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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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
Having BEEN in the situation myself, I can tell you that switching to neutral was the LAST thing I thought of. When you're sitting minding your own business at a red light and suddenly your car flares to life doing 60 mph in a couple of seconds, You're really much more focused on trying to stop the car, not the transfer of power from the engine through the transmission.
On a sidenote: Cutting power to the engine is ALSO a bad idea, at least if you happen to have power steering. Or so I discovered.
--- To err is human... Am I more human than most ?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.