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)."
Oh great, a car going on rampage. As if drunken and irresponsible humans didn't make the streets unsafe enough already.
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.
"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.
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.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
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.
/s/Automatic/Automated
:-P
I watched more.
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
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.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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.
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.
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.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
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?
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.
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 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
- 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.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.
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.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!