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Toyotas Suddenly Accelerate; Owners Up In Arms
cyclocommuter writes "Some Toyota owners are up in arms as they suspect that accidents have been caused by some kind of glitch in the electronic computer system used in Toyotas that controls the throttle. Refusing to accept the explanation of Toyota and the federal government (it involves the driver's-side floor mat), hundreds of Toyota owners are in rebellion after a series of accidents caused by what they call 'runaway cars.' Four people have died." The article notes: "The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has done six separate investigations of such acceleration surges in Toyotas since 2003 and found no defect in Toyota's electronics."
BMW insists there's nothing wrong with their electronics even though every single one of their cars indicates 4-6 MPH over true speed.
Problem exists between accelerator and chair?
Follow me
I have to say that the decline in manual transmission driving has really diminished people's driving abilities. It's one thing that the there's an acceleration issue. It's another thing to not consider putting the car in neutral when something like this is encountered.
Well, looks like regardless of whether or not the problem is electronics or floor mats, people still go with the things they don't understand. Regardless of whether it's bad floor mats or electronics, it's still a design issue and Toyota. Poorly designed floor mats that trap the accelerator pedal are no worse than malfunctioning computer systems if the end result is that you end up in a flaming wreck or plunging off a cliff (that's from tfa).
So Toyota says it's floor mat. But here's something I don't understand after reading TFA... all people who had that problem (and lived to tell the tale) insist that they were braking hard as the car was accelerating. If it were really just gas pedal stuck in a floor mat, then surely applying brake would force the car to decelerate regardless?
A very dangerous combination...
What exactly were they testing?
Were they testing implementation of the design and build quality issues, or were they reviewing the design itself?
Passing the former by no means guarantees you'll pass the latter.
That said, are there any reports of this happening in vehicles that for whatever reason lack floor mats?
There you have it, the HAM in the truck in the other lane rag chewing on HF about his new rig has managed to seize control of the Prius.
I for one welcome our RC Prius wielding retired overlords.
Hihi
I own a 2005 Prius. My wife and I have been driving it around for years and not once have we noticed a sudden acceleration. We recently bought a 2003 Toyota Sienna mini van and drove it around the country, putting several thousands of miles on it. Never noticed any sudden acceleration with that vehicle either.
This is only anecdotal evidence, but combined with all the various investigations that the govt. has done I am thinking that this is a non-issue.
How many times has the Audi science been reaffirmed (answer: too many times to even mention) that shows that a bunch of old, sensory input deprived, "should not be driving" people press the ACCELERATOR instead of the BRAKE, not because of a bad design, or because of some "computer" malfunction (dear sir: the "computer" (DME) that controls the engine has NOTHING to do with the brakes, you senile retards), but because OLD FUCKING PEOPLE CAN'T FUCKING DRIVE AND PRESS THE WRONG PEDAL.
THIS WOULD HAPPEN EVEN IF THESE FUCKTARDS WERE DRIVING MOPEDS.
The answer is: take their licenses away, NOT improve technology so they can continue their hazardous, reckless, wanton travel.
And again, nothing was ever found to be wrong with the cars. Seems most of the drivers were used to American cars, and the Audi had both brake and accelerator a little to the right of the more typical position. They were pressing the accelerator instead of the brake. Fact is, in almost all commonly available cars, if you stand on the brake and on the accelerator simultaneously, the car will go nowhere. For events to have happened as described, you'd need the simultaneous failure of two unrelated systems, which both healed themselves miraculously after the event. Additionally, same as last time, there are a few unfortunate cases followed by a deluge of similar claims. I wonder why...
God damn it, this again? All these "sudden acceleration" accidents are caused by morons "suddenly" putting their foot on the gas pedal. Afterwards, they say that the car accelerated by itself - and it's impossible to prove them wrong.
The computer went bonkers over a year ago. All the warning lights came on, etc... I bought it in South Florida, moved several times, put 140k miles on it, and live in the San Francisco Bay Area now. I took it to the Toyota dealership here and wanted an explanation!
They kept it a few months, brought in an expert, and told me it was a faulty sensor. The on-board computer thinks the hybrid battery is dead, yet it is continuously sending out a full charge! The dealership told me the faulty sensor was embedded in the transmission housing, would require a complete replacement of the transmission (which involves removing the engine), at a cost of $7,000. To fix... a sensor.
Ugh... so I opted not to fix it, as the car works great otherwise. Kinda annoying though - as every warning indicator is always lit so I never know if anything else needs service.
I gotta admit, other than that - its never accelerated on its own - thank goodness!
Cybie! aka Ralph Bonnell
Perhaps Toyota should talk to Audi for advice on this problem?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
F-22 raptor - 1.7 million lines of code
F-35 joint strike fighter - 5.7 million
Boeing 787 - 6.5 million
Premium class automobile - ~ 100 million
IEEE Spectrum: "How hard should it be to stop a runaway luxury car?" http://spectrum.ieee.org/blog/computing/it/riskfactor/how-hard-should-it-be-to-stop-a-runaway-car
IEEE Spectrum: "This car runs on code" http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/advanced-cars/this-car-runs-on-code
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
With American cars, the floormats are optional and come with a big price tag. This is a safety feature to prevent exactly this type of problem.
It's exactly like when Ashlee Simpson appeared on SNL and was caught lip syncing. She knew that she couldn't sing live, so she played her auto-tuned voice over the speakers. When the playback stopped and she was shown to be faking it, she danced a little jig. American car floormat pricing is like that little jig.
for stupid
Isn't a stuck floor mat a far more likely explanation than a mysterious computer bogeyman? Even with a recall there would be tons of cars that never changed them out. No doubt this should be investigated, but the article seems to be nothing but speculation and hearsay.
From the linked article:
There have been other deaths as well, including a fatal accident near San Diego this August that took the lives of California Highway patrol officer Mark Saylor, his wife, daughter and brother-in-law.
The Lexus they were driving, borrowed from a dealer, raced out of control at 100 miles an hour before hitting another vehicle, crashing into an embankment and bursting into flames.
The car was clearly new to him (borrowed), and he could have mistaken the pedals, but since he died in the crash no one will know. They had time to make a phone call to 911 claiming no brakes?
A highway patrol officer should know how to take the car out of gear, hit the brake, pull the parking break and kill the ignition. Or even just selecting a lower gear.
The fact that non of those things were done, or they didn't work suggest to me that it was indeed the floor mats trapping the pedal when they floored it to test acceleration.
But still, full brakes will at least slow down a car under full acceleration.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Does anyone know the software design / assurance standards for automobiles? Aviation (FAA) mandates DO-178B (level A through D) for software deemed to have an effect on flight safety... is there something similar for Cars? Closest i can find is this PDF Automotive Software Engineering [pdf]. THis calls out what looks to be the right things, but is it mandated anywhere that system-safety through to software assurance is followed?
anyone?
I label drivers on the road among some of the following catagories, Mini Van drivers, Hyundia / Kia drivers, and Toyota drivers.
All of these groups I consider highly dangerous, and avoid them at all costs. Also it provides me with much entertainment when my suspicious are reinforced, usually on a daily basis.
It's not a bug, it's a feature.
Ok, repeat after me: there is no production car on the planet with an engine capable of suddenly overpowering simple hydraulic brakes.
Know what Audi's engineers found back in the 80s? They found gas pedals bent out of shape by people standing on their "brakes".
This is not "news for nerds". This is the same bullshit driver error as before, just the computers playing boogeyman are a bit more advanced this time.
P.S. This opinion is based on the statements quoted in the article. The laws of physics may not be widely known, but your car can't nullify them.
See that "Preview" button?
and it really was the floor mat. Now I'm OCD about making sure it's in the right spot before I get in the car...
$tech_specs =~ s/Drive-By-Wire/Die-By-Wire/g;
Never shake hands with a man you meet in a fertility clinic.
My Geo Metro had the EXACT same problem. It would suddenly jump from 1mph to 1.1mph very quickly. They wouldn't admit the problem either. We figured it was due to having an odd number of cylinders.
Maybe they sent in Tyler Durden to apply "the formula" and X was less than the cost of a recall.
they can't replicate.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_Minutes#Unintended_acceleration
After a lot of controversy the final conclusion was user error.
I guarantee you this is another example of driver error in the same vein as the unintended acceleration that afflicted Audi 5000's years ago. If I'm not mistaken I think the problem in the Audi was that the position of the pedals was slightly off from what people were accustomed to causing them to think they were pressing down on the brake when they actually had the accelerator down to the floor. There have been a few other cars with similar issues.
I'm quite certain the problem with these Toyota's is similar. How in the hell could a car possible start accelerating on its own? And even if the accelerator is drive-by-wire the brakes are not and will likely never be. This means that if the owner got on the brakes hard they'd be able to slow the car. Even if the ECU didn't cut power when braking as some cars do, the engine won't be able to overpower the brakes. About the only possible culprit I see is cruise control, but again, that should be fairly easy to defeat.
The fact is that when some people panic they freeze up and are unable to do anything else. As with the Audi, they press the gas accidentally, the car lunges forward and they panic, pressing down harder on the pedal. It reminds me of what happened to my father years ago. He was teaching my sister's friend to drive. For whatever reason she got on the gas, started barreling towards a car and hit it. She freaked out and froze, her foot firmly planted on the gas. My father actually had to take her leg and lift it off the gas because she was completely unresponsive.
And the problem is that sometimes the issue isn't actually unintended acceleration but some other problem that gives that impression. I know of some cases, for example, where a transmission doesn't engage properly for whatever reason. The driver tries to accelerate but the car doesn't move, so they give it more gas. The transmission eventually does engage and the car lunges forward more aggressively than anticipated. The car may have a real problem, but the driver didn't respond to the issue appropriately.
People nowadays are far too ignorant about they drive. Some people barely know what they're driving, let alone how anything works. As part of driver training basic instruction on the mechanical operation of a car should be mandatory. This would allow drivers to better respond to problems and make them better informed when they deal with mechanics so that they don't get taken advantage of so easily. It's like Toyota's recall over the floor mats. Are drivers so oblivious that they don't notice their floor mats riding up under the pedals. It's not like those things slip under there that easily. Too many people seem to take driving as seriously as they do sitting on the sofa watching television. But they sure do manage to have quite an ego about what they drive.
I had this happen to me once on my 1988 Mercury Grand Marquis. The accelerator got stuck under the floor mat and the car took off. Know what I did? I Put it in neutral, Realized that was stupid (since the engine was redlining now) and turned the key to off. once I pulled over, I fixed the mat, started the car and went down the road.
These new cars, with no physical ignition cutoff is a bad thing. I swear to god the auto industry wants eX-Driver to happen, where we got teenagers running down freeways at breakneck speeds going after rogue cars with chaff guns because some idiot in R&D was too stupid to put a big red EMERGENCY STOP Button in the cab of the rogue AI car.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
It's very difficult to diagnose problems like these without a reproducible testcase. It sounds like you've stumbled upon one. You should talk to your dealer. Either:
Sorry for the anon posting, but I don't want to undo my moderation in this thread ...
Especially after waking up one winter morning to my neighbor's new Cadillac Escalade engulfed in flames. The neighbors were sleeping inside; by the time the owner came out to settle the flames, it had destroyed the Mercedes parked right in front of it. Had he not woken up, his house would've been gone.
He claimed that it just happened spontaneously, and I'd believe that, since my sister heard a loud sound and I heard it continuously honking before the fire started. It's kind of scary to think about, but freak accidents are called that for a reason...
Toyota has a serious problem. Have for years. It's not the floor mats.
I was driving a '98 Toyota Camry. Foot on the brake. B-R-A-K-E. Yes, I know the difference. Car in drive. Waiting for a right turn. The car revved up high. I did manage to throw it into neutral, and the engine continued to surge. Luckily I didn't hit anything. And it was pure luck.
The car did not have All-weather floor mats.
I have racing experience, and a background in Mechanical Engineering.
The reason the problem hasn't been found is that it's probably a subtle fault (like the AT&T crash back in the early '90s, or the stress concentrations in the DeHavilland Comet) and they're (by they I mean the NHTSA) probably not looking very thoroughly, due to lack of manpower. They don't do investigations of car crashes the way they do for other serious engineering failures, like plane crashes or bridge collapses.
Audi almost went bankrupt when 60 minutes investigated Audi's accelerating out of control. http://www.automobile.com/audi-investigated-for-unintended-acceleration.html
In the end it was all just a fairytale.
From working on cars , drag racing and that I work on autonomous car that needs an remote emergency stop. I find that the drivers couldn't stop the vehicle as a problem with the driver. Sorry for there loses but they should have payed attention in drivers education. I remember the old videos from the 70/80s where they went over if your throttle gets stuck what you should do. IMPO was more likely on older cars with a manual throttle cable would be come stuck or go out of control. The throttle in my Saturn has become stuck due to moisture in the throttle cable, along with cold temperatures; one time on the highway , one time coming out of the subdivision and I didn't go flying off a cliff.
Fun facts for people that forgot drivers education.
1) A fully depressed brake will stop the car even if the throttle is stuck.Unless your brakes fail also , or you have 500 lbs of torque, but I don't see Prius putting up those numbers.
2) Kill the ignition. No ignition the engine stops quick. In fact your engine stops quicker if there is more fuel in the engine. In older cars with a carburetor when the car would "diesel" continue to run after the ignition is cut, flooring the gas instantly kills the engine.
3) Put it in neutral. Nothing to explain there.
I had this same problem with a 1989 Jeep Cherokee in 2000. People died because of similar problems. On the internet and in court, Jeep claimed it was user error. The problem is people don't know enough about their cars to diagnose it, but it turned out to be the Throttle Position Sensor. Which would randomly rev the engine to 4000 RPM's instead of the idle of ~900 when you put it into gear. Yes, absolutely unpredictably. It was not easily duplicated for a mechanic, because when the TPS first started to go bad, it was very infrequent.
The problem is your normal routine is start the car and put it into gear almost immediately. The engine takes more time to rev noticeably past idle speed, at which time you're already moving and lost control of the car. Jeep claimed this was an unreasonable explanation, because they had an engineer sit in the car, depress the brake, put the car into gear, and then rev the engine and be unable to overpower the brakes. I found this only to be true if I were standing on the brakes, something I wasn't in practice to do, from a stop. It also overlooked the problem that once you let the car start moving, getting it stopped again was extremely difficult.
So everyone always assumes there are enough idiots out there for it to be driver error, but it happened to me, so I never trust any of the car manufacturers when this problem creeps up which it does fairly often. Also, it seems like extremely poor engineering on the manufacturer's part to fail to acknowledge this possible avenue of failure. Seems more like they are just covering their asses to avoid culpability.
I was in college at the time, and this is probably one of the more valuable lessons I've ever learned in engineering and something I think would be valuable in software engineering also. Never, ever dismiss complaining customers as morons just because its the simplest explanation especially regarding a safety issue. People actually put up with a lot. More often than not, when people complain and it is difficult to do so, there is merit to the complaint. A proper investigation is required, and a open mind, and wide imagination help determine the failure states.
They could have Lucas electrics.
Sent from my PDP-11
of the floor mats, which jam the accelerator in some instances. People who refuse to get them replaced are putting themselves and others in danger.
My favorite quote from the article:
Right before the crash, Saylor's brother-in-law called 911 from the backseat of the vehicle and said urgently, "Our accelerator is stuck. We're in trouble&There's no brakes."
So there was time for the passenger to use a cell phone but no time for the driver to either:
1) Turn off the engine
2) Put the car in neutral
3) Use the E-brake
That is, of course, assuming an unlikely coincident failure of two independent systems in the car (hydraulic breaking system and throttle). . . .
I have a 2007 Sport RAV4 that I bought for my wife. I am usually driving rear-wheel-drive vehicles with stick or auto, so this is the first front-wheel-drive I have owned.
Forget about the slight difference in handling, I have noticed a very odd issue with both the "fully electric" power steering and throttle. On at least several occassions where I was accelerating the vehicle suddenly surged forward as though the throttle had been floored. It was totally shocking each time it occurred to me. It had nothing to do with braking because my foot was on the accelerator the whole time and wasn't trying to slow down.
The first time it happened to my wife she almost lost control of the car. I was very upset with her and asked what the hell she was doing, she said the car just surged on it's own. I didn't believe her until it happened to me several times. I have also seen a couple very strange transmission shifts that occurred.
Seems like some buggy ECM logic to me.
The ABC web site has a video from Consumer's Report on what to do in case of uncontrolled acceleration. They use a Toyota to demonstrate that pumping the brakes results in brake failure - so the brakes cannot always overcome the engine. The Toyota off button requires holding down for three seconds, which is not obvious (until this happened) even to Toyota owners. They recommend putting into neutral and braking to demonstrate that this does work the best. At then end they show a VW where the full on brake does override the full on accelerator, and this is where good programing could make the car "failsafe" (I know, not the correct term but cut me some slack).
My mom's best friend was killed when her husband was parking their Toyota Camry at a restaurant on the Pacific Coast Highway, and the car suddenly accelerated through a fence and off a tall cliff onto the rocks below. Her husband survived with severe injuries, and he swears that the whole floormat excuse is BS. The car had been giving them acceleration issues prior to this incident, but the mechanic they took it to could find nothing wrong.
Ask Me About... The 80's!
Besides the obvious, does it run on windows, how you fix this, are we going to start seeing service packs for cars?
Hundreds of Toyota owners?! Well, then: if a percentage of the population of Toyota owners of North Dakota are upset, by all means, everyone who has ever owned a Toyota should raise their torch and/or pitchfork!
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
One thing I haven't understood on the Prius floor mats. I don't know if this is on the newer models or not but the older sedans have a clip that prevents them from skidding up into the pedal. There has not been any reports of the retaining clip breaking, only the mats slid. I wonder if this is an issue on only newer ones.
For a picture of the hole for the carpet clip;
http://www.boston.com/cars/newsandreviews/overdrive/Toyota-floor-mat-proper-installation.jpg
I've never had my mat come lose. Due to the shape shown in the photo, it can't get in the way unless it comes lose. If it comes lose, I'll remove it.
The truth shall set you free!
one with a flat.
Table-ized A.I.
Shouldn't it be possible in these computer-run-cars to check the logs and see if the brakes were actually applied while the accelerator was slammed? Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I thought they logged that type of stuff, similar to an airplane's black box (but not as sophisticated, obviously).
The older Prius sedans are not affected. From the Boston Globe article with the photo above they list the affected model years.
About 3.8 million Toyota and Lexus models are affected, including the 2007-2010 Camry, 2005-2010 Avalon, 2004-2009 Prius, 2005-2010 Tacoma, 2007-2010 Tundra, 2007-2010 ES 350, and the 2006-2010 IS 250 and IS350.
My 2002 isn't in the list. Only the hatchbacks are.
The truth shall set you free!
... it's probably a race condition causing the problem.
What if this signature were clever?
I honestly don't know what the deal is, here--I'm sure a complex software system like that has bugs.
That being said, I'm certain that a small percentage of the Toyota-driving population accidentally steps on the gas instead of the brake, when they are 100% sure they are stepping on the brake. There are plenty of videos floating around of people in parking lots stomping on the gas at the last minute and plowing into cars or restaurants.
All these posts remind me of when my 1972 Buick, a small block 350 with a Rochester four jet and 220 HP, had a half eaten acorn left on my intake manifold by a squirrel/chipmunk trying to keep warm while enjoying a snack. The result was a stuck throttle. If I accelerated the acorn shell kept the throttle wide open. Even with the gear shift on the tree I was easily able to find neutral in a split second. Any competent driver can shift to neutral and/or turn off the car (a feature I believe is mandatory in all U.S. cars). Sure you end up with armstrong steering and greatly reduced braking power, but they still work. Sure I almost killed a few people, but I didn't. I shifted to neutral. That was 25 years ago and I still have that half eaten acorn. With my current car (Acura) I am fully aware that I may need to shift to neutral or turn the vehicle off, and I have, just to make sure the vehicle operates as I expect. Learn to control your vehicle or get the fuck off the road.
If sensible input creates wonky output, it doesn't matter how well we understand the physical components. A screwy program will screw with the components in ways the operator doesn't expect or want. Google "breathalyzer source code" or "therac-25" for simple proof. More examples abound.
My car doesn't have this problem.
Possibly because the only electronic device on the whole vehicle is the auto-reverse cassette deck
One might suggest that if people are dying, you'd want to be more than up in arms, before people end up in trees.
(thanks, I'll be here all week)
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
The government & Toyota are probably right about the floor mat. But that's what recalls are for.
This is exactly what happened to me and I was heading to a cliff - 3rd gear - floored and I had the presence of mind to turn off the ignition. Seriously - I was terrified.
Picture this, you turn a corner, accelerate, change gears, and suddenly you are going around 80 Km/h with about 1 block to the edge of cliff and a 90 degree turn on a residential street with a cliff in front of you.
I had the time to turn off the ignition and jerk to a stop... BTW taking it out of gear under full acceleration is not simple either. I can hear the vacuum cleaner sound of the engine too - it was crazy. However, when the engine red-lines - it kill the accelerator for a second and then lets it restart... grabbing the ****ing anything with that is un-fun.
AFTER it stopped I could diagnose the problem being that the driver's side floor mat came off the hook that is supposed to hold it in place and inched up over the gas-pedal... thus couldn't un-press it until the carpet was pulled back.
Since there was a slot in the peg that holds the carpet in place, I took a handy dandy twist tie and wrapped the peg with the carpet in place preventing the carpet from EVER popping off that peg. Since then - no scary shit.
Toyota and Nissan should fix this problem - at their cost - and it should be a recall. - After all - it's a 10 cent fix - a peg that has a simple spring latch on top would fix it with no problems. Picture hanger anchors have used that technique for decades now.
This year I've been driving 4 different Toyota Yaris and 2 Toyota Auris from 2009. The floor mat stuck on the gas pedal on all 6 cars which can be a bit annoying when driving 75 mph on the freeway and some idiot is stuck in 70-72 mph and you can't pass him because you got someone else driving past in the outer lane. Just breaking while the gas pedal is stuck is no fun. First time this happened I almost panicked, but I managed to remove the floor mat in time. So I wouldn't call this an electrical glitch, you just need to move the floor mat back 2-3 inches and this doesn't happen.
About 20 years ago, the Audi 5000S had the same supposed problem. You can read about the problem at the "New York Times", the "Los Angeles Times", and the "Business & Media Institute".
The trouble began when "60 Minutes" (of CBS News) broadcast a story about a woman who killed her son when she accidentally pressed the accelerator pedal instead of the brake pedal. Her son was standing in front of the car. The woman, refusing to admit guilt, accused Audi of producing a defective car which accelerates automatically without driver intervention. She even filed a lawsuit against Audi. (Later, the court determined that she was at fault, but that fact was never broadcast in the original "60 Minutes" program.)
The sales of Audi vehicles fell dramatically after that "60 Minutes" program.
The Audi 5000S was never defective, but it did have 1 minor inconvenience. The accelerator pedal and the brake pedal were much closer to each other than they were in a traditional American car. This closeness was something to which a small subset of American drivers could not become accustomed. They sometimes did press the accelerator pedal when they intended to press the brake pedal.
As for the Toyota Camry, is it defective? The probability of it being defective is higher than the probability of the Audi 5000S being defective. Consumer-safety standards in Japan are lower than the standards in the European Union.
Even from an engineering perspective, the Toyota Camry is a dangerous design. For example, the transmission is mechanically separated from the automatic-transmission lever (that the driver uses to change gears). The lever is connected to an electronic box that sends some electrical signals -- along copper wires -- to the tranmission to control it: the process is drive-by-wire. Supposedly, Toyota used 2 identical sets of wires (for reasons of fault tolerance) from the electronic box to the transmission.
Another participant in this discussion claims that Toyota also mechanically separated the accelerator pedal from the fuel line. Toyota appears to have used drive-by-wire throughout the design to eliminate some metal -- thus saving money.
Do not trust the fault tolerance in mass-merchandise products. Fault tolerance is expensive and is meant to be expensive. Toyota likely tried to save some money on the fault tolerance, and it was not able to protect the vehicle from the 1-in-1,000,000 chance of a transient fault in the electronic circuits. The chance of a glitch is low, but the probability that it occurs exactly once among 200,000 vehicles is high.
The fact that only a handful of people have been affected by the freak accelerations matches a distribution of a low-probability electrical glitch. If you own a Toyota Camry, I suggest that you sell it as quickly as possible and get an old-fashioned-technology vehicle without the drive-by-wire. The Ford Fusion exceeds the quality of the Toyota Camry, does not use drive-by-wire, and costs much less than the Toyota deathtrap. Think about it.
Problem exists between accelerator and chair?
Cool! That means I can avoid responsibility by suing my manufacturer! Always wanted a way to get back at my parents! MUhahahhahaha.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I'm causing an accident, let's blame the car. Let's blame, and therefore sue, anything or anyone. How very, very american.
I can't believe, that nobody mentioned the rule from Fight Club:
Narrator: A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
Woman on plane: Are there a lot of these kinds of accidents?
Narrator: You wouldn't believe.
Woman on plane: Which car company do you work for?
Narrator: A major one.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
"panicked and didn't press the brakes hard enough."
well, if I was put into that situation, I guess I will use all my muscles!
The Lexus did not stop is probably due to its lacking of a “smart-throttle” technology which is standard on German autos such as VW or MB.
http://blogs.consumerreports.org/cars/2009/10/toyota-recall-putting-stuck-floor-mat-survival-strategies-to-the-test.html
Isaak Asimov has said it all...
A friend of mine just had her toyotas engine die because a cheap $20 hose was prone to failure, When it failed, the oil all leaked out WITHOUT the oil light coming on. This issue has occured for quite a few people with the Toyota Avalons (though almost all the ones with this issue were made in the same year)
All misspellings and grammatical errors in the above post are intentional and part of my artistic expression.
At full throttle engine vacuum drops and most of the power assist for the brakes disappears.
I admit I know nothing about cars, let alone their computer systems.
But I always thought that modern cars had some kind of primitive "black box" type feature that would record things like acceleration, breaking, speed... I dunno what else, and tie that into the air bag deployment.
I have no idea WHY I assume this, but it's always been floating around in my mind.
Can anyone confirm or set me straight on this?
-David
I had this happen with a Saturn. I was in a drive through waiting to get to the window when they car suddenly lurched towards the vehicle infront of me. I nearly rear-ended him, but luckily I was able to cut the gas in time.
I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of other cars had similar problems. I was on the freeway a couple of years ago in my 2005 VW Jetta. The cruise control was still on, but was not active after I'd braked to slow down while passing through relatively denser traffic. For no apparent reason, the car began accelerating as if the "resume" button had been pressed. I didn't collide with any other drives, but it spooked me pretty good. I still use the cruise control, but I always turn it off entirely as soon as I decide to slow down.
good luck, trying to pull the handbrake so hard, that it will stop a car going full-throttle ahead...
Hey, when you come up with that Ford Fusion that has a non-electronically controlled automatic transmission and that doesn't have the electronic throttle control that they're wallpapering the world with press releases about, I've got some nice land to sell you to park it on...
Why would this happens only in the US market ? They don't do a software+hardware for the US, they do the same world wide, it would be costly to adapt the software. Now think about this : why such story never happen in Europe ? Here is an answer for you : last time this happened people were pushing the wrong pedal. And after various people checked this over in many accident, I betcha this is the same problem. People panicked and hit the wrong pedal.
But my problem wasn't a computer glitch, some part go jammed into the lever for the throttle and it was stuck at about 2/3rd down. Was really fun to park with the engine roaring and having to stand with my full weight on the break to have it just creep along. My problem wasn't internal to the car, flipping the throttle and pounding on it trying to get it "unstuck" didn't work for me. It was an issue of components inside the engine compartment, something I can't address myself without basically removing the entire engine (thanks Chrysler, the parts are cheap but the hours of labor to replace them really keeps my mechanic in business)
This is a common mechanical problem that has plague cars since the beginning, and people have been killed by throttles that have gone out of out control. I don't see any practical difference between one that has broken physically, like mine, and one that is the result of a computer glitch. Either way, it's an unacceptable situation with essentially the same outcome. A dangerously uncontrollable vehicle that needs to be repaired.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
This reminds me of the recent article in Wired Magizine about Autism being caused by Vaccinations.
Sure the overwhelming scientific/engineering evidence points to User Error,
but a collection of well intentioned, but unverifiable, personal stories keep it alive.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/10/tesla-electric-car-accident-denmark-prius-suv.php
and
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/01/prius-and-tesla-gang-up-on-suv-the-suv-wins/
Here's an example of the levels of damage a Prius can do. (Example from Denmark)
I realize this probably is a bit OT since the Prius-driver was at fault (didn't notice the SUV, the Tesla and a motorbike stopping at a junction), but it is impressive, not to mention scary, to see the kind of damage a small car like the Prius can do. The Tesla is LITERALLY wedged under the SUV.
BTW: No-one was hurt, the motorbike is in the bushes somwhere (not in photo).
T-Bone
You put the car in neutral and the engine goes to 8000RPM. That will freak you out, I guarantee.
Not really. I had a 1980 Ford Granada (US/Canadian model with 4.1L 6 cylinder automatic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Granada_(North_America), a totally different car to the European model) in the early 80s. Its throttle was entirely mechanical, and the linkage to the butterfly valve involved a rod which twisted when the gas pedal was pushed down. One of the cheap clips holding this rod at one end got broken, and as a result, when I floored the throttle (required for manoevering in fast traffic on urban expressways), one of the engine hoses got jammed under it, effectively locking the trottle wide open.
I think the other highway users were more freaked out than I was, since I was driving with the brake lights on while holding the car at the speed of the traffic (65-75mph). There was no shoulder to stop on, but it was only a few km to the next exit ramp, where I dropped to neutral and then switched off the motor (as it raced towards bursting speed) and coasted to a safe halt with manual brakes and manual steering. A quick look under the hood revealed the problem, but I waited a few minutes extra to allow the motor and brakes to cool properly, before continuing home.
Despite driving more cautiously, I had the same thing happen two more times, before the clip was replaced a couple of days later.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I've had no problems with my Prius, however I did experience something similar to what those drivers are complaining about when I had cruise control turned on and active (set to a specific speed, as opposed to having no speed set). When cruise control is on and I tap the break to slow down and temporarily take the car off cruise control, if I don't touch any of the pedals for a few seconds and the car continues to decelerate, cruise control will kick back in and accelerate the car back up to the set speed. I would not be at all surprised if the problem was actually due to misuse or misunderstanding of cruise control.
Hell, some people are stupid enough that they need to be specifically told that just because cruise control is on, doesn't mean you can get up to go make a sandwich while driving, I guess they also need to be told that cruise control will cause the vehicle to maintain a set speed with no throttle or break input. Oh wait, that's specifically what it does.
So, now every time there's news to be had the Federal Government have to give us their genius insight? You might as well say, "Hey we're lying to you... and to prove it, the biggest liars in the room agree with us!"
The only thing I want the Federal Government to say to me is "yes sir". I've gone to sleep in America and Woken up in Soviet Russia, eh?
In 1986, CBS TV show 60 Minutes aired a program about unintended acceleration ini the Audi 500S. As far as I can tell, the '5000 (AKA the Audi 100/200) is not drive by wire. Wikipedia has an article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_Minutes#Unintended_acceleration that claims NHTSA and Transport Canada both found the problem was operator error and that CBS partially retracted their claim. Didn't help Audi's sales though.
Here's a guy claiming it can't be double pedal actuation because brakes are stronger than V8 engines: http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/in-defense-of-the-audi-5000/.
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
They show more speed because they want you to drive slower??
I don't think such weird explanations are needed.
The fact is that its impossible to design a speedometer(conventional) which will show you exact speed. So you are always going to have some error based on tire inflation etc.,
Now its your Speedo showed less speed than actual, and you got ticketed, it would mean lawsuits, so its safer for the mfrs to show more speed than actual,
Imagine you are in a 65 zone, and you are at 70 and speedo shows 65, you get ticketed. Big lawsuit problem. So they go the other way, err on the side of caution. 2-5% is there in almost all cars.
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
If your car suddenly accelerates I would have thought you'd be better off keeping your hands firmly on the wheel.
From the RISKS Digest:
There have been several recent cases where Toyotas have suddenly accelerated
out of control.
The most notable had a passenger who called 911 and reported her spouse, a
Calf. Highway Patrol officer who taught driving safety, was unable to stop
their car. They crashed with all on board killed.
Toyota has recalled several million cars to replace a floor mat that may jam
the accelerator.
But the crash raises the question: why couldn't an experienced officer stop
a runaway car?
a) It was a loaner from the dealer.
b) It was equipped with a keyless RFID ignition lock. To force such off, you
must *hold* the Start button down for 3+ seconds; touching it is
ineffective.
c) The transmission was some mix of manual and automatic, with a series of
gates to keep you from mis-shifting. Apparently there is no clutch pedal.
d) There were passerby reports the car brakes were on fire as it went by.
I see two big risks here. The first is changing longstanding,
well-understood, user interfaces without considering the uninitiated
driver. While Windows may have taught some of us that of course we use the
Start button to stop; it's not clear such learning transfers to driving.
And when you hide a vital safety function behind a time delay....
The second is more alarming. I thought that there was a {?unwritten}
requirement that no US road-legal car could even overpower its own brakes;
i.e., given full throttle and full brakes; the car stops, period. (This may
not be the case for a dedicated race car...)
Is this no longer true? Are there production cars where the brakes can't
stop a runaway? (That does not say you couldn't fade the brakes into
worthlessness, but we can assume the driver knew that.)
There are obvious add-ons that could reduce the possibility of a recurrence
[Tie brake activation to a throttle cutoff, add a real STOP button to the
dash, etc.] but those add complexity or direct costs...and may provoke new
problems.
While Toyota's head is now on the chopping block; they won't be the last.
http://www.audifans.com/archives/1998/07/msg02207.html
People forget that when the Audi 5000 was released, it was hit with the same allegations. Owners swore the car started accelerating by itself, even though they were pressing as hard as they could on the brake!
60 minutes did a hatchet job on the car, and it almost ruined Audi.
And at the time, clearer heads pointed out (in car magazines, newspapers) that it is impossible for an engine to overcome the brakes in a car. This is clearly true. But people swore they were pressing the brake.
Here's what NHSTA found: the Audi had much smaller pedals than American cars, particularly the brake, so that when people were panicked, they were actually pressing the accelerator, not the brake. It seems impossible, but true! The car was designed for European audiences and had smaller pedals to accommodate a clutch, even when it had an automatic transmission. So when people moved from old-style American cars with a huge, wide brake pedal, they were not reacting properly in a panic situation.
I've seen the same thing in relatives. About 2 decades ago, a female relative claimed she got into an accident because the car started accelerating, no matter how hard she pressed on a brake. She swore this to be true, even though what she was suggesting was a physical impossibility. But to this day, she believes it.
So I would be skeptical of this claim by owners. Not impossible, but highly improbable based on what we've seen from people in this situation many times before.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Cars are tested an insane amount before they are put on our roads. The easiest part of a car to test is its software. We aren't talking about a CGI script by a teenager here. And software doesn't erode or malfunction or break. If it has bugs, it always has them, and they will be there from the beginning, meaning they will be found.
If there is some real glitch, it would have to be mechanical or in the wiring. Like a switch not getting flipped, or some sensor going wack.
It's not just 'drive by wire' vehicles. At one point while driving a 1991 model car, I pressed the accelerator hard to get up a hill. When I let off the pedal, the cable/pedal must have gotten stuck because the vehicle kept accelerating (now down the hill). In retrospect, I should probably have switched it to neutral, but at the time my immediate snap response was to turn off the ignition key. Despite the loss of power steering and braking, it was quite effective.
It seems to me that if people are hitting the vehicle in front of them because of unexpected acceleration, they either are very bad at making quick decisions or they do not maintain a safe following distance while driving (a common problem these days).
When jet engines with Full Authority Digital Engine Controllers (FADECs) were introduced in about the late 80's there were several cases of engines suddenly surging to uncommanded high speeds. It turned out that the digital commands were sometimes getting corrupted between the cockpit computers and the FADECs. This was cured by requiring the commands to be repeated several times before they were accepted by and acted on by the FADEC in question.
How about having a larger cutout near the pedal, AND having the damn pedal not go so close to the floor?
But still, as others have suggested, how are you sure this is what happened? Before the idea of the pedal getting stuck under the mat was publicized, you might have considered other possibilities, like operator error. I've experienced something like this at least twice now, where I confused the brake and accelerator pedals, which was very freaky. I've traced the issue to some some operations involving lots of shuffling between the two, where instead of mentally thinking "brake... ok, now accelerator", I'm just thinking "need to alternate between moving and stopping... OK, alternate again". If it became unclear as to whether I was accelerating or braking, that would fail, and the usual response, "press harder", would make it worse. One or two of the times, it occurred while backing out of a parking space. The other was making a right turn into a gas station, just after going through a traffic light. After the turn, I was fucking accelerating towards a guy standing just outside the building, within 30 feet. He didn't seem jarred, but I sure was.
I had a 91 Geo Prism (a Toyota Corolla) that had this problem. It scared the heck out of me the first time--I put it in neutral then shut it off because the brakes weren't doing the job. I got to the side of the road and it took me about a minute to figure out it WAS THE FLOOR MAT. If I wasn't careful to keep the floor mat back out of the way it would do the same thing again. Not so scary then, but it did take more time than braking to correct the situation so it was dangerous. There also may be a computer problem, but not in this case.
Keep Doing Good.
I drive a Prius. The emergency shutdown procedure is to hold the "stop" button pressed for at least three seconds. That's a long time if you are out of control doing high speed on a motorway. I do not know if the transmission switch will respond if you try to select neutral while accelerating. The worry is that the computer controls everything except the manual/hydraulic part of the brake (unless pressed hard the brake pedal only activates "engine braking" which is electrical) and if the ECU is having a brain fart you have limited options.
That's all I'm saying... Why I am supposed to care about some malady that befalls you in your foreign car, when my city is destroyed by Big 3 downsizing. If our unemployment is our fault for building shitty cars, then, certainly your accident is your fault for buying one too. Don't come crying to me about your Toyota problems...If you get killed in that thing, its not my problem. You abandoned my country decades ago.
This is my sig.
And even if the accelerator is drive-by-wire the brakes are not and will likely never be.
An old Air Force paper http://www.ml.afrl.af.mil/publications/factsheets/Brake_by_Wie.pdf references an agreement with Delphi Automotive Systems to bring brake-by-wire to the US auto industry.
According to a market forecast published by Tier One in 2001, "brake-by-wire installations were predicted to jump from zero in 2002 to over 19% by 2010. The most likely applications were assumed to be luxury vehicles, performance cars and hybrid vehicles (combined with regenerative braking systems)." Gosh, that sure sounds like the vehicle classes folks are complaining have the problem...
>whereby the ECU can properly evaluate requested levels versus actual in pretty much everything.
Hmm, requested......
>This information was gathered while researching diagnosing my personal car, a B5 Audi S4.
If you have to request things you don't own it.
The Audi 5000S was never defective...
It might be true that some people hit the wrong pedal, but I actually owned an Audi 5000 Turbo and experienced sudden-acceleration.
I was driving down an Interstate highway in Texas, when the car suddenly began accelerating. I was on cruse control, and my feet were not touching any pedals. Since I'm comfortable at high speeds (past racer) and the weather and road were good, I was pretty calm. I put my foot behind the accelerator pedal and pulled back. It moved freely. I realized the cruse control had opened the throttle wide open.
I tapped the brakes to shut down the system. The pedal wouldn't move. I pressed hard with both feet, and could feel the arm flex, but it would not move. Realizing I had no brakes, and a wide open throttle, I hit the dash switch to shut off the cruse control. As the car slowed, the brakes slowly became operational. I noticed the turbo boost gage was now reading negative pressure. When the turbo boost was on, you could not apply the brakes.
It turns out that there was a check valve between the intake manifold and the brake booster. If it leaks/leaks, then high pressure air prevents the application of the brakes.
My belief is there was a bug in the cruse control, or it was susceptible to outside interference (trucker with hopped-up CB radio?) Combine that with the check valve issue and you have a car that could very well exhibit the behavior that 60 Minutes indicated. Those people said the car suddenly accelerated and the brakes didn't work. And that matches my experience exactly.
I contacted Audi USA, but they blew me off. The dealer didn't care either.
I'll let others argue whether this is a 'defect', but I've been cured of ever buying another Audi.
Place nail here >+
The classic line: "The harder I pushed on the brake, the faster it went".
Um, OK then. Try pushing on the brake pedal next time.
I don't get it. Can somebody explain it to me using a computer analogy?
The dealer wouldn't believe me as it was intermittent. When it did happen I had to slam on the break and turn off the ignition, and then everything would be fine.
I finally talked the dealers mechanic into taking my car and using it. After 3 days I get a call where he finally experienced the problem.
Turns out it was something strange with the cruise control, even with it turned off at the steering wheel it would still engage and not stop accelerating.
Let's just say that when your driving on a downtown street and your car decides to floor it, you end up in situations where you really wish you were wearing a diaper.
I feel sorry for the Toyota owners going through this. Specially because I know how skeptical the dealers can be.
The computer-controlled diesel engines in all the big trucks and buses use drive-by-wire. The throttle position sensor is built into the accelerator pedal.
Granted, there's no throttle plate to control (the accelerator pedal in diesels control fuel flow only) but Detroit Diesel, Cummins, and Caterpillar have been making these drive-by-wire systems since the late 1980s in vehicles that are a heck of a lot more dangerous when running out of control than the biggest car or pickup.
Why can't I mod "-1 Idiot"?
As an owner of a 2009 Toyota Camry LE, I can confirm that my car will occasionally (maybe once every 30 minutes on average) start accelerating (not fast, maybe 1 mile per hour per second) for about 2.5 seconds, even when my foot is steady on the gas pedal, and even when I'm driving on a completely flat surface, with the cruise control off, and with no external forces like wind outside or gravity pulling the car up/down a hill. This absolutely has nothing to do with the floor mat because it happens when my feet are not shifting at all. I'm a test engineer and have a good sense of cause and effect, how changes on the inputs to a system affect the outputs. The next thing I'm going to do is remove the floor mat and see if it still happens.
Anytime your car starts to accelerate when you don't want it to, you can always just put the car in neutral. You have to train your brain to do this automatically and quickly, because if you start accelerating rapidly, you will also need to focus on the road and not cause an accident. My wife almost got in an accident several years ago because our old 1993 Ford Explorer had a sticky gas pedal. We've since gotten rid of that clunker (thank goodness), but when it was happened I told her it was important for her to train her "muscle memory" to put the car in neutral. Many people who don't know how to drive a manual transmission also don't ever use the neutral on their automatic transmission vehicles.
Time to call 911, but no time to turn the ignition off - one notch, don't lock the wheel. This is nicer than putting it in neutral. I think the media need to point out these options when they report on this because a lot of people probably don't know why "N" is there or that it's OK to turn off the ignition while moving (but not normally recommended).
How about the overall problem being a combination of bad design *and* a lack of driver abilities? Floor mats, sure, no doubt that people do it wrong just like child seats. You take the summer mats out when putting in winter mats, jeez. Car trying to be too smart so that the driver can be a little less smart, absolutely a problem in general. Manual tranny for me, screw those slush boxes. Drive by wire, no problem as long as the driver can react to problems just like us old fogies do.
Can't put the tranny in neutral because you've never done it due to being a slush box, that's a user issue most of the time. Can't turn off the engine due to a fancy key fob, that's a dumb design, really dumb. What's the point in that other than a kewl factor? If it doesn't have at least a push button or an old fashion key then just say no to that nonsense.
'assisted parking'? wtf, that's the biggest waste of technology I've heard in a car in a long time. I have to keep a mental list of cars with the most gadgets and technology so I can stay clear of them. Not because I fear that the technology will fail but because I fear that the driver has no clue how to drive much less react in a sensible manner.
The big 'feature' on my new car is traction control. I've never had that so when I tested the car by putting into a slide on purpose to see how it reacts I was stunned that it corrected my slide even though I know how to do it better, same for ABS. I'll get used to it but I typically turn that function off, thankfully there's a button for that.
My patent pending banging-two-sticks-together throttle system brings the whole thing full circle.
evidence being the words “Prius is doing 97"
ABS, ASR (and dozens more) like stuff gave the people wrong impression that their cars and even trucks/bus stuff they drive will save them from every kind of stupid mistake (like driving 140 km/h in city) they do.
Every time I see a bus driving at insane speeds and he won't be able to stop because of basic Newton principles, he has some "ABS" or "ASR" sticker at back. They should come with warnings like: "ABS doesn't mean you can drive 170km/h and your car will magically stop when you push the brake."
It is sad that ABS (using as its widely known) like technologies should have make things way more safer but because of PEBAAC factor you mention, they could be causing more harm than good.
And when the cable goes, it isn't working at all.
But that's OK, it's cheap to replace.
Just have to hope you can coast to the nearest car repair shop...
There is obviously a race condition in the throttle system.
da-dum-dum-tsh.
Try the veal.
These the same guys who initially said there was no problem with the Shuttle booster tank foam or the O-rings? That Pinto gas tanks were perfectly safe?
"Refusing to accept the explanation of Toyota and the federal government". I would hope people had enough sense not to trust them.
The Vendors and the government has a notoriously bad habit of publishing outright lies. If Toyota wants to clear this up, the need an impartial COMPETENT independent investigation. The government may be considered independent and sometimes semi-impartial, but is often greatly lacking in the competence department.
Doesn't modern planes have both "digital" and old fashion wire controls which also helps computer to validate sanity? Perhaps they should have both and in case something makes no sense at all, it should do some logical choice based on the data?
There was this "issue" with an old VW Bug I had once. The carb would ice up on the outside, causing the throttle to stick in the open position. Lots of fun/ Had to throw it in neutral and kill the engine before it over-revved.
Best Slashdot Co
I had this happen to my in my 1989 Nissan 240SX, but I felt the floor mat slip. Due the position in which you sit in the car, you're fairly well held in the seat, so I was able to drag the mat back with my feet. I will note that the rev limiter in Nissans seems to be implemented with a particularly brutal fuel CUT, not a reduction, and it's a MUCH harder hit than in most other vehicles. 1989 240SX, 2.4 liter 8.6:1 compression jerks like you've got a frozen diff when you hit the fuel cut; 1993 Subaru Impreza, 1.8 liter 9.5:1 compression is almost graceful. Yet they're made with many of the same parts :)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Really. Unless you have a hundred miles of estate, why do you need cruise at 83mph?
Is there also not a "cruise at my speed"? So just get the speed you want (if it's your own land, why do you want EXACTLY 83 mph? surely 85 is just as OK too) and then go "cruise".
I don't think that word means what you think it means. Hint - accurate != exact.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
I do hope that the British Libel lawyer ambulance chasers dont come after you! (im british btw)
hell, i've got an 86 Bronco II that occasionally tries to surge and ram the guy in front of me at a light, this isn't really a new problem.
Everything is porn to somebody.
I had a similar incident happen on my '98 Jetta. I was on an interstate with the cruise control on, and it decided to start accelerating for no reason. The best part is that this was one isolated incident for a car in which I logged over 200k miles. By the way, that was an awesome car. I could drive like an old lady and get 45mpg, or (typically) like Mario Andretti and *still* get 43mpg.
In response to the claims of tinkering with the speedometer, both my '98 Jetta and my '08 Mazda3 have always reported the exact same speed on the speedometer as those roadside radar detectors.
Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. - John 14:6 NLT
Why not just slam it into neutral?
~SAB
It takes a lot of acceleration for my arms to go up.
Only his tendency toward a dazed stupor prevented him from screaming aloud.
The Audi 5000S was never defective...
That's right it wasn't. It was people blaming the equipment for their own failures.
As for the Toyota Camry, is it defective? The probability of it being defective is higher than the probability of the Audi 5000S being defective.
Umm, please show your calculations. You already admitted that the Audi 5000S was not defective so this should be interesting.
Consumer-safety standards in Japan are lower than the standards in the European Union.
Even if true (and you've provided no evidence that it is true) that has precisely nothing to do with a car sold in the United States where US consumer safety standards apply. Never mind that the Toytoa Camry is produced right here in the US (also in Japan, Russia, China and Australia).
Even from an engineering perspective, the Toyota Camry is a dangerous design. For example, the transmission is mechanically separated from the automatic-transmission lever (that the driver uses to change gears). The lever is connected to an electronic box that sends some electrical signals -- along copper wires -- to the tranmission to control it: the process is drive-by-wire.
Drive by wire does not make it a more dangerous design. It has DIFFERENT failure modes but different is not the same as dangerous. Fly by wire has become state of the art in airplanes where they have much stricter reliability standards so the technology clearly CAN be safe. While it is certainly possible Toyota has a defective system, I want to see some actual evidence of a fault beyond a few anecdotes of customers.
Do not trust the fault tolerance in mass-merchandise products
You do that every day whether you are aware of it or not. There is a reason we have product safety and liability laws. You trust your life to mass merchandise products every single day of your life.
If you own a Toyota Camry, I suggest that you sell it as quickly as possible and get an old-fashioned-technology vehicle without the drive-by-wire.
Good luck with that. Lots of cars are already drive by wire and within a few years nearly all will be. Enjoy driving unsafe older cars.
Fault tolerance is expensive and is meant to be expensive.
Actually it doesn't have to be expensive at all. A pipe wrench is a great example highly fault tolerant engineering but it isn't expensive. Fault tolerance CAN be expensive but it doesn't have to be. With an appropriate design it can even be cheaper.
The fact that only a handful of people have been affected by the freak accelerations matches a distribution of a low-probability electrical glitch.
It also matches the distribution of a handful of people standing on their accelerator pedal and being too embarrassed to admit they weren't using the brake. Remember the Audi? It's entirely reasonable to believe this is people trying to get money via our legal system instead of an actual engineering fault.
The Ford Fusion exceeds the quality of the Toyota Camry, does not use drive-by-wire, and costs much less than the Toyota deathtrap. Think about it.
The Ford Fusion DOES use drive by wire. Every hybrid car is drive by wire and soon enough so will (nearly) every non hybrid. Drive by Wire has FAR too many advantages in both cost and features to not be used.
Regarding quality, JD Power thinks you are full of crap and I tend to believe them more than you. 2010 Ford Fusion vs 2010 Toyota Camry
The traditional problem with drive-by-wire or fly-by-wire systems is that they are susceptible to high power radio frequency interference. The long wire for the controls can act like an antenna, and a high enough power RF signal can become stronger than the control signal so that the computer acts on it instead. There have been a few instances of fly-by-wire military aircraft crashing into the deck of a carrier due to the high power RF from the carrier's onboard radar. Likewise there have been a few drive-by-wire mishaps on the road due to high power RF from CB radios boosted with linear amplifiers well beyond the legal limits. There have been instances of drive-by-wire cement trucks dumping their load onto highway due to these issues.
Problems with drive-by-wire and fly-by-wire occasionally repeat because these high power RF corner cases are unexpected and *theoretically* shouldn't happen, but do.
So it's not at all a surprise that no FAULT with the electronic hardware has been found, because the problem likely ISN'T a fault with the electronic hardware.
Apparently the typical push-button start system can be manually turned off, but you have to hold the button for several seconds.
This sounds like a poor design as regards safety. In industrial equipment it is standard practice (required by code I think) that the off switch be more prominant and completely override the on button. Often the "off" is a button that must be pulled out (it remains in that position) for the system to operate, whereas the "on" is a momentary button.
The idea is that, in an emergency situation, if one flails at the control panel, you are most likely to accomplish turning the thing off; which is probably what you wanted to do (in an emergency).
McFly777
- - -
"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman
You need to go slightly to the left or right or press something to get into reverse but pushing it straight all the way should land you on "N". Maybe some cars don't I have not driven all of them.
There's a very basic problem here that no one seems to be getting. Drivers claim that their cars accelerate even though they push hard on the brake pedal. That's not possible. The brakes are more powerful than the engine. Always. Because it's so much easier and cheaper (both initially and liability-wise) to make powerful brakes than a powerful engine. The brakes win. Every time. No exceptions. You can prove this to yourself by going to a deserted road and flooring the gas pedal. Hold it down, then use your left foot to step on the brake. You can easily bring the car to a dead stop, even with your gas pedal mashed to the floor. Even if you're driving the most over-powered performance car on the road. (If it's a manual transmission, let up around 2000 rpm or you'll damage the engine.) There is no connection, mechanical, electronic or via software, between the engine management system and the braking system. A failure relating to the gas pedal cannot in any way affect the brakes. Even if all the electronics go completely nuts, the brakes still default to a simple, independent hydraulic system. This whole story is hogwash. It's the Audi 5000 all over again. Everyone went crazy over how the demonic "unintended acceleration" was going to kill us all. The final conclusion? People were stepping on the wrong pedal. This is not a technological problem. It's a human factors problem. Still a problem that needs to be addressed, but can we please shut up the science-challenged Chicken Littles so we can address it?
I am sure you can't turn the car off with the keyless power button, the only option on this model.
You can force a Prius to turn off in an emergency by holding down the power button for several seconds.
This is still a safety flaw. The off switch should be more prominant and easier to hit than the on switch. Having to do an emergency action that requires one to wait several seconds is just wrong.
McFly777
- - -
"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman
But still, as others have suggested, how are you sure this is what happened? Before the idea of the pedal getting stuck under the mat was publicized, you might have considered other possibilities, like operator error.
From the original post:
AFTER it stopped I could diagnose the problem being that the driver's side floor mat came off the hook that is supposed to hold it in place and inched up over the gas-pedal... thus couldn't un-press it until the carpet was pulled back.
In other words, he diagnosed the problem right after it stopped, not much later when a convenient excuse showed up in the news.
The only thing about this that is "news" is that stupid people are once again reject evidence and reality. It is always the same thing:
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I've spent a fair amount of time disassembling several Denso electronic throttle ECUs used in Subarus and some Mitsubishis. They use several throttle position sensors to make sure the throttle angle is what is called for. When any of the sensors detect failure (i.e. they do not match one another, or they do not match requested angle), the car failsafes to about 6% throttle, just a bit above idle, until the code is cleared (ECU reset, or a OBD2 tool is used to reset). These are monitored in real time. There is also an extra diagnosis step right when the car is started. These are embedded systems running real time code, the ones I've spent time on specifically are SH-2 RISC, running Hitachi's "vehicle operating system", then the vendor's own code (mishmash, unsure, I think mostly Denso's, but there is code based on each manufacturer's patents).
A software bug is always possible, but I have a hard time believing something like that would be the root cause due to the limited scope, validation, and closed nature of the code. Electrical gremlins even less likely, because of the multiple circuits that monitor the throttle angle.
I suppose the actual accelerator pedal sensor could fail, I think there is only one.
We all know there are people out there who actually really think that way. We don't expect them to hang around on slashdot but maybe there are a few.
I have not owned many cars but enough to see good and bad floor mats designs.
Chrysler daytona '87 was terrible. Nothing at all to hold the mats in place and even winter mats with "spikes" under to hold them to the carpet would frequently move around.
Audi A4 2001 was great. Pin system that held really well and worked with both summer and winter mats. I can't see how they would move accidentally.
Acura MDX 2005 is also great. Different pin system but holds just as well.
And if the floormat is not too blame surely braking should help enough to prevent accidents in most situations unless you were already going too fast and too close to someone. And then after the braking helps with the initial panic you can turn the ignition off or go for neutral.
This is true of any gas powered automobile with vacuum assisted braking, not just Toyota models. Manifold vacuum goes down as engine speed goes up. Modern cars have a vacuum reservoir to give you a few assisted pumps of the brake in the absence of a source of vacuum, but after that you are on your own.
Some one mentioned their 2010 prius with the smart key and being unable to turn off the ignition while driving. This is not true. If you actually read your owners manual you would see that if while driving, you put the foot on the break, and hold the power switch down for 5 seconds, the ignition in your smart key vehicle will cut ignition.
That was the kid on the bicycle behind you pushing!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
What gets missed in all these articles is that the brakes on a car can always over power the motor. Take a car like Porsche twin turbo. It decelerates from 100 mph to zero in about 3 seconds. Takes 10+ seconds to get there.
So when you hit the brakes you will slow down. Unless you drive like an idiot, dragging the brakes and overheating to the point they are outgassing so much there is no pad to rotor (or shoe to drum) contact.
So... unless there is indication of a brake failure, PEBAAC is right
TODO: create/find/steal funny sig.
My current car is a Mitsubishi with their FASTkey system that allows me to keep the key fob in my pocket and unlock the door by grabbing the handle. The fob also acts as an electronic ignition enable while it is inside the car.
If the car is running and the key fob is moved away from the car, the engine will be disabled.
I would like to think that in an emergency situation, such as a runaway throttle event, I would have the presence of mind to chuck my keys out the window as a last resort.
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
In the 1980's CBS' "60 Minutes" repeatedly aired an article about "unintended acceleration", including a dramatic interview with a woman who ran over and killed her 6-year-old son. Audi sales were severely affected for years. In the end, the consensus among engineers is that drivers were pressing on the gas pedal when they thought it was the brake. In the case of the 6-year-old, the accelerator pedal was mashed heavily into the floor mat. For obvious psychological reasons, the woman could not admit she was pressing the gas. The Toyota situation of unintended acceleration is probably an urban legend. We will see.
If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
Bull.
Try it with any production car. Mash the throttle and hold it back with the brakes. The brakes will win. Period, end of story.
Brake fade can be one of two reasons. Boiling the brake fluid which typically doesn't happen right away. Besides, you are flushing the brake fluid every year right???? and "Pad Fade" where the brake pads themselves overheat to the point they no longer grip the steel rotors or drums.
Try another experiment. On a road, at 50mph, mash the same pedal (in whatever gear) then floor the brakes. You again will stop the car.
Brakes can (at least for a short period of time) absorb about 5x the horsepower that the engine can put out. As long as you ultimately bring the car to a complete stop you will be O.K.
TODO: create/find/steal funny sig.
Perhaps Toyota should have used this "technology" in their Formula 1 cars. It might have helped them tremendously during the last few years. It seems that it's too late now though.
872835240
My wife co-worker's Lexus accelerated unexpectedly unfortunately she had automatic tranny which refused to go into neutral.
Two things has happened as a result -
Bad: she got injured
Good: her Lexus was a total loss so she could get rid of it
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=8980024 Remain calm, brake then neutral. See link above. I like 1990 - 2000 Japanese manual cars. They only have one computer and things are pretty simple. I wonder if there is a separate computer in the newer cars that controls the interaction between the throttle and the intake valve.
Toyota's all come with hooks for the floor mats. It appears that some dealers had been applying winter mats over the normal factor mats (so they weren't hooked in and slipped forward).
As a sailor I find this discussion interesting because I've been forced by necessity to learn and understand how everything on my boat works, including diesel engine, electric, plumbing, rigging, sail, paint, even the construction materials used. I've also come to mistrust hi-tech in a marine environment.
If my diesel runs away, I know of at least two methods to stop it, and can usually diagnose and solve other mechanical problems. If the steering fails, I know how to access and repair the steering components, but if I can't then I at least know how to steer by sail alone. If the electric fails I can systematically isolate the fault, or just sail without. If the plumbing fails I can likewise isolate the cause and have the equipment on hand to repair it or stop the leak. In essence, I've become a plumber, mechanic, electrician, carpenter, engineer, etc.
But I think most yachties are more like car owners, they don't want to know, they just pay others to fix it.
I tell you, knowledge is freedom. The less you understand the workings of something, the more enslaved you are.
Oh, and the more you pay through the nose for it.
Me, I'll continue to ride my bike to work.
Contents of kit:
1. Head Band with a large red dot in the middle.
2. 1 copy of written instructions:
When Rapid Acceleration occurs, place Head Band on head.
Raise both hands above head.
Scream the following: "Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!"
My apologies, to Anime Fans, everywhere.
Do we know if the toyotas have the "floor mat hook"? so the mat does not move....
I had the same problem with my old saturn (01 SC1) with the throttle sticking. POS CAR!
i have a honda (06 accord 5speed), wire throttle.. no issue yet..
Buy American - problem solved ;-)
nuf said
Do the accident related automobiles have cruise control?
But no time (or presence of mind) to push the selector into neutral? How about turning the ignition off? What?
The stupid, it burns!
One point missed on all posts is that overheated brakes don't work. If brake operation allows them to heat up too much before enough stopping occurs, you will get to complete failure. I can see it possible to be racing down the road, get the brakes heated, and then fail to generate enough braking to stop the vehicle.
Having said that, I'm on the side of "user error" in these cases.
I drive a current generation Tacoma with manual transmission, which is covered by the recall.
In my case, the floor mats really do get in the way of the pedals on a regular basis. I noticed it nearly immediately, but loved the truck enough to look the other way. Maybe it's because I drive a manual transmission that I notice it, but the mat OFTEN interferes with the pedals. I just sorta have to reach down and pull it out of the way from time to time.
And I've noticed similar issues with other Toyotas/Lexuses that I've rented/borrowed. Now I'm not saying that these guys in TFA aren't right, but in my case the floormats are a sufficient explanation. Throw in a pushbutton start and an automatic transmission and I understand how accidents could happen.
SteveWoz's concern about Toyota cruise controls - that's something I definitely started noticing in the early 90's. Some models are worse than others, but either way - the speed control is errative and unresponsive in most Toyotas I've driven.
So, the situation that has been described with the Toyota/Lexus cars has happened to me at least a handful of times with my A4. When I notice the car continuing to accelerate, which usually takes about a second or so, I immediately depress the clutch, let the engine "redline", which really means it hits the fuel cutoff, and yank the floor mat back. I think driving a manual does make you more aware of what's going on. At the very least it requires more attention and physical coordination/finesse. Maybe if I drove an automatic, I wouldn't realize I had to pull the lever into Neutral, or at least not as quickly.
I had a Ford in the 90s that seemed to accelerate on its own. Happened for a few months. I assumed it was some problem with the cruise control, and so did everyone in my family who drove the car. One day it happened as I was rounding a corner in the snow. Not good. A few weeks later I noticed it was the floor mat getting in the way of the pedal. Especially in cars that have cruise control, it is easy to think that is the problem and overlook a simpler explanation.
From a post above you....
"Braking systems have this thing called a brake booster. When the throttle plate isn't fully opened, the engine creates vacuum. The vacuum pressure is supplied to the brake booster, which has a diaphram inside. When vacuum is present, the booster assists the brake pedal making it easier to depress.
When the car is at WOT (wide open throttle), there is no vacuum and therefore no brake assist. On a turbo charged car, there is positive pressure at WOT (though there should be a check valve in the vacuum line). If you put positive pressure in the brake booster, you get the opposite effect, and you're not going to stop the car
"
I'm not crazy,I'm actively irresponsible.
I work in a European automotive company and I'd like to make a few points : 1) e-throttle is the reference design on every new car sold in Europe, it is the only way to meet the pollutant emissions regulations in Euope. Moreover it provides reductions in fuel consumption. 2) The unwanted acceleration is the most dangerous event that is taken into account in the design of the system 3) several levels of redundancies are designed to avoid this, both at hardware and software level. It implies dual sensors for the gas pedal, dual estimation of the desired torque, and switching to a safe state in case of discrepancy. The floor mat hypothesis seems not too far fetched for me, even if I have no insight on the Toyota design for this ECU.
Doesn't anyone remember the issue with Ford vehicles accelerating out of control back in the '90's ?
The problem was EVENTUALLY traced to the design of the wiring harness.
The wiring harness was not supported correctly and eventually some of the wires would get bare spots. And whenever there was enough moisture in the air; due to either rain or simply high humidity. The cruise control would accelerate the car.
Also; I once had a VW diesel Dasher that would accelerate wildly on it's own.
The issue turned out to be that particular year had a problem with uneven pressure in the cylinder head. Causing engine oil to leak past the rings.
When enough engine oil entered the combustion chamber; the car would then run and accelerate uncontrollably on that oil.
So DON'T dismiss all the cases as driver error.
Your absolutely right, now move this conversation to Detroit ... or mexico or wherever it is that they make cars. The engineers get paid bank, the programmer who buys a no brand multi use controller off a radio shack shelf and programs it using 50 lines of basic code gets paid crap. Fact is computers are still not a part of true car culture. For the record just because you have a dressed down garmin heads up doesn't make it computer controlled.
Shoot the capacitors in my 94 galant still explode periodically because they were the cheapest parts Mitsubishi could get.
So Toyota is the latest whipping boy... While I don't doubt that it's possible for a cruise control system or throttle body control computer to get stuck/fail, or a floor mat getting in the way, 99.99% of all these 'run away acceleration' incidents are driver error. I was the owner of an Audi 5000 back in the 80's when Audi was getting the beating over this. As it turns out people were pressing the accelerator instead of, or in addition to, the brake pedal because they were so close together (a design I really like in cars cause it allows easy heal-toe pedaling - something almost impossible to find now since the lawyers ravaged the auto industry over the design).
I had my own experience with a gentleman test driving my Audi when it came time to sell it. He accelerated when approaching a stop sign instead of slowing... He thought it was the car "still warming up" or some such nonsense, but I happened to look at his feet at the time, and saw he was pressing both pedals (gas more than brake) instead of only the brake pedal. Fortunately we didn't have an 'incident'.
Regardless, in all tests from all auto manufacturers that have been accused of this "unintended acceleration" thing... It doesn't matter what they do to cause a full open throttle (simulated failures, full accelerator pedal depression, etc) the cars can always be brought to a full and remarkably quick stop by applying full pressure to the brake pedal. Sooooo, people, use the damn brakes! Even if you accidently press the gas too, you can still stop by fully depressing the brake pedal! Use both feet on the brake pedal if you have to!! You can also throw 'er in neutral and pull the emergency brake should the worst coincidence occur - where you have an open throttle plus brake failure - what are the chances of that?
The Veyron has 1001 horsepower. It can accelerate from 0 to 400k/h in 50 seconds. But it can decelerate from 400k/h to 0 in 10 seconds.
Correctly functioning brakes are ALWAYS more powerful than the engine.
All this stuff about drive-by-wire failing, blaming the computer, and all that is clearly impossible.
Didn't you read the parent post? The NHTSA has investigated SIX of these computers and the controlling software, and found no issues.
Toyota: Moving you forward into the next traffic jam. Whether you like it or not.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I had a 1969 Chevy Nova that had this same kind of problem. The design of the accelerator was a set of rods that was hinged off the pedal, up the firewall to a pivot, and straight forward to the carburetor. All was well and good until an engine mount broke and it rocked a bit to one side. Engine mounts are intentionally captive, so it never breaks free, but suddenly there's a lot more transverse travel. Make a hard turn in traffic and the throttle gets pinned full open by that fixed linkage as the engine rocks to one side and stays there due to torque. I was a scared 16 year old kid in a suddenly hurtling rocket. But even through that, I had the presence of mind to reach up and turn the key off. So the question begs: Why didn't these people just switch off the engine when things went wrong?
I assume you are talking about the case of the 20 year police officer and his family in a loaner Lexus?
In the article I read, it was postulated possibly the zigzag gating of most newer car auto trannies makes it harder to quickly bump into neutral. This seems somewhat silly as I doubt most people look down when shifting to park. You just kinda cram it up there till it goes. It seems like if it was an emergency, you could get the car into neutral/reverse/park which would stop power transfer to the wheels.
As I was thinking about this though, I thought to myself - do any of these new cars with fly-by controls either lock out certain gates in the mechanical automatic tranny linkage, or do any of them have fly-by automatic tranny control, where this would be impossible?
"moving while he was filling it with gas, so clearly not driver error"
If the car was not turned off and in park (or as applicable w/manual trans.) then it is definitely driver error.
Or are you claiming the car spontaneously started itself?
"She was driving her Toyota Prius outside Denver, CO when she says it suddenly shot up to 90 miles an hour......." In a Prius??? Suddenly??? I think not. There's the ignition switch....the little thingy that the shiny metal piece goes into to turn the car on and off. TURN IT OFF! There's the emergency brake....PULL IT! There's this thing called the gear shift, PUT IT IN NEUTRAL or if necessary, slam it into park.
The power brake uses vacuum from the intake to operate. At high rpm there is no vacuum and therefore no brake assist.
The fix was to put a metal guard plate over the rod behind the brake pedal.
I thought the fix was to require the driver to depress the brake pedal to shift from park to reverse or drive - which later became a requirement for all automatic transmissions in the US. If the driver has to depress the brake first (while still in park) they are less likely to have the engine start revving up without noticing it (and before engaging drive or reverse).
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Your jingoism is naive and pathetic
You can call me jingoistic and naive, but at least I checked the numbers. Free trade hasn't worked. If it did work, over the last 40 years, American standard of living would have risen, but it has fallen. If it did work, we might have had a positive trade balance more than once during the course of the 40 years. If it did work, we would not be twenty trillion dollars in debt.
I mean, sure, you can go ahead and drive your jap car past all the blown own cities, pretend the sapping of our national resolve has nothing to do with the fact that we do not make anything anymore, mutter on some jumbo crap about having an IP based economy, but, the fact is, free trade doesn't work, hasn't worked, and won't work, and quite frankly, by the numbers, is just as big as a failure as socialism is.
It's not even that you are screwing your own country over by buying foreign products. It's that, you think you are smart to do so. What's next, 2+2 = 5?
This is my sig.
Meaning "arms are raised rollercoaster style while drivers accelerate off edge of cliff" ....AHHHHHH!!!!!!
did the inspectors inspect the code that is driving the electronic systems or just turn it on and see if it works?