruise Control/Brake Switch A Circuit High
DTC P0574 Vehicle Speed Too High - Cruise Control Disabled
A quick search also showed that OBD is relatively new to Europe, required on gasoline powered cars since about 2001, and on diesels since 2003.
Floor accelerator, then release to free throttle cable (won't work on throttle by wire, usually). If this doesn't work ...
I had this happen to me a few weeks ago, I hit a pothole faster than I should have and all of the sudden I started accelerating out of my control. Of course I toggled cruise control a few times (to no avail), so then I tried pumping the gas pedal a few times. Much to my surprise, it actually made the car accelerate more.
To end the story, as it turns out, when I hit the pothole, my horn speaker broke off of it's mount and landed right on top of the throttle, wedged between the throttle and the firewall (95 Sable). When i pumped the gas pedal, it only wedged the horn further.
A little duct tape and a zip-tie later and the problem was fixed, and it's back to too-fast-for-conditions driving for me!
Wow.
:-)
(a) haha, yeah, that's what dads would say
(b) that's a kickass story to be able to tell YOUR kids
If you held the brakes on for, say a minute, you would have warped rotors and glazed pads. Not to mention that the car would probably have STOPPED.
Remember, your brakes are strong enough to easily lock the wheels. All they have to do is overcome the torque of the engine at redline (not the peak of the torque curve). I don't think this car would've had much problem stopping, even if the engine was at full throttle. Note that he would've started braking after passing the truck, not when he hit 120mph.
aQazaQa
My '96 dodge caravan (I'm a musician, it's my gear-hauler) will do in excess of 95 (actually got a speeding ticket once at 95) but won't set the cruise control above that. The engine's not speed-regulated (like some BMW's and such, electronically limited to 130mph or something), but the cruise control is.
I've also had problems similar to the Civic owner above, only my CC is not aftermarket - it's standard factory. But it will still accelerate wildly sometimes for no apparent reason. Disengaging the CC fixes the problem.
As an aside, I sometimes have trouble with my transmission getting out of 2nd, requiring - get this - a rolling restart (shift to neutral and turn the engine off and on). Which leaves me wondering - did Microsoft somehow get into Chrysler vehicles??
As an aside, I sometimes have trouble with my transmission getting out of 2nd, requiring - get this - a rolling restart (shift to neutral and turn the engine off and on). Which leaves me wondering - did Microsoft somehow get into Chrysler vehicles??
Actually, that was common practice in my roommate's RX-7 before some crackhead pulled out in front of him. From the factory RX-7s are designed to pump a little bit of oil into the combustion chamber in order to keep the apex seals and such lubricated. It's very common practice for owners with some engine work to start using a technique commonly termed pre-mixing. Instead of relying on the engine to pump oil into the combustion chamber, the owner will pour a measured amount of 2-stroke motor oil into the gas tank. It burns better than regular motor oil, but still keeps everything lubricted. This means that you have to disconnect the oil metering pump from the engine. Unfortunately, if you're still using the factory ECU, you can't remove it completely as the ECU still needs to get signals from it. Well, the oil metering pump on my roommate's car started to fail (probably due to the fact that it wasn't actually pumping oil any more, and so wasn't being lubricated itself) and would send signals to the ECU telling it to enter "limp mode." This would basically cut fuel to the engine past a certain RPM and in certain high load situations. It's very frustrating when it kicks in while trying to pull out into heavy traffic or when trying to pass somebody. Anyway, the temporary fix for the problem was, you guessed it, a rolling restart. Just flick the ignition to reset the ECU. I kept telling my roommate that he should hook up a dedicated switch to reset the ECU and label it Ctrl+Alt+Del. I don't think he found that comment too funny.
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.