Slashdot Mirror
Woz Cites "Scary" Prius Acceleration Software Problem
theodp writes "Speaking at Discovery Forum 2010, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak went off topic and spoke about a 'very scary' problem with his 2010 Toyota Prius. 'I don't get upset and teed off at things in life, except computers that don't work right,' said Woz, who went on to explain he'd been trying to get through to Toyota and the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration for three months, but could not get anyone to explore an alleged software-related acceleration problem. 'I have a new model that didn't get recalled,' Steve said. 'This new model has an accelerator that goes wild but only under certain conditions of cruise control. And I can repeat it over and over and over again — safely.' Toyota said it investigates all complaints. 'We're in the business of investigating complaints, assessing problems and finding remedies,' said Toyota's John Hanson. 'After man-years of exhaustive testing we have not found any evidence of an electronic [software] problem that would have led to unwanted acceleration.'"
We recently discussed other problems Toyota has had with electronic acceleration systems.
The problem is the really competent people almost never actually call customer service, because they know better. 99.9% of the "experts" that call customer service are people who think they know a whole lot, and can talk a good game, but don't actually know what they're talking about. Also, first level techs are basically script-reading drones who get paid garbage wages for an essentially unskilled job. You can't expect people like that to accurately determine if someone is an expert or not.
The end result is you would end up with a lot of people who sound like they know what they're talking about being escalated and wasting the time of your skilled (and highly paid) engineers.
Most customer service centres seem to be manned by people that would fail the Turing test.
Last time I called Dell about a laptop that was completely dead, no power lights, no fans, they asked me what the error message on screen was and it took a few minutes to explain to them something as simple as the fact that I couldn't get an error message on screen because the laptop was dead.
It was probably one of the most epic examples of human idiocy I have ever encountered. The worst part is that I understand these people are given little flow charts, or on screen wizards, so he must've managed to click past the first box that checked whether the system even turned on or not and then been incapable of handling the idea that my response didn't fit his next question.
I don't even know why places like Dell even have customer services anymore really, they outsource because it's cheap, but the centres they outsource to are cheap because they're incompetent. They might as well drop the customer service lark altogether and save themselves even more, if I phoned Dell and got told by an automated message that customer service didn't exist anymore, it wouldn't have been any less helpful than the guy above that I did actually get through to.
That quote ignores the influence of the mass media. From all accounts, this problem with Toyota's accelerator is extremely rare. However, Toyota has been getting absolutely reamed in the press for weeks over it. There's no telling how many potential customers they've lost because of this, but the damage to their previously spotless reputation for quality could take decades to recover. When people talk about quality reliable automobiles, Toyota and Honda are almost always the first two names that come up. For a company like that to have an issue like this, and to have handled it like they did, is devastating.
I got a speeding ticket last year while driving my mother-in-law's new Toyota Sienna for the first time. I was following a vehicle through a work-zone with the cruise control set at 50-mph (so I thought). The vehicle in front of me changed lanes and the van accelerated rapidly to 65-mph...right past a cop. I tried to explain to him that the van did it, but he didn't care.
I know now that the digital cruise control, in combination with the collision-avoidance "radar" in the Toyotas will regulate the vehicle speed, but what happens when the vehicle in front of you moves or accelerates is sometimes erratic behavior. Could this be related to what's happening? Is it user error?
I can imagine that woz explained specifically what the problem is (and how to reproduce it), but the article doesn't mention any specifics. Now I have nothing empirical to form an opinion off of.
Thanks a lot modern news media!
I did the same thing at comcast before I left.
I embarassed an entire divisional Office. they were still talking about how to approach the problem and I produced a working prototype to the CTO in their meeting. He berated the other office of 8 that could not even get started on a project that I solved on my own in 1 week.
They still hate me to this day, and I've been gone for 4 years.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
"Last time I called Dell about a laptop that was completely dead, no power lights, no fans, they asked me what the error message on screen was and it took a few minutes to explain to them something as simple as the fact that I couldn't get an error message on screen because the laptop was dead."
/. readers every day.
Next time you call support take a video, it might be the next "verizon math fail" with 30,000+ hits. All that bad press over $71.
I had a problem with a Whirlpool wash machine. It was a few years old and the warranty expired, but I took a video of the problem and posted it on Youtube. Within a week and less than 50 views I had an email from someone claiming to be whirlpool offering to help resolve the situation with a 800 number and extension attached.
I use to work tech support for a huge hosting provider (they're in the top 5). We'd get threats of lawsuits every day, but one time someone blogged about us and management had an all hands meeting, telling us to ignore lawsuits because those are easy to fight but if a customer threatens to blog about us to escalate to a manager immediately (usually we could only offer manager call backs... yes i know stupid).
People forget how powerful the internet is yet we see the effects of millions of
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
If you think that approach is stupid, I suggest you never fly. Exactly the same approach is used in avionics, although I think they usually need a majority from 7 systems. Each system is designed by a separate team. They all solve the same problems, but in different ways, so hopefully they'll have different bugs.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News