Slashdot Mirror
$1M Prize For Finding Cause of Unintended Acceleration
phantomfive writes "Edmunds Auto has announced that it will be offering a $1 million prize to anyone who can find the cause of unintended acceleration. As Wikipedia notes, this is a problem that has plagued not only Toyota, but also Audi and other manufacturers. Consumer Reports has some suggestions all automakers can implement to solve this problem, including requiring brakes to be strong enough to stop the car even when the accelerator is floored."
.. the problem is between the pedals and the seat, morons.
Okay, I'll save them a million right here. "The" cause is that humans make mistakes. Cars are designed, assembled, and operated by humans.
How about some sort of a mechanical linkage between the throttle body and the pedal....oh wait...where have I seen this before?
How the idea of "drive by wire" became popular is beyond me. There are some things that need to remain simple, and in human control. Steering, braking, throttle, and gear selection should never be done fully by electronics and remain in the drivers hands...along with the ability to kill power to the engine for that matter.
We already have a solution - Cut the power when the break is pushed.
What I struggle to understand is why this isn't a legal requirement on all new drive-by-wire cars?
As someone else said, shifting just sends a signal to the transmission. You're not directly controlling any gears. The transmission won't go into neutral or reverse at a high speed probably because of safety protocols in the software. The people that testified said they tried exactly this and it didn't stop the acceleration.
So you could argue that the software should allow this and let the engine rev and let whatever happen.
-John
"... including requiring brakes to be strong enough to stop the car even when the accelerator is floored."
Yikes. Isn't that always the case, or are they really selling cars in the US with brakes that aren't able to do this? Just for the record, lack of this ability would basically mean that the car can accelerate faster than it can decelerate, and most cars accelerate pretty darn slow.
If your brakes can't do this, get them the fsck fixed. They're broken.
It's called neutral, and it's a feature of your transmission. It disconnects the engine from the wheels. Transmissions, both manual and automatic, are designed to easily select neutral, for emergencies like this.
Too big to fail? Does that make me to small to succeed?
I'd love to take a shot at the prize money. Now, will Toyota kindly release the source code to their electronic throttle systems?
What was that? No?
Didn't think so.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
> What I struggle to understand is why this isn't a legal requirement on all new drive-by-wire cars?
You would think that there would also be a requirement that the source code be released for review to anyone who cares.
Don't know the cause, but to fix it, push down on that third pedal. It disconnects the engine from the wheels.
You don't have one? Oh... Hmm... Evolution at work. Better luck next time!
Have you ever tried it? In any sane car (and I except 2 tonne SUV monstrosities) you don't need power steering to steer effectively except at very low speed.
Brakes might be more of an issue, but even after turning off the engine, there is usually enough stored potential energy in the servo reservoir for a minute or two of braking.
If done correctly it is not more dangerous. mechanical cables and linkages fail too. What you get out of it is greater flexibility in the design and added control that lets the designer improve efficiency. for example it is generally better to ramp the throttle open rather than snap the butterfly open -- snapping it open causes a sudden loss of vacuum in the manifold which kills airflow for a fraction of a second. You'll get better fuel economy and the engine performance will be improved. Coming in the not too distant future is electronic steering. Removing the mechanical connection to the steering wheel will make it possible to repackage the system without having to worry about shaft angles; and, will improve safety in accidents because there won't be a steering column to get in the way and crush legs.
Drive by wire aka fly by wire is technology that's been used in aircraft for two decades now and is only just finding its way into cars.
Every motorcycle I've seen made in the last 30 years has had a kill switch on the handlebars. It just shuts down the bike's entire electrical system and stops the engine. It's intended as a safety feature if you're in a situation where you don't want to have to take your hands off the controls to reach the key. Also, as I understand it, if the bike's crashed, but the throttle's wedged on, all you have to do is hit the Big Red Switch, rather than trying to reach the key while the bike's hopping around because the rear wheel's making intermittent contact with the tarmac.
Seriously - an Off switch within emergency reach of the driver - how complex a concept is that?
OTOH, what are these cars doing with such massive embedded systems in them? I've seen numbers in the tens of millions of lines of computer code being bandied around as indicators of their size and complexity - WTF does a *car* need all that computing power for? I've driven dozens of cars without a single microchip in them - they started, they stopped, they did everything you'd reasonably expect a piece of personal transport to do. What does adding all that complexity get you, apart from a car only officially licenced and approved dealers can work on because nobody else has the diagnostic software...? Oh wait...
Never mind.
Why are the moderators modding up garbage like this? Fly by wire in airplanes uses triple redundant systems at a minimum, and more commonly quadruple redundant, and they test the shit out of it before it makes its way into production. In cars, on the other hand, nothing is ever redundant and they don't do anywhere near the kind of testing they do for airplanes. It's as though car designers care more about their convenience than about making the vehicles failsafe, and they should do hard time if anyone dies because of their attitude towards engineering.
For the millionth time, you CAN put these cars into neutral at speed. I've personally done so.
...And releasing the accelerator will mean the engine car slows down. I've personally done that.
Since the car's electronics are malfunctioning, I think that assuming that the various systems controlled by the electronics would work as usual is making a rather large assumption.
In Australia, it's a legal requirement that an automatic gearbox has no interlocks preventing the driver from shifting from a driving gear to neutral. You don't even need to press the shift button to shift to neutral. As long as you don't actually switch the engine off, there will be enough oil circulation to keep the gearbox happy while you fly on inertia. Shifting to neutral and switching the engine off would likely cause damage if you were travelling at high speed.
That's not true. My landrover has an electrical lockout that prevents changing into nuteral whilst driving. I have tried it
From my reading, pushing the brakes (yes, even real hard) does not cause the electronics to cut the gas in Toyotas -- this is one of the usability problems in Toyotas, so to speak. However, in all tests, the brakes in Toyotas are able to overpower the engine, although it might take a bit longer to stop than normal.
I believe in the future Toyota plan to introduce an engine cut-off feature when the brakes are applied hard.
Maybe people have been conditioned to panic rather than deal with problems.
Shifting to neutral and switching the engine off would likely cause damage if you were travelling at high speed.
No, it doesn't. Ask any automatic transmission repair guy. Unless you're going to coast for more than about 10 miles (probably impossible unless you're driving down a mountain slope) then nothing bad is going to happen.
Where are people coming up with this nonsense?
The worst that happens from turning the engine off is that you lose power steering assist, and after a couple of applications of the brakes you lose the power brake boost.
Putting moderation advice in your
Unintended acceleration is why everyone needs to learn to drive a manual transmission first. Step one: press the clutch. Problem solved. In the case of an automatic: put the car in neutral. Then the car can no longer overpower the emergency brake, oh yeah did you forget cars have those? They have them for a reason.
An easy fix would be to have a 'dead' spot on the accelerator right at the end of the travel, so that the 'foot to the floor' situation would just result in the car idling
Disastrous idea. I've had to accelerate hard a few times to avoid a collision, and you do that by flooring it, no time to think further. Unfortunately once I couldn't do that because there was a car right in front of me and we were both stopped. The resulting fireball resulting in 8 cars looking like this... Way to end a honeymoon.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
That the main problem is the American press being influenced by the Government trying to create mass hysteria? The Government DOES own quite a large stake in GM.