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$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."
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.
Not only that but some vehicle designers are, quite literally, stupid. Really, why on earth would you directly link a braking systems boost mechanics to the f'ing accelerator. The more you accelerate, the less braking potential you have if you start stomping down to get the vehicle stopped in a hurry.
If I can stop my ZX-10 (motorbike) under (metric shit tons of) power with my pinky finger, how hard is it to sort this crap out in a car? A million dollars? This is not a contest, it's peoples lives. Just build the brakes completely independent from all other systems and the job is done.
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.
We already have a solution - Cut the power when the break is pushed
How do you left-foot brake if pressing the brake cuts the power?
You don't. It's not something you should be doing anyway.
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 shouldn't you be doing it? That's not what I was taught when racing cars in my younger years...
Because it's a dangerous technique that is used by racing drivers to get some extra speed out of their car. When you are on the road you should not be trying to get that extra speed, you should be trying to get the extra safety. Now grow up.
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.
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 ?