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)."

Comments

Knight Rider

[kpogoda]

Was the name of the car KIT? :)

Re:Knight Rider

[VendettaMF]

/s/Automatic/Automated

I watched more. :-P

Yeah...

[jargoone]

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.

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? artid=22184&pg=1

Re:Yeah...

[kerry-buckley]

How many people actually know someone that is a competent driver that has had this happen?

I had my (purely mechanical) throttle stick open once, but it took about two seconds to realise what was going on and switch the ignition off.

I've heard people in these situations before saying "but I couldn't cut the engine, otherwise the servo brakes/power steering wouldn't work!". Right, so driving for miles at full throttle is far better than taking a few extra yards to stop.

Re:Yeah...

[dr_dank]

A similar problem almost put Audi out of business in the 80's because of a "story" on 60 Minutes

Yes, but it did give rise to the funniest automotive acronym I've ever heard:

AUDI - Accelerates Under Demonic Influence.

Right up there with:

Fiat: Fix it again, Tony!

Re:Yeah...

[Profane MuthaFucka]

When I lived in Phoenix, there was a woman who had her Hyundai accelerate out of control. She was blowing through red lights, barely managing to keep her car under control. The police were trying to clear traffic ahead of her, and finally one got in front of her and used his brakes to slow her car down. It was a frightening event, and everyone was just happy that the woman was safe, and that she hadn't killed anyone else.

And then, it happened again. Turns out she was just an attention whore, and nothing was wrong with her Hyundai.

Sounds Familiar

[YodaToo]

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.

Re:Sounds Familiar

[Delta-9]

"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."

You are correct, that is exactly what was happening. Audi went ahead and made the stupid move to put more distance between the gas pedal and the brake pedal for the idiots over here in the US that have fat asses and feet.

Re:Sounds Familiar

[squiggleslash]

That would strike me as still being a design flaw, just not the one the complainers initially thought it was.

I recall the major issues concerning the Airbus A320 in the late eighties. There were a number of unexplained crashes and accidents, and both the pilots and Airbus were at loggerheads because Airbus couldn't see any fault with the software and had done everything possible to make it reliable, and the pilots - including survivors of actual incidents - believed the planes had gone totally out of control.

Well, it turned out that at least one of the issues had to do with circumstances in which both pilot and plane dealt with a problem without taking into account the other's actions. As an example, if the plane tilted to the right a little too far, the plane would immediately tilt it back. The problem was so would the pilot, and the two together would over-compensate and the plane would end up dangerously tilting left. So the pilot and plane would then do exactly the same thing in the other direction. Pilot assumes plane is out of control. Plane is just trying to correct the "dumb" pilot. Result, in some cases actual disasters.

Designers have a habit of looking at designs purely in terms of a control panel hooked up to a device. However, the control panel is an interface to a device - a human being - not the end-point of the design, and designers need to be more careful to ensure that the fact a human being will be a part of the system is taken into account, at all stages of the design. Airbus, of course, can be forgiven for being one of the first to encounter a problem with this.

Whether this is relevent to the Renault incident is open to question.

This is a fancy way of saying...

[tkrotchko]

This is a fancy way of saying "The guy is lying".

Re:This is a fancy way of saying...

[gfxguy]

I personally believe the guy was full of it, on the other hand it is also standard operating procedure to deny liability first and then investigate.

Blame what you don't understand

[NicolaiBSD]

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.

Re:Blame what you don't understand

[Delirium Tremens]

Irrelevant. If you had read the story, you would have learnt that

• the driver was not drunk;
• he actually called the police while driving at 200 Km/h to ask for help;
• he had not been ticketed before the call or caught by any police radar that would have made him want to pull that stunt to cover his speeding excess;
• he eventually managed to disconnect controls to the car so that it finally and slowly cruised to a stop on the emergency lane.

Yes, the driver might still be lying about the all thing, but, if so, it was not to cover any known misdoing. On the contrary.

Re:Blame what you don't understand

[flibuste]

If you had read the other story, you read that:

Selon LCI, le conducteur avait déjà été condamné pour état d'ivresse et excès de vitesse, son permis lui avait été retiré durant 4 ans.

Translation:According to LCI [a TV Channel], the driver has already been prosecuted for drunken driving and over-speeding, and his license cancelled for 4 years

This guy sounds like a dangerous idiot who is trying to protect his but with a fake story.

It also sounds like the media picked up HIS story first without fact-checking. Same thing happened with a woman in the Paris subway who claimed she and her baby were attacked by "anti-semites". Her story went first page in most of the newspapers, people started shouting against the insecurity in France, "anti-semitisme" and all sort of non-sense. It turned out she was mythomaniac and made up the whole story.

Machines going wild

[yogan]

Oh great, a car going on rampage. As if drunken and irresponsible humans didn't make the streets unsafe enough already.

Happened to my wife a few months ago

[Enry]

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.

Re:Happened to my wife a few months ago

[Technician]

Turning the key off was not preferred as it locks the steering wheel on most cars causing a loss of control.

I drove stick cars for many years. My first was a beetle and my latest a Mustang. I had a throttle stick once (broken spring) and I didn't want to blow the engine. Plan ahead on what to do. Pratice it. I calmly turned the key one click only. Problem solved. Nothing broken.

Newer automatic cars are even simpler. Turn the key off. It won't go into lock until you put the shift in park. They do that on new cars so they won't roll away if you forget to put it in park as it keeps you from removing the keys. To get your keys out, you have to put it in park and then lock the steering. Only then can the keys be removed.

Try it. Shut off the car in your driveway but leave it in nutral or in drive. Try to lock the steering and remove your key.. There are only a few cars that let you remove your key without locking the transmission and steering.

Just because no problem was found...

[sxltrex]

...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...

Bit like Airbus

[reality-bytes]

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.

Re:Bit like Airbus

[hoofie]

I recall seeing a documentary on this a few years ago. They looked at the FDR outputs and comapared the time-lag between the pilots inputs and the control response.

Once the pilot realised he was making an arse of it [he was low and slow, even for a demo - he has passengers for god's sake], he requested TOGA [To-Go-Around if I'm correct] power from the engines and put some back pressure on the side-controller. The engines started to spool up [you can hear it on the video of the crash], but the elevators refused to respond for a number of seconds - the flight computers were in landing mode and as far as they concerned they saw an unsafe input. So they said 'Non'. By the time the elevators started to respond to the pilot input, he was in the trees and sadly, people died.

Re:Bit like Airbus

[Alioth]

Actually, that's completely incorrect.

The aircraft did give the pilot TOGA power (take off/go around power), but the aircraft was ALREADY so far behind the "power curve" (i.e. in the region of the flight envelope where slowing down actually induces MORE drag - if you want to find out more google for a drag/airspeed diagram - unlike ground vehicles, the curve has a "back side" for aircraft where induced drag increases as speed decreases) that it was simply against the laws of physics for the pilot to extricate himself from the pickle he'd put himself in.

It takes several seconds for a turbofan engine to "spool up". Unlike a small piston engine which can go from idle to maximum rated power almost instantly, a turbofan engine takes several seconds to go from a low power setting to takeoff power. There's an awful lot of inertia in the many turbine and compressor discs. (Modern jet engines are much better than the first generation ones, but they still take time to get up to speed).

The pilot did ask for takeoff thrust. However, by the time the engines did reach takeoff thrust (they actually performed slightly better than spec) the tail of the aircraft - which was already in a nose-high attitude because of the angle of attack needed to fly as slowly as he was flying - was already striking the trees at the end of the airfield. The additional drag of pulling the empennage through the trees overcame the thrust of the engines, and the plane slowed further causing it to impact more trees, adding more drag, slowing the plane further, until the final impact with terrain.

The pilot was ENTIRELY at fault. The same thing would have happened if he was flying a Boeing 727 ('Jurassic Jet') with the same kind of flight profile. He tried to violate the laws of physics and lost. The overall record of the Airbus A320 series shows that calling it "die by wire" is pure, unadulterated inaccurate hyperbole.

Re:Bit like Airbus

[Idarubicin]

Some of these systems seem so easy to implement too- I mean how hard can it be to put a sensor in front of the car and sense if you are approaching an object at a speed that you will soon not be able to avoid a collision?

It's really hard, actually. At highway speed, you're covering about 30 meters (100 feet) per second. To stop, you're looking at probably three times that distance or more.

Do you want your car to activate its emergency braking system every time it approaches a hill? Will it understand that a guardrail a hundred feet in front of you is okay because you fully intend to follow a curve?

An alarm to notify drivers that they're going to lane change into the side of the car in their blind spot could be managed, but avoiding objects on the road ahead is a fiendishly difficult problem.

Incidentally, if you're following closely enough that hard braking by the car in front will cause a collision before you can respond, then you're following too closely. Back off and/or slow down.

The official Renault press Release in English

[zakkie]

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.

Obligatory Father Ted Quote:

[tiluki]

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.

Re:I still don't get it

[R2.0]

Your statement has the same weight as Irwin Fletcher saying "Its all ball bearings these days."

Throttle by wire - a couple of companies
Brake by wire - none
Steering by wire - none

Why? If the first one fails, the engine dies. If the second 2 fail, you die. Some carmakers are experimenting with it, but none have brought to production.

Ancient .sig

[superid]

I remember someones very old (probably a Wildcat BBS) sig that went something like:

Anxiety \Anx*i"e*ty\ - n ; finding yourself behind a pinto and in front of an Audi 5000

DaimlerChrysler did this to AutoWeek

[IronChefMorimoto]

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.

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=3331

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=4163

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

Maybe it's an Easter Egg

[cryptochrome]

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.

I call BS on Renault

[Morgahastu]

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.

Re:I still don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't let you do that

Something similar happened to me...

[hoggoth]

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.

Re:I still don't get it

[The Snowman]

ABS is essentially brake-by-wire. If the black box decides it doesn't want pressure at the slave cylinders, the driver is just along for the ride.

I do not know about other ABS systems, but in my vehicles if the ABS fails the power brakes still work. I had my ABS malfunction in one vehicle and the brakes worked like normal. In my experience, ABS modules are very fail-safe and I have never heard of one taking the driver along for the ride. Maybe you have, I am not saying you are wrong, just that I have not heard of that before.

Re:I still don't get it

[Issue9mm]

That might have been unexpected, but it's seldom lethal. Your car will drive just fine without any power steering fluid (assuming you don't burn out the pump and innards of course), as that is how all cars used to be.

If you'd accelerated a little bit, you'd have noticed it got easier to turn, as the tires have less constant contact with the ground.

Basically, the point I'm making is that if power steering fails, it's a little harder to turn. If steering-by-wire fails, the car DOES NOT turn at all, and you die. Granted, I'm sure that there would be some sort of failover in place before it was ever actually implemented, but that's the difference.

Having to put some muscle into it is a whole lot better than the wheel spinning freely with no effect.

-9mm-