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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."
PEBSAP
My UID is prime... is yours?
Make the reward information on something related to Portal or Half-Life. Seriously, the guys on Valve's forums will quickly solve any puzzle thrown at them if there's the slightest prospect it'll lead to information on a new game.
... but unfortunately I'm speeding to my death as I type.
complicated cars.
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
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.
An explanation I've heard is that some cars won't let you turn off the engine or shift into neutral at high speed.
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?
The last words coming out of the stereo were "Good night, asshole."
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
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.
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
Never mind the million dollars, give us the source to all the drive-by-wire modules so we can find the race condition (literally!) for you.
"... 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?
But those of us who CAN drive usually have the sense to want more brakes than the "barely able to stop once, much less handle a downhill mountain road" rubber bands that seem to be the common equipment on mainstream cars.
BTW, can someone actually name a car sold in the last 5 years that cannot stop, even against full engine power?
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.
Almost all cars generate braking forces far in excess of whatever the engine is capable of putting out. Adequate brake torque isn't the problem here. If the brakes have to resist the the torque input, then their effectiveness will obviously be diminished.
The proposal of having engine power being cut off when the brakes are applied seems to be sensible, however there are certain situations where you will need both the engine power and brakes on at the same time. Such as starting from a stop on a hill. So the solution isn't that simple. The easiest thing would be to either install an switch that trips past an certain amount of brake travel, or to sense the line pressure. They can use that data and determine how hard the operator is trying to brake, along with the vehicle's current state, is it stationary, or moving, and if so, how fast? They can use that to generate parameters to decide when and if to cut out engine power. At high brake pressures, and moving at high speeds, one would not be expect to continue to accelerate. At low to moderate pressures and being stationary or barely moving, engine power should not be cut off.
Another thing they could do is install a sensor and determine if a foot is present on the accelerator or not, specifically in non-cruise conditions.
Some people apparently had trouble shifting into neutral, but that should not happen at all. I don't know if it's an issue with the transmission trying to block that action, or if it was not able to mechanically disengage due to the engine accelerating. In either case, they should change the shifter from an mechanically controlled operation to an electronic one. Being controlled electronically also makes it easier to move the shifter. If the car is shifted into neutral, that's a fairly clear indicator that the ECM should override the pedal and drop to idle, and shift into neutral.
I think it would help if there was a verbal and textual feedback system to aid the driver along with a command system.
> 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.
Being able to shift to neutral is a required safety feature. I can't imagine where "he couldn't do it!!!1111oneoneone" got started.
The Lexus ES-350, the vehicle CHP Officer Mark Saylor died in, does not have electronic shifters. Even if it did, electronic shifters allow gear shifting under speed. In fact, they do so without the natural increase in force necessary for non-electronic shifters to shift gears while under speed.
This is something you can actually test, it won't hurt the vehicle if you don't let it revv for very long. Accerlate on the freeway, shift to neutral without ceasing acceleration. Most vehicles will require more than normal force to change gears but will do so without complaint or problem. The exceptions are the vehicles that will act entirely as they do all the time, because they're by-wire themselves. Do, however, stop accelerating before shifting back.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
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!
For the millionth time, you CAN put these cars into neutral at speed. I've personally done so. Your explanation of how transmissions work is not correct.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
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.
If you have a car that has an automatic transmission, putting it into neutral while driving is a bad idea and it wouldn't surprise me if ALL automatics stopped the driver from doing so. The reason is that auto gearboxes have an oil pump that's driven by the engine. When you stop driving the gear box from the engine and start driving it from the wheels, the gear box quickly heats up and I suppose could even seize with potentially nasty consequences.
Try Googling "why can't i tow an automatic car" or something like that
this post is now diamonds!
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.
"This Corolla comes with Spontaneous Drag Race Mode standard, making it the most exciting car in its class!"
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I might be getting the physics wrong, but I thought that most performance cars had a 0-60 time that was greater than the 60-0 time, suggesting that the brakes can convert KE to heat quicker than the engine can convert fuel to KE.
The sticky gas pedal on the Toyotas is a mechanical issue, not an electronic one
Actually, that's being called into question now. Toyota owners with "fixed" pedals are starting to report that the problem still persists. Failure analysis experts are starting to support the notion that electronics are at the root of the problem
That's what i'd be putting my money on for 99% of the cases of short unexplained bursts of acceleration. The longer ones (eg where the driver has enough time to call the police) might actually be faults with the car, but incidents of that are so rare compared to other deaths on the road that it's hardly worth spending time on.
I've done the opposite before - I put my foot on what I thought was the accelerator but was actually the brake. The car didn't go faster so I pressed harder and nearly planted my face on the steering wheel! I can easily understand how the more unfortunate case would happen for a few seconds (which is plenty enough time to have disasterous results).
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, and it wouldn't accelerate again until the pedal was fully released. There would be an initial surge of acceleration if they did the accelerator-instead-of-brake trick, but as the driver panicked and pressed harder, they'd just go back to idle instead. To take the idea a bit further you might make the car brake instead of idle, but while it would be funny to watch, I suspect that that would cause more accidents than it would avoid.
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.
Or how about.. you know.. a multipurpose rotary switch in easy reach just forward of the steering wheel that can be rotated to the 'off' position?
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That explains everything- Microsoft must have been involved in the design of the car software.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
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.
To be fair though, the ZX-10 is designed for queers and tarts; it's necessary to be able to stop with a pinky finger so that you can wiggle your other fingers and coo "Helloooo, sailor" at passing twinks.
-Mod hints: -1 Troll, +1 Informative.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I think the main cause of the problem is American press influenced by GM trying create mass hysteria to make the auto market leaders look like shit. Good luck.
Not that long ago an Airbus plane flying from Brazil disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean due to uncontrolled acceleration.
Several years ago a BMW model that runs on an embedded version of Microsoft Windows screwed up so bad it locked the passangers inside the car, and people were blaming Microsoft for the mishap.
Problem can happen anywhere --- from bugs to deficiency in programming language (embedded programming included), to the lack of thorough verifications (verification itself is extremely complicated by itself), to node clashing within the network, to stampede problem, and so on.
Having 50, 60, all the way above 100 computers in a car or an airplane is always a disaster in waiting.
For more than 30 years I've told people that computers are not 100% proof, and should never be trusted when lives are at stake.
But are they listening?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
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.
If you shift to neutral while driving a car that is not a run-away Toy-Yoda (never liked them anyway), and you pushing the accelerator, then the engine itself will rev up to its maximum rotations, it's true, but as long as the clutch is not engaged your engine will be fine for a while, or completely fine if the rev limiter kicks-in (either the carburetor or the fuel injector, or the actual limiter device) and will reduce the amount of fuel flowing to the engine or will even shut down the ignition. Just be careful not to drop the clutch into a low gear when the engine is in red, then you may have engine trouble.
You can't handle the truth.
Maybe people have been conditioned to panic rather than deal with problems.
How many different model cars have you driven lately? Sure, some have useful handbrakes, but many have "push on/push off" foot activated emergency brakes. Try modulating one of those.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I'm pretty sure that it's standard on all cars to have brakes that are more powerful than the engine. First of all, it's relatively easy, compared to adding horsepower. I've tried it in several cars including high and low power cars and have never had brakes that couldn't easily hold back the engine. 300 ft/lbs is a pretty powerful engine, but when spread between 4 wheels it's relatively little torque for even fairly modest brakes to handle.
However, that's assuming they are operating properly... If they're defective, doesn't matter how powerful they were designed for... I used to have a 300ZX with rather beefy brakes, and when the master cylinder started leaking the brakes got rather weak. I probably would have had a hard time holding back the engine in the 5 miles or so I drove it after noticing it but before getting it fixed.
Now, if the car computer can disable the foot and parking brakes, that's another matter entirely. Usually the parking brake is an entirely different system from the brake pedal, using a cable instead of hydraulics. Because there's no booster it can take significant effort to get a lot of braking force, but I'd expect you could overcome the engine with the parking brake unless there are mechanical issues, though some may find it difficult or impossible to apply enough force to a hand brake to overcome the engine, particularly if going down hill. So there still could be some cases, particularly with a computer in the mix, where strong brakes can't be operated effectively enough to overcome the engine.
Sean
Microsoft has a better solution than for the Unintended Acceleration (UA) problem. Just put Unintended Acceleration Control (UAC) on the car. When you push on the gas pedal, three beeps occur followed by a message on the dash that says "You have pressed the gas pedal. Do you want to accelerate?". The owner must push the "Confirm" button on the steering wheel to accelerate. This continues until the owner either dies of boredom or reaches the intended speed. Gee, Vista wasn't so horrible after all!
I bet your ZX-10 also comes with a killswitch, right? I'd also be willing to bet that whoever taught you to ride a motorbike taught you what it was for, as well?
On a side note, Moto Guzzi found that I had purchased had unintended accelertation issues back in '03. The trottle return spring wasn't strong enough, or had a tendancy to break or something. I was active on a forum for the bikes, Moto Guzzi sent out a letter about the problem before anyone mentioned it in a forum.
There are indeed responsible manufacturers out there. Strangely enough its the ones who are small enough to know that losing $1 billion in sales and lawsuits will more than bankrupt the company.
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know. --Aldous Huxley
If you have a car that has an automatic transmission, putting it into neutral while driving is a bad idea and it wouldn't surprise me if ALL automatics stopped the driver from doing so. The reason is that auto gearboxes have an oil pump that's driven by the engine. When you stop driving the gear box from the engine and start driving it from the wheels, the gear box quickly heats up and I suppose could even seize with potentially nasty consequences.
Try Googling "why can't i tow an automatic car" or something like that
Nonsense. No such rapid heating occurs.
The pump on an automatic transmission is driven directly by the torque converter shell, which is driven directly by the engine crankshaft.
So, the only way to stop the pump is to stop the engine. Shifting to neutral does not do that.
Even if the engine were stopped, the transmission doesn't suddenly lose all of it's lubricant - there is still fluid in the bearings and bushings and you're safe to coast for many many miles. The rules about not towing an automatic without the engine running specify a limited distance, not that you can't do it at all.
Putting moderation advice in your
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.
Hmmm....the only problem with neutral is that in a lot of vehicles the transmission is no longer physically connected to the shift lever either. The electronics in those fail as well and then what do you do? It happened to me; luckily I was just starting off and the tranny was stuck in 1st, even though I had it in drive.
--
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 ?
Why are you bring Audi into this? The submitter mentions Audi only in reference to unintended acceleration cases of the past. If you read the link in the summary you will see that there was no defect found in the Audi cases. There was however plenty of fraud committed by CBS (60 minutes) and others to tarnish Audi's name.
About time car drivers had something to keep them awake.
That's what the 50 buttons bluetooth enabled media center controller on the steering wheel is for.
Perfect riposte to my claim that only Ford make safe cars and all Fords are safe. Except that isn't what I said at all. In fact it isn't remotely like it, is it?
Seriously, what the fuck has that got to do with drive-by-wire versus mechanical? Try reading more than one word before replying if you don't want to broadcast what an utter fucking imbecile you are.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.