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Toyota Pedal Issue Highlights Move To Electronics
cyclocommuter writes with an excerpt from a brief WSJ story on increasing electronic control of car components: "The gas pedal system used Toyota Motor Co.'s recall crisis was born from a movement in the auto industry to rely more on electronics to carry out a vehicle's most critical functions. The intricacy of such systems, which replace hoses and hydraulic fluid with computer chips and electrical sensors, has been a focus as Toyota struggled to find the cause for sudden acceleration of vehicles that led the company to halt sales of eight models this week."
Well, maybe all-electronic cars should be required to have a highly visible button labelled "Emergency Off" - I think I don't have to explain what this should (and shouldn't!) do.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
The problem with any tech is that it's nearly impossible to make it perfect. In some situations like airbags, you can make the system very simple and independent, so it's not prone to failure. But when there are scenarios that result in death, you need to be able to *shut it down* very quickly. In a car, that means literally turning the engine off.
If you can't do that in the car in question, that's insane. If it's not obvious to do so, it only highlights the life-or-death importance of good interface design, which on most cars seems to be outrageously awful. You should not reasonably have to open a manual to change the fucking clock.
citation needed. I'd say the opposite, huge number of replaced PCM modules and sensors show electronics are short lived, needlessly complex solutions offered in lieu of time tested mechanical and hydraulic ones. For example, guess what can happen if O2 sensor in exhaust system is faulty, car can drop rpm to idle then rev high in ten second pulses, very dangerous on highway. Happened to me, found myself in 4000 lbs. bucking steel bronco. Computer should not have so much control over throttle, just a small amount of mixture and timing adjustment, not complete potentially deadly control.
On Toyota's with this button you have to hold it down for 3 seconds before it turns off the car. In fact the long time hold has been criticized in relation to these accidents. Since you only have to touch to turn on, when you want to turn off in an emergency you also just poke at the button and nothing happens. In the panic of the moment you don't even consider trying again and holding down for a longer time.
Before you go bashing the intelligence of the driver you should be aware of some issues.
First, the car was a rental so the driver wasn't familiar with some non-standard features of the car.
Second, the car did not have the standard key ignition switch. It has a push button on the dash that turns the engine on or off. But more importantly, when in motion the operation of the button changes. When stopped, you simply press the button and the engine turns off. But when in motion, you must hold the button down continuously for three seconds in order to turn off the engine. Presumably this is to prevent turning off the engine accidentally while driving. This three-second delay doesn't normally occur so only someone who has read the 200 page manual would know that. I imagine that in a panic situation you would press the button two or three times and then give up.
Third, the automatic transmission has a sport shifter feature. You can move the shifter in a position through a gate so that when you press forward the transmission up-shifts and when you press backward it downshifts. You cannot directly push the shifter into neutral. You have to move the shifter sideways and then up several notches to get to neutral. In an unfamiliar car and a panic situation you would try to push the shifter into neutral like most cars. Instead pushing it forward would just up-shift to a higher gear. In a panic situation, going 120 mph, it might be difficult to figure out how this non-standard transmission works -- that you have to move the shifter sideways through a gate to get to neutral.