Slashdot Mirror
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."
Before that, they claimed it was the floormat, even though at least one credible incident report was for a car where the floormats were removed.
Now they claim the pedal sticks down in spite of the reports including cases where the car takes off while at highway speed or while stopped. A sticky pedal cannot explain sudden acceleration, only a failure to stop accelerating.
They seem to be dodging the issue of the car refusing to shift into neutral while at speed even though restoring that simple bit of functionality would greatly improve safety. The controller should really take the hint and digore the accelerator at that point.
This article (happened in Australia - linked related articles contain more information): http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/16/2773868.htm
describes a problem with a Ford Territory getting stuck with the cruise control actively trying to keep the vehicle at 100km/hr.
A couple of things to answer the 'this guy was idiot, I'm so clever it wouldn't have happened to me' crowd:
1. He couldn't turn off the ignition as the car won't let you do that if the car is moving.
2. He couldn't shift to neutral because the car wouldn't let him push the shift release button. (It was an automatic, so no clutch pedal.)
3. Pushing the brake wasn't helping enough to stop the car. (In the end it worked, but he had to jump on it with both feet all his adrenaline fuelled strength while pulling as hard as he could on the handbrake.)
4. The accelerator pedal only worked to speed him up, It wasn't a pedal 'sticking to the mat' issue, as the car was holding itself exactly to the speed of the cruise control.
5. The car was going too fast to just ram into a barrier or tree, etc.
6. The guy called Ford Australia (on his mobile phone), who couldn't help him and put him on hold. So then he called the police who, to their credit, cleared the road ahead and kept him calm enough to eventually get the car to stop. The total ordeal lasted 50 minutes.
7. The recording of the police call was released and played on the news and it was pretty obvious that both the guy and the police were doing everything to get the car to stop. This was not a situation where a quick two second phone call to a know-it-all Slashdotter would have solved the problem.
Anyway, I can't believe this news didn't make Slashdot when it happened a couple of months ago, as it contains considerably more information than the usual fare on this topic.