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Toyota Accelerator Data Skewed Toward Elderly
An anonymous reader passes along this discussion on the data for the Toyota accelerator problem, from a few weeks back. (Here's a Google spreadsheet of the data.) "Several things are striking. First, the age distribution really is extremely skewed. The overwhelming majority are over 55. Here's what else you notice: a slight majority of the incidents involved someone either parking, pulling out of a parking space, in stop and go traffic, at a light or stop sign... in other words, probably starting up from a complete stop."
Were little old ladies form Pasadena...
27 data points is not enough to draw a strong conclusion.
parking, pulling out of a parking space, in stop and go traffic, at a light or stop sign... in other words, probably starting up from a complete stop
Or in other words, they take their foot off the pedal and put it on the wrong one.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Old people can't use computers. Even if it involves lightly pressing on the accelerator.
Woz has already described the repro case.
Now, the iPad may not be the be all and end all of consumer devices, but I trust Woz when he talks.
If the vehicle has that much computer controlled functionality, why doesn't the black box tell which pedals were pressed at the time of impact and for the moments before impact? The black box system is arguably an invasion of privacy, but in this case it would go a long way toward fixing the problem(s) and perhaps saving lives.
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To me that is a clue for the source ....... CRUISE CONTROL.
Drive around on cruise control then, release at high speed without changing the CC speed. Make a full stop, then kick the CC and see what happens. Instant acceleration.
Toyota vehicles aren't the only ones that will react this way. Any vehicle with cruise control will have the same issue.
I suspect it's got something to do with the idle left foot getting involved as well. I drive manuals (stick shift for you Septics) and have a strong preference for them. Occasionally when I drive an automatic I get a brain fart and I am trying to de-assert (haha I am a programmer) the non-existent clutch I end up hitting the brake and wondering WTF is going on. Same goes when one wears thongs (jandles/flipflops) and driving one gets the brake being pressed at the same time as the accelerator. How many old people with low muscle tone are wearing broad soled shoes nowadays?
This assumes there is only 1 problem, not a half dozen different problems occuring in different situations. Yes, there are probably some that are putting their foot on the wrong pedal, that happens with every make and model of vehicle out there. Lets say statistically all cars have some percentage of elderly putting their foot on the wrong pedal, subtract them out and look at what's left. Serious electrical or mechanical issues can be lost in the noise.
All this means is that the data includes not just machine-caused and computer-caused unintended accelerations, but also driver-caused unintended accelerations. That's not a big surprise, it just means you have to be careful and filter those out.
Certainly you wouldn't expect that the unintended accelerations while entering the highway were because the driver had their foot on the wrong pedal, would you?
In particular, there's no indication of what model car was involved in each one. The computer-caused problems are likely to only be encountered on hybrid models (Prius being the most common).
I resemble that remark you young whipper-snapper!
Now get off my lawn before I accelerate uncontrollably and run you down!
God-damned kids!
Sig this!
Some elderly may have reduced motor-skills (no pun intended), visual impairment, and lowered cognitive functions. Toyota's have an ergonomic design that is in some way (technical term), "at odds" with these folks physiological disposition. Perhaps the throttle is too responsive, or they just happen to accelerate quickly, or its the brake pedal positions. I believe human error is the root cause, but Toyota is catching the flak because of some engineering anomaly with these models that happens to be a perfect biometric match with geriatrics.
Does this mean Toyota needs to do a recall? Perhaps. Are they 100% to blame? Probably not. Am I speculating, yes, but a lot of the time something high-profile like this occurs, you get folks displacing blame when they are at fault. If my grandmother gets a virus because she clicks on some free screensaver pop-up, it is ultimately her who undertook the action through her ignorance. This doesn't mean she was wrong, or is a terrible person, or is a complete idiot, or any of the other connotations that are superficially inflated by the media whenever we speak of the word "blame".
Our society seems to be doing a sort of blame transformation, where those who perpetrate the actions that lead to harm, loss, etc... have their blame displaced on somebody else. It seems like it is becoming more of "it is the systems fault for not designing around my ignorance or lack of skill" than "it is my fault because of my ignorance or lack of skill".
Not to say there arn't shady companies that do push shitty products that are genuinely dangerous, and worthy of recall, for those cases happen as well. But delineation between the two scenarios is increasingly difficult, in semantics and in legality.
Could this have anything to do with this recent slashdot story?
Time Flies By As You Get Older
TFA is actually quite convincing; however, might I suggest another possibility? It could be that short or elderly drivers are less easily able to react/respond to the unintended acceleration, and as a result are more likely to get in an accident as the result of the problem. Perhaps the author of this study could compare his data to the demographic/height distributions of various types of traffic accidents to test this hypothesis.
It sometimes does. From everything I can gather, the story reveals that the driver pressed the gas instead of the brake... revealed from the recorder box in the car.
The real explanation could be as simple as "Those 55 and older are the ones who can afford to buy the cars in question".
Jobs? Which jobs?
That may satisfy our biases, however drawing a conclusion from this data without first adjusting for the distribution of Toyota owner ages is just plain bad analysis. Drawing a conclusion from such a small sample, and the large number of cases in which no age is listed are both factors that weaken the point of the article. Aren't the number of Toyota cases close to 100? Don't other manufacturers have similar problems? Sound conclusions require rigorous analysis.
I wonder if the driver's foot well is particularly small on these cars. I've been driving an older E150 lately and it's got a foot-activated high-beam switch right where the clutch would be on a similar pickup. I've drained the battery twice so far by hitting that damn switch as I pull in to park and not realized it.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
What it means is that there's likely zero problem with Toyota's cars and there never was.
What's happening is that people are missing the brake pedal and hitting the gas pedal without realizing it. Their car then speeds up, shocking them, and since they think they're foot is on the brake they slam it all the way down, stomp on it, etc., and it just keeps going.
The elderly do this all the time.
Toyota's are just really popular cars, and some lawyer out there smelled blood.
And right now is a really good time to buy a Toyota. You'll get the deal of a lifetime :)
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
I think we've all done that at some point. :)
I was driving a borrowed car, that had a wide brake pedal. I was coming up to a turn, so I stepped on the "clutch" as I normally would, and it took a second for me to figure out why the car came to a hard stop. :)
I've had the inverse of the unintended acceleration in my car. If I'm wearing work boots, they're a bit wider than my regular shoes, and can catch on the brake pedal rather than the gas.
I posted a rant about this on the previous story (blaming cosmic radiation for it). Most of the unintended accelerations I know of were old people, and those weren't even electronic throttle vehicles. They couldn't understand why the car went faster, because they were pushing the brakes. There was a story about that happening in Santa Monica at a farmers market a few years ago. The driver killed a bunch of people and injured even more. Reading about his reaction and what he said at the accident scene, it sounded more like he did it on purpose. Well, his prize quote was "If they saw me coming, why didn't they get out of the way?" He got probation, because he was "too old to go to jail". Damn, I didn't know being old was an excuse for murder.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
It's been a while, but my '77 Oldsmobile had a button up in the right corner, not quite where the clutch would be, but there abouts. I don't think the high-beam selector did anything unless the headlamps were on, it just toggled between low and high. Strange that yours actually turns them on. And perhaps I just don't recall correctly. That car's been gone for more than 10 years now...
Yeah, no kidding, I drive a wrangler with a six speed, when I visit the parents they want me to drive their auto trans.
I actually once accidentally put the trans in drive instead of reverse. I cover the brake when I drive their pacifica, but wow - yeah, totally understand the brain fart thing.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Starting and accelerating from a complete stop is something every single driver of every unit tested lots and lots of times, you can't drive a car at all in a city without doing that dozens of times. So the functionality and parts for that action have always been very thoroughly tested. It is indeed odd that a bunch of uninformed users have decided it doesn't work and no engineers can reproduce the problem. I wouldn't be surprised if the cause of the problem is found to be users who hate computers and decided to blame computers for their own poor driving mistakes. There is a possibility of a real problem existing of course, but the user bias against a solution has been known to cause problems too. I had a user who had lots of technical problems all the time, and the more attention I gave her, the more problems she caused. The solution was to stop helping, and she eventually stopped calling. I never did find out what a lot of the problems were, but decided it was mostly imaginary or sheer ignorance of the user.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
i used to own a 1988 full sized Bronco. it had that switch AND a clutch. not sure if i ever inadvertantly hit the switch but i do remember pressing against it on occasion.
seems to have misplaced his
he-he, you said you wear thongs... but on a more serious note, i doubt that someone who regularly drives automatics would have a problem like yours. if you're used to never using your left foot while driving, you wouldn't suddenly have the urge to do so. though accidentally pressing the wrong pedal i'm sure happens quite frequently, i'm more and more convinced that this whole toyota ordeal is nothing more than mass hysteria.
weinersmith
If you read the above article and thought, "gee, what convincing evidence," then you're a moron.
It's not a surprise that traffic fatalities were skewed towards the elderly. In any given accident, an elderly person is much more likely to die than a young person. They're not as sturdy.
Now that you're a little bit less of a moron, please go on with your day.
The data in question catagorizes fatalities. Elderly people are often
killed by accidents that would only injure a young person. This could explain
the data skew regardless of whether or there is an actual accelerator defect.
Seriously,
If people were too stupid to just put car on neutral or turn off the car then I think they should learn more at driving a car. These people may be some danger on the road.
Most car are front wheel drive car. In such a case, if someone was hitting hard on the brake then you should be able to lock rear wheel. If so, then you should be able to see marks on the ground !
For me, all this story is a Driver Error !
I have used a number of cruise control systems in GM, Ford, and Toyota vehicles of various vintages from the 70s on to brand new vehicles. I have NEVER ONCE seen a cruise control that would do what you describe. All of them refuse to activate below a minimum speed (over 25mph, over 30 in most cases.)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Look how many have a name that starts with U indicating that U the customer are the problem.
Old people are judging how fast they should be going by the loudness of their car's engine,
instead of actually checking the speed meter.
Their hearing and responsiveness to engine's vibration are also worse than younger generations so they notice less.
So, they constantly misjudge relatively quieter Prius' speed and floor the pedal when starting from a stop (or even moving)
because "its (gasoline) engine is not running enough" instead of gently hitting the pedal.
When they notice that they are moving too fast, they do hit the brake but this is later than younger people
because not only do younger people respond faster, they can keep track of multiple information better.
If we can get a group of volunteers from various age groups and driving experiences to drive a Prius on a test course,
we'll probably see drastically different driving styles based on age and experience.
(These volunteers should be checked for any hearing problem as this should be a factor as well.)
In addition to the data on that spreadsheet suggesting that the majority of cases were "older" people, look at the racial breakdown. Not suggesting that it has anything to do with race, per se, but rather that it would be interesting to know how much experience operating a motor vehicle that these folks have. Did they migrate here? Were their licenses just carried over from their originating country or did they have to retrain to the applicable state requirements?
Trust me fast acceleration is not their problem.
My '95 Explorer will not engage cruise control it reaches about 23 MPH. I've driven several Ford Tauruses, and same thing - cruise will not engage until about 23+MPH. I cannot get cruise to engage from a stop, or even slow speed.
Sorry to burst your bubble. Of course, some other vehicles could be programmed differently, but every other vehicle I've driven with cruise control has behaved the same way.
Oh, and please let us know if your vehicle does this. I would be suprised, but if it does, well, that's the fact.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
First thing you would need, if you really wanted to see if there was a correlation, would be the age distribution of Toyota drivers.
If, perhaps, the distribution looked just like this graph, it would mean nothing.
If, perhaps, the distribution of driver ages skewed to younger drivers, or showed a flat pattern, then you might have something.
Without that baseline, it isn't even worth coming up with theories.
This data shows nothing statistically significant.
look at the "Historgrams"
These numbers are meaningless without the proper context.
First of all, what is the percentage of ownership, by driver age. In other words: Do a disproportionate amount of older people buy these cars?
Secondly, what is the comparable accident percentage, by car manufacturer and driver age. In other words: Do older people have a problem with all manufacturers or only Toyota?
Lastly, 24 incidents is way too few to make any kind of sane inference. Once you break it down by age category you have some categories that only have one to three members. At that low an amount they could simply represent random chance and not some sort of trend.
When you have such a low number you have two choices: ignore the problem or dig deeper beyond these simple statistics. Given that people's lives (and Toyota's reputation) are at stake I'd say that Toyota is doing the right thing by dissecting the cars and chasing every possible problem. If they find something then they can fix it, if they don't find anything then at least they gave it their best and can honestly say that these incidents seem to be user error.
Sapere aude!
Do older people buy more Toyotas? Do they buy a certain model more than others? Is this proportion of ownership of Toyotas by senior citizens out of line with other brands and models? Have autopsies been performed to determine if they panic and suffered a heart attack during the acceleration, making them more likely to die from the incident? Is this a common trend in other accidents not related to the Toyota rapid acceleration problem?
That said, the seems a very crude statistical compilation. I would agree that, in general, senior citizens are more accident prone, but with such a small sample size, I don't think you can put this on having a 'senior moment'.
More data is needed. And more manual transmissions.
we cannot say ONE thing about "skewed" age without knowing the age distribuitonof prius drivers
based on what i see around me in boston, prius drivers tend to be old - avg age, uh,.....50 ?
You're absolutely right! Your anecdote unequivocally proves that anyone who says they were hitting the brakes when their car accelerates is a liar!
did Toyota claim it was floor mats, then a defective pedal part and is now having its electronic analyzed along with GM at NASA?
Surely Toyota, the NHTSA and NASA have statisticians?
You know, I've gone drinkin-n-drivin with Matt before, and fuck, he always ends up on the floor pushin his head into the gas pedal. I had no idea he was into old folks with Toyotas, though. Does that make him queer?
1. Toyota's tend toward the "expensive" end, therefore only more wealthy drivers would buy
2. Older buyers tend to see the added value of more reliable brands, younger buyers tend to be more price sensitive.
3. Cheaper autos tend to use older tech
4. Older tech doesn't use "drive by wire" and extensive computer control
5. If the flaw is in computer control (sensors or servos), then automatically we'd see fewer problems in the younger set because they do not have this technology.
That said, I'm not convinced the issue is computer control as yet. I think it's a viable possibility, but to date the evidence isn't there - and that is also consistent. It's difficult to expect a log of a electronic system gone haywire to be conclusive. Logs are taken with expectations in mind. If an action is outside of expected input, then the log is also in question. And in this case, the logs are not all that detailed to start with.
If I knew more details, I'd have greater insight. In this case, the wisest course in my opinion is to implement more logging, both in data points and retention.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Claims of sudden acceleration happen across all makes. However incidence among Toyotas is significantly higher than other makes, and this trend goes back many years before all the widespread media attention. Thus either a) older people tend to buy Toyotas, or b) there really is something about Toyotas and sudden acceleration.
I started car shopping shortly after the bad press about Toyota broke. I always wanted a Corolla because of its great reputation.
I tried researching the issue, but nobody had hard numbers to firmly establish that the hype was hype. All I got were anecdotal accounts along the lines of "we've had Toyotas for years we love them". The only numbers I did get were that Toyotas got in more accidents per a given number of cars than Hondas, though it wasn't established if it was the car or the driver.
It occurred to me that the main reason I started thinking about the Corolla was reliability....in other words, not having to think about my car and here I was scouring the internet doing research.
Finally, the 2010 Car Buying Guide of The Consumer Reports came out. Everything that attracted me to the Corolla, reliability and safety seemed to rated slightly higher in the 2010 Civic.
If my current car was in better shape I probably would have waited 6 months for the smoke to clear before giving up on getting a Corolla.
My intuition is that a significant amount of bad hype is involved( though not the only issue going on ), but when it comes time to put down tens of thousands of dollars of your own money and take risks that could hurt you personally, your attitude changes.
I don't like spending more money for a Honda, but I can and given what is at risk it is not worth it to take a chance on a Corolla in the next few weeks.
I think getting their electronics analyzed by NASA is the smartest thing Toyota can do. They need a detached third party body with a stellar reputation to reassure people to clear their name.
foot-activated high-beam switch
Holy shit, it still runs??!!
Old people don't have enough experience with video games. Younger people encounter a stuck accelerator and shift into Pole Position mode, finding a safe way to slow the car or mashing buttons until something clicks. Old people switch into TV mode, watching the scenery whizz by as they wait for someone to rescue them.
According to TTAC, the number #1 vehicle for unintended acceleration is the Lincoln TownCar. The Ford Police cruiser is one of the lowest, however. Funny thing is that, mechanically-- they are the same car. The difference is the people who drive them-- one group being highly trained with fast reaction times, and the other group-- well not so much.
It is not just age distribution that they need to look at with Toyota, it is the complete demographic of the Toyota owner. Car enthusiasts do not usually buy Toyota's these days. Toyota's are incredibly boring in appearance and they handle like slugs. The are anti-exciting, right up there with a root canal. The average Toyota driver is the person in the fast lane doing 45mph and texting someone at the same time. For the average user, unintended acceleration happens everytime they touch that strange scary pedal on the right. When you add in that their brakes are likely shot because they drag them all the damn time while talking on their i-phone going down the road-- and never do routine maintenance on their vehicle: it is no wonder they can't stop.
Toyota's main problem is that they decided to make cars for idiots and got bit by that (granted that is a large market share, just ask Microsoft).
Make younger drivers cart the old folks around and then get off their lawn.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
1) Older people have slower reflexes. A thirty-year-old is more likely to regain control of a runaway without incident than a seventy-year-old regardless of the cause.
2) Older people are not as strong. A twenty-year-old may be able to stop a runaway by hitting the brakes where a seventy-year-old can't.
3) Regardless of whether or not Toyota has a computer problem, some of the Toyota runaways are probably due to "wrong pedal syndrome". What is the age distribution for "runaway" accidents for all makes?
4) As others have pointed out, the elderly are more likely to die in accidents.
5) As others have pointed out, the sample is too small to justify any conclusions about age.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
What was given is cases of DrivesToyotaYES+HadProblemsYES.
We have no idea what the population distribution is for DrivesToyotaYES, so we can't tell if the results are skewed.
Well, I didn't say that.
But since you're so kind to put words into my mouth, I'll say that the evidence does support what you're saying.
People tend to like to blame the object doing the work for their own errors, rather than admit they're having an error. I've seen people blame a hammer because it always bends nails. With anyone else using it, it's fine. Sometimes you can't look at the fact that the nail bent and eliminate the operator.
Or more of a computer analogy, to make you even happier. How many of us have been called because someone's computer isn't working. "The computer isn't working", just to find out that they're trying to browse the net on a 56k connection, or they have more malware than legitimate programs running? I even "fixed" a computer by turning the brightness back up on the screen. Never underestimate the stupidity of the operator.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
The odds of this kind of skew are ridiculously low.
We have ages of 27 people. 13 of them are over 65. If you look here, you can compute that of all Americans over 15 years old, 16.5% are over 65. (14.4/(14.4+72.9)=16.5)
I'll be generous and assume that 20% of Toyota owners are over 65.
So in a sample of size 27, what are the odds of getting 13 or more people over 65, when the population you are looking at has only 20% of its people over 65?
The odds of getting that skewed of a sample are only about 1 in a thousand. (1-binomdist(12,27,.2,1)) So despite claims to the contrary, that is indeed statistically significant.
(Disclaimer: I know nothing about where this sample even came from, and am not claiming anything about its validity. I am merely disputing the posts dismissing this sample out of hand without doing some simple math.)
Not only that, but also it assumes that the only reason there's a correlation with age is that the likelihood of driver error increases with age.
Older drivers also tend to drive more slowly, accelerate more slowly and deliberately, and are more likely to give "noisy" inputs to the pedals, since their motor control isn't what it used to be. If there's a particular controller failure that's triggered by a "noisy" input (ie. lots of small variations at a fairly high frequency compared to the real desired control input), then it seems reasonable that the elderly might be over-represented.
In other words, let's all step away from the Jump To Conclusions mat.
Program Intellivision!
I hear some people swear by those old things. Nothing like the feel of pressing the keys and having your keypress transferred to strike the paper through an inked ribbon. It's highly tactile. Of course, you'd have to scan the text and digitize it before posting on the internet, but that's just a small price for you to pay to keep that old-school tactile feeling at your fingertips. Manual transmissions? Exactly like this.
I mean WTF is wrong with you so-called techies when you think that cars with "drive by wire" throttles, brakes, and steering (yes, steering) are a good idea. You know how reliable computers are (not "can be") and I'm sure you would be quite nervous to trust your life to a computer controlled car. But in the same breath you jump to the defense of Toyota who build cars just like I've described - and apparently didn't even see the need to include some fail-safe routines into their systems.
I see this kind of stuff every day on Slashdot; people arguing both sides of an issue "just because". They never consider that one or both of those "sides" are nothing more than political or marketing spin. It makes me sad to see that this is the kind of discourse my fellow man is capable of.
Anyway, go on with your beating on people who claim to have been taken on a full throttle ride by their Toyota. You probably won't experience this kind of thrill yourself so you can feel safe and justified with your attacks. And if the worst happens and your Toyota freaks out and runs you full-throttle into a bridge abutment - well, we won't hear about what happened to you so it's all OK here in Slashdot land.
...for you Septics
In case anyone else is as puzzled as I am -- it turns out that's rhyming slang for yank. (Septic tank, got it?)
Many many things already pointed out so far.
This is naughty even, TFA & TFS indirectly claim something that the data does not support.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
um, to pull out of a parking space you need to use the accelerator.
in my 3 incidents of rapid unexpected acceleration, i was at a stop in icy conditions. when i applied the gas gently, the car jerked forward much faster than anticipated. once was at a stoplight and no accident occurred. once was backing out of a parking space and i ended up hitting a lightpost hard enough to fuck up the bumper. the third (actually first) incident, i was at a red light behind a truck and whacked him pretty hard. after 120,000 miles driving this car, i know what to expect when i hit the accelerator. on these 3 incidents, it was quite a shock.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
I agree 100%. Except my problem is my size 13EEE. Every time I drive my sisters toyota, it's like the pedals were designed for a size 4 shoe. Hitting both pedals at the same time is not uncommon.
Anyone remember that gem of litigation? The one where people won lawsuits claiming breast implants caused chronic fatigue syndrome despite the fact the rate of chronic fatigue among breast implant patients was the same as the general population.
The law isn't about the truth. It's about narrative.
Look at the Tylenol scare. There's only one way to respond as a company in that situation. Toyota's great sin is that they held back and waited for the truth.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
The article looked very suspect to me. So I looked over at wwwarchive and sure enough - no 2009 history, no 2008 history, but whoever has the site now knew well enough to go get a site that was registered more than a decade ago. I grabbed a random article from the site, googled some text, and ended up with 20 news-spam sites containing the exact same article. Tried another one - same story. Seems like the only original content might just be this article. Maybe it's not a Toyota marketing firm... maybe it's just a spammer trying to get their news site a boost.
Bah. Kdawson posted it. I'm not logged in. Anyone else notice that his postings are always spammy?
There's a saying from the old country I like for these situations.
"An ugly girl blames the mirror".
Sent from my PDP-11
Guys. Just because the data is skewed towards the elderly, doesn't mean it's their fault.
Does anybody know what the age distribution for Toyotas really is?
How can we talk about the statistics of people having accidents without talking about the statistics of people driving the car in the first place?
How many young people buy a Toyota vs old people? Toyota has typically been cheap and easy to maintain and repair. This is something typically elder people value much more than young people who rather go for something looking good instead. The article also mention the statistics are more skewed against immigrants than Americans, however Toyota is not an American car, and there are other American cars. Immigrants are thus far more likely to using a foreign car than someone born in the country of Ford and GM. The statistics may just as well be representative of the demographics buying Toyota rather than saying anything meaningful about the accidents.
- Beware of statistics; it can easily be abused to fool people to believe in lies
I've owned quite a few cars with that style of dip switch and none of them actually turned the lights on. However back in the 70's I had a Honda 750 motorbike. The headlight was controlled by a sliding thumb switch mounted on the RH side of the handlebar, it had three settings off(left), low(center) and high(right). Kinda scary when going around a bend and you flick it across to off instead of low.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
That is the most retarded "feature" I have ever heard of, it simply doesn't have any safe use.
I press the Resume button and the CC accelerates back up to the speed it was set at.
Obviously, the old geezers are just trying to look for Country Kitchen Buffet. So, just shut down those buffet restaurants and those Toyota's will fix themselves (at the expense of the elderly).
An entire Slashdot story where the only analogies can be car analogies...
My kingdom for a donkey!
If the incidents (or many of them, or even just some or a few of them) are caused by human factors--mixing up the brake & accelerator pedals--then we aren't we looking at that as a problem and figuring out how to solve it?
I don't know what the solution might be--maybe having the accelerator pedal give you some feedback if you slam it into the ground as you would a brake pedal in an emergency situation?
But regardless, it is a problem, it is a known problem, it is definitely a real and very dangerous problem, and there are bound to be solutions out there. Why does no one seem to be looking?
That's little help to a continent full of people who don't know wtf rhyming slang is either...
This same "unintended acceleration" issue happened in the 80's and after much hullabaloo it was determined that the cause of this is people hotting the gas when they mean to break. People have the occasional brain misfire which causes them to hit the gas instead of the break (maybe while "breaking" just as they are about to shift into reverse), this causes them to push harder on what they believe is already the break (but actually the accelerator) and thus a certain lurch through a storefront window. Possibly also on the interstate where they mean to tap on their break in response to sudden stimulus (car in front breaks or swerves) and hit the gas and lurch, and lurch again when they try to hit the break harder. I would bet anyone $1 (im poor) that this will be found out to be the case and that the recalls were totally unnecessary.
See this March 10th, 2010 New York Times piece by UCLA Prof. Richard A. Schmidt, who's one of the world's experts on the phenomenon of sudden unintended acceleration: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/11/opinion/11schmidt.html Converging lines of evidence indicated that, for a rash of cases in the 1980s, the cause was most likely driver error: your foot gets accidentally placed on the gas instead of the brakes ("noisy neuromuscular processes"). The good news is that if there are regularities to the human error, then designs can be updated to block or reduce that error (e.g., shift lock).
The more I hear about this latest charge against Toyota the more things come into focus. The problem here is a variation of PEBKAC that most people on this site are familiar with. This time, however, it is Problem Exists Between Pedal And Chair.
In the mid 1980s Dateline ran a story claming that the Audis of the day were experiencing what they called "Unintended Acceleration". Victims of this failure contested safety of the Audi throttle body design on the 4000 and 5000 series sedans because they were punching holes in garages. There was nothing special about the throttle body design of either engine for the era. A simple metal braided cable connected the accelerator directly to the throttle butterfly through the firewall. In that case:
-Most of the people reporting this problem were elderly
-The problem was never reproduced by Audi
-Recalls were performed anyway
In essense, there was nothing wrong with the cars but the Audi brand suffered badly for the next decade. The carmaker obviously recovered and now competes with higher end makers like BMW and Mercedes with resonable success. Toyota will suffer the same fate of poor short term sales with long term recovery. It took psychologists to explain the reported problems with Audi in the end. It appears that people expect machines to do what they what them to do despite what the machine is actually instructed to do. Anyone who debugs computer code knows this disconnect firsthand.
Drivers want the car to come to a stop so they move their foot to what they think is the brake pedal and apply pressure while their foot still hovers over the gas pedal in reality. The accelerator is depressed and the car begins to do the opposite of what the driver intends: Unintended Acceleration. Now, this is where the psycologoy enters. To stop the car one needs to remove their foot from the accelerator and depress the brake but the driver can only do this if they recognize this sequence of steps. Recall, this driver knows that their foot is on the brake pedal because they placed it there to slow the car. Therefore, they need to depress the "Brake" pedal harder in order to acchieve the desired slowing of the car. The driver then floors the accelerator as a result of their sensory confusion and sends the poor Audi through the back wall of their garage.
The brakes on a vehicle will always be able to overpower the acceleration of the engine. This is visually shown in the stopping distance of the vehicle which is always shorter than the distance required to accelerate to the test speed. Automatic or manual transmissions are irrelevent in this computation but placing either in neutral position will disconnect power from the wheels as well. No vehicle can ever accelerate uncontrolably even if the claims of Unintended Acceleration for these Toyotas turn out to be founded. One can always stop the car in less than 500' at highway speeds.
All of this has happened before to an import automaker and only you can prevent this from happening again. Engineers make decisions based on data over sensational media stories. Rushing to conclusions over this issue represents poor judgement equal to that of consulting tennants of a retirement home before recompiling your kernel.
Maybe the accelerator pedal should do nothing when floored.
As far as I know, a significant majority of these "uncontrollable acceleration issues" have occurred in the US. Toyota is by far the most popular make of car here in Japan and the rules regarding old cars are a lot more strict (None over 7 years old, I think. After which they are exported by used car dealers.), meaning that a significant majority of Japanese drivers are driving computer-controlled Toyotas. However, the Japanese media has not reported any similar problems. The common perception here is that this issue is being manufactured by the US government to aid domestic auto manufacturers, but more so, to screw Japan for trying to get rid of the American military bases in Okinawa.
Now, I'm no expert in statistical analysis, and the fine folk here on /. who have criticized this study on theoretical grounds may have a point, but I do know how to read a graph, and the one included in the fine article is pretty clear and simple. The trouble starts with the 50 year old group and gets progressively worse through to the 70 to 80 year olds who clearly must really suck at driving. BUT for the 80+ group the drop off is dramatic, with them dying less often than even than the teenagers. So the message to older drivers is that if you can just hold on until you're an octogenarian, you'll be driving safely well into your hundreds. Clearly that's when all those years of experience really pay off.
Loose lips lose spit.
many countries will find this out in the near future, if not already.
I was driving AT only in the US for a while, then came over to the UK and had to learn (and pass a pretty strict test) to drive MT cars; and I come down firmly on the AT side. If you actually _care_ about what's going on inside your car, fine, probably manual is for you. All I care about is getting from A to B, and for that, the UI of manual transmission is perfect - press brake to go slower, press gas to go faster, change 'gears' to go back or go into park, and that's all folks.
I'm the first to admit my driving skills are about average, and I plan to keep them that way. On the other hand, my wife can drive really well, and while she prefers MT, she tells me that the recent AT cars she's driven behaved well enough that she can't find good objective arguments for using MT anymore.
They were all trying to get to Country Kitchen Buffet.
Check against the total pyramid of age of people buying a toyota. But frankly I would be surprised that this is the case, firstly because toyota aren't pricey to begin with, and secondly because people over 55 have in my experience less money available.
There was a consumer report issue on this (I think it was consumer report), they put all segment of age in a car , then induced circumstance where the brake had to be used. And overwhelmly , older people mistook the brake and accelerator much much more than younger people ! I can't find the report anymore because now google is FLOODED with toyota accelerator "problem", so it makes search for anything older difficult. And my own ancecdotal evidence, a lot of the accident you see in the news, people plowing into farmer market or into other kids, are old people either not having their sense, or mistaking accelerator and brake ! It is a KNOWN problem, and chief among why some of us would like to see people over 55 do a driving test on regular basis... Locally, that don't happen, and people have to do a test only when they were in accident, are known to have mental problem, or were fined above a ertain number of points. In other word, too late.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
"But one shouldn't believe the hype. We went through this a generation ago with the Audi 5000 and other autos accused of sudden acceleration, and, again, mysterious unknowable car components were supposedly at fault. In a North Carolina case I worked on, the plaintiff's expert theorized that electromagnetic transmissions from submarines might have set off the throttle via the cruise control, though, unsurprisingly, he was not able to duplicate the effect while driving around electrical towers with much greater electromagnetic interference. Back then, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) spent millions studying the issue. They found that sudden acceleration was several times more likely among elderly drivers than young drivers, and much more frequent among the very short or someone who had just gotten into a vehicle. Electromagnetic rays don't discriminate by age and height, which suggests very much that human factors were at play: in other words, pedal misapplication. A driver would step on the wrong pedal, panic when the car did not perform as expected, continue to mistake the accelerator for the brake, and press down on the accelerator even harder. This had disastrous consequences in a 1992 Washington Square Park incident that killed five and a 2003 Santa Monica Farmers' Market incident that killed ten the New York driver, Stella Maycheck, was 74 (and quite short); the California driver, George Russell Weller, 86. We're seeing the same pattern again today. Initial reports of a problem, followed by dozens of new reports coming to light as people seek to blame their earlier accidents on sudden acceleration."
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I'm a young New Zealander who doesnt drive, can anyone explain why American cars historically have had/have "super sized" pedals please? What is the point? It sounds awful to me. In New Zealand, we used to have old banger "British Leyland" marques until we became an "elephants graveyard" for Japanese imports. New Zealand's car scene is populated mostly by 10+ year old Japanese imports that wouldnt be anywhere near the current Japanese standards.
In my mind, it would be far better to have smaller, although not *TINY* pedals close-ish together? Instead of slamming your left foot onto the thick slab over there, slamming your right foot at the thick slab way over there....
---
It is when you're starting off... Or does YOUR cruise control have a "take off from parking position" cruise setting???
So, let me see. Toyota is stating that elder people (that obviously have lower reflexes) or people in situations where it's difficult to manoeuvre the vehicle without without causing an accident (parking, etc), are more likely to have an accident when their cars acceleration control fails.
How, genius! Who would ever even reach this overwhelming conclusion? Guys, you deserve a Nobel for this.
Well, Toyota, here is a freebie thought for you. If those are the same guys you have programming and engineering the accelerators, well, perhaps it's time to hire other people, no?
it seems the whole 'unintended acceleration' phenomenon is to a large extent like a US version of this
I personally think people should either be tested annually or have their licence taken away once they retire. You shouldn't encourage people with apple sauce for brains to be driving.
I've driven recent model cars in both the US and Germany. When comparing things like fuel economy and performance, here's a short list of things people tend to forget:
Driving in the US means much more driving very long distances compared to Europe. So many of my European colleagues just don't grok this until I describe a few things. For example, an 8 hour drive from Phoenix to LA at 70+ miles per hour, then show them on a map how little of the US that actually covers. I do that, then ask them how far away they'd be if they drove for 8 hours from their house at that speed (as if it were possible).
Distances impact the relative "feel" of fuel costs. I live in a rural part of the country (as do 42% of McMericans). It's several miles drive for me to get to groceries. It can be a 45 minute commute at highway speeds just to get to work (not for me, but it's common enough). You just use a lot more fuel. This is also why public transportation is so much more difficult to make practical here. The distribution of population is radically different. Much of the US was settled after the advent of personal transportation that you didn't have to feed and water.
To my German friends -- don't feel bad about not quite fully understanding that sheer size and scope of the U.S. You aren't the first from Germany (well, technically Austria I suppose) to make that mistake. (poke).
P.S. - On the whole Automatic vs. Manual transmission thing -- I've certainly driven both. People claiming better turns on sweeping mountain roads and are driving front wheel drive cars are pretty much full of crap. Sure, a manual will give you a real edge with a rear wheel drive car. Otherwise, get over yourself and quit pretending your an F1 driver in your silly little consumer box.
When I drive in Europe, I make an effort to rent a small automatic. It costs more. Why? Because I don't know the roads well and my attention is full enough paying attention to the different road etiquette and the GPS combined with signs in different shapes than I'm used to and frequently in languages I don't speak.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Because Toyota hasn't pointed it out. Don't you think that if these incidents occured across all cars, the Toyota would have pointed it out by now?
Usually the best indication that something is not a defense is that the defense ain't using it.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Looking at the stats graph on the website listed in the article, I did not see a corresponding ownership distribution stat among the different age groups. Without knowing the ownership distribution, the "skewed" incident stats we see are close to useless.
I'm not willing to guess about the ownership distribution among the class of cars seen to have this acceleration problem. As usual, reporters fall down on the details.
Toyota may be off the hook, but we still can't know for sure.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
I wonder if this isn't possibly a case of a paranoia meme carrying across society? Either that, or the fact that most America cars have automatic transmission and most cars in other countries have manual transmission?
My father used to be facilities supervisor for a large banking chain, and he told me about the incidents where elderly customers did damage to bank branches because of unintended acceleration. One woman hit the wrong pedal as she was attempting to park in front of the bank, floored her large american-made car through the front of the building, through the teller counter, through the wall behind the teller counter into the employee break room, pushing the refrigerator through the back wall of the building...she kept the tires spinning, melting through the tile floor, until a bank employee opened the driver door, reached in and turned off the engine.
She then hopped out and, since she was at her desired destination, tried to make her deposit.
My dad had quite a laugh over the mess he had to get fixed. He was glad no one was hurt, of course.
Obama Motors is just slandering Toyota to sell more cars. Recalls happen all the time.
Oh, how soon we forget. Bush approved the bailout of GM during his last few months in office; Obama inhereted the mess. Now, I'm no fan of Obama, but please, let's get the facts straight.
Bush was just continuing a program of warrentless wiretapping that started decades before he took office. So that means when he and the telecoms violated your 4th amendment rights, it was ok? See how dumb your argument sounds? Wrong is wrong. I don't care who did it first. Now put Obama's cock back in your mouth so I don't have to hear your bullshit anymore.
and I mean really shit, every 50 miles you had to open the hood/bonnet and tinker with it, and even when it was running nothing worked anything like it should have done when new.
I learnt to drive a car that had, at one time or another...
a/ no clutch
b/ no starter
c/ no brakes
d/ no hand/parking brake
e/ dodgy steering
f/ throttle / carb problems, inc throttle cable breaking or jamming open
g/ carbs that iced up at whatever throttle position you happened to be on.
h/ dodgy tyres
i/ no syncromesh on the gearbox
j/ now power assist on the brakes or steering
j/ etc etc
compared to the kids now who start out with relatively new cars, basically I learned to drive and control a car, by having to cope with cars that pushed the envelope, whereas everything a driver encounters now is within a very very small performance envelope.
The old Series II Land Rover had 3 gear sticks, one high-neutral-low range, one two-none-four wheel drive, and one reverse-first-second-third-fourth, which also had false neutrals, no power steering, no power brakes, and frankly, even in a country where the vast majority of drivers are stick shift, probably less than 1% of drivers can just get in it and drive it, and this is with a (worn, but working) synchro main gearbox.
I've also driven auto trans, from RE Olds through Merc to press button selectronic "drag strip" shifters, also floor stick, column stick.
I've driven vehicles that you had to adjust ignition timing and mixture manually as you went along, and even some you had to manually pump the lube oil.
So basically, if you have ever been taught to drive PROPERLY, you can remain in control of the car, no matter what happens, short of the wheels literally falling off.
The problem always comes back to driver ed, particularly given the fact that one car model is sold worldwide, but there are VAST differences in driver ability, attitudes, roads, traffic, etc etc.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
the steering gets locked only when you REMOVE the key.
Only on a few cars, like Mercedes Benz which uses an electronic key and motorized steering lock. On most cars with a conventional ignition key, the steering is locked when the key is turned back to the Off position.
Putting moderation advice in your
This is not true for most cars. On many cars the power steering boost is reduced at higher engine speeds but this is done for fuel economy reasons and it's actually just part of the mechanical pump design. It's much simpler (and therefore more reliable and cheaper) to do this in the pump itself than to use an electronic control system.
On most cars, the only electronic connection to the steering system is a pressure sensor that tells the engine computer how much load the power steering pump is placing on the engine. Cars with electronic stability control systems also have a steering angle sensor, but electronically modulated steering assist is only on a minority of cars as it adds to the cost over just having the power steering pump produce less pressure above a certain engine RPM.
It helps to be a member of the SAE and read their published papers on this stuff.
Putting moderation advice in your
I've seen this a lot. Arms should be only slightly bent. A tall guy with his seat too close will end up with his head in the wheel.
the day after I had the recall completed, I was accelerating hard (its an XRS, so it has a tiny bit of gusto, not much), to get ahead of some cars and make a turn ahead. Anyways, after I got up to speed, I lifted my foot and the pedal stuck for a second a full WOT. Bit disconcerting, but I knew instantly if I needed to the clutch was my friend, that and the brakes are easily more powerful than the tiny P.O.S engine toyota puts in its cars. As soon as i realized the pedal had stuck, there was a audible click sound and the pedal sprung back.
IMO, definitely not a computer or electrical problem, it was purely mechanical. And the clutch and brake is not by wire anyways.
I haven't been able to replicate it since, so it must be just the right situation, either way, getting in an accident because of that is idiotic, and your license should be revoked.
There you go. That's actually a really great idea and would solve this entire problem instantly.
This is Audi 5000 all over again. From P.J. O'Rourke's 2003 book (Parliament of Whores) account of the mid-1980s Audi "sudden acceleration" scare: "These sudden-acceleration incidents, or SAIs, closely resemble those sudden-intelligence incidents, or SUIs, that many of us have experimented with our automobiles....we'd be driving down a country road at a reasonable and prudent 115 miles an hour and--all of a sudden, for no apparent reason--the car would suffer an SUI and roll over five times in a cornfield." "It's worth noting...that the Honda Civic's pedal placement is nearly identical with the Audi 5000's [a car that was blamed for a lot of the SAIs], yet the Civic got few SAI complaints. On the other hand, the Mercury Marquis--where, on a clear day, you can almost see the accelerator from the brake--was in the SAI top ten. We don't need a "60 Minutes" investigative team to tell us what kind of person buys a little Honda rice rocket and what kind of person buys a huge Mercury Medicare sled."
To refine this a bit, what you could do is make 'zone' near the extreme of the accelerator pedal travel which will provide full acceleration. But then another zone right at the end of the travel where the acceleration would cut out (and perhaps not just completely cut out instantly, but gradually ramp down as it gets very near the end of travel down to nothing at the very end of travel).
What that would do is make it easy enough to get completely full acceleration out of your vehicle, but you would have to do so intentionally by finding that sweet spot--which is what we want here. You make the sweet spot plenty wide & easy to find.
But if you panic & slam the accelerator to the floor, you get no acceleration at all--which is also what you want.
Once people are used to this system (which would only take a couple minutes driving I would guess) the only times you'd be pressing the accelerator to the floor would be when you were #1 panicking for some reason #2 actually trying to apply full brakes.
In neither instance do you want to give that person full acceleration (the last thing you want is a panicky person at the helm of a motor vehicle with full acceleration, and the person trying to apply the brakes obviously doesn't want full acceleration either).
Perhaps this whole accelerator business is simply a mass delusion like the Seattle Windshield Pitting Epidemic. Cosmic rays got blamed then also.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Windshield_Pitting_Epidemic
More importantly, how many old people are wearing thongs (gstrings, t-backs)?
Damping absorbs vibrations. Dampening is caused by moisture.
What is something that old people expect from a car when they hit the gas? Noise. A hybrid pulling away from a stop is highly likely to be running on electricity, and making close to zero noise, especially to someone hard of hearing. No audio feedback = less aware their car was moving = lawsuit, I mean accident.
I come here for the love
And Audi had a higher incident rate as well, and that was confirmed to be driver error.
The confirmation was incorrect. I owned an Audi Turbo 5000 and while going down a highway at 70mph on cruse control it began to accelerate. My feet were not touching the pedals.
A flaw in the check valve prevented the brakes from working while boost was positive. Turning off the dashboard switch cleared the fault.
My experience is the car had an issue. I suspect a hopped-up CB radio used by a passing truck triggered the event. Do they use CB radios in Japan or Europe?
Place nail here >+
I drive semis for a living. I wouldn't want to go back to eleventy billion manual gear changes a day. I left all that behind last millennium !! (ok... not that long ago). simple fact is.. As a pro driver you DON'T just sit there like a lemon and let things happen to you. It's the merest flick to switch the transmission into semi-auto and hold or knock it down a gear. Just because the transmission is Auto doesn't mean you just sit there and let it do it's thing. You're a Pro driver. Start thinking and acting like one.
Outcast, Peterborough, UK
Idle left foot? It's perfectly allowed to drive with both feet with an automatic. The driver's instructors tell you not to because it is easy to get confused, but if you take the time to practice it's actually pretty easy (and yes, I can still drive a manual, too). If you're trying to drive fast, it removes a lot of work from your right foot and allows you to switch between gas and brake much faster, not to mention hitting both the gas and the brake at the same time (which is warranted in some cases. Just not when you see morons taking off from a stoplight with their top-center brake light still lit).
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
These are the Same people that had the Audi 5000 series sedans in the mid 1980’s that also suffered “sudden unintended acceleration”. They would have been in there early 30’s back then.
Fair enough. And, I've been told that today's auto transmissions can be "locked" into your chosen gear. Whatever - Freightliner got it wrong in the early days, as I say, they took a nice stab at getting me killed, and I never gave them another chance. I DID downshift, and the gear selector was in 9th gear, I believe (can't remember for certain after all these years, that was in 1999) and the computer over rode my choice of gears when the tach reached whatever speed it was designed to shift at. 2500 rpm? I really don't remember now. I brought the truck back to the yard, and told the boss I was NOT driving the damned thing again.
I much prefer manually putting that tranny in my chosen gear, and KNOWING that no one, and no thing, can possibly over ride my judgement. You realize at least as well as I do that sometimes there is simply no time to second guess that computer and/or another driver, and put things back the way you want them.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I used to drive a 5000 lb truck (IH Scout Traveler) that would regularly have the power steering go out. If you were traveling over 20 mph it was easy to turn at any rate that you'd want to turn at speed. The only thing that made it even minorly dangerous was if you were making a 90 degree turn at an intersection with one hand (which is poor technique anyway). If it went out and you didn't have your other hand ready, you could drift into the next lane as the steering wheel jerked against your hand.
and in my opinion Toyota's engineers are either incompetent or Toyota is engaged in a massive cover up program. The black box information is not gospel. Broken sensors, firmware race conditions, all sorts of things can cause problems that the black box will report incorrectly. These cars have what, about a million lines of code. Anyone that thinks there are no bugs in a million lines of code, well show me just one O/S, or any other major piece of software, with no bugs, just one.
Toyota needs to take two courses of action: 1) Release the code, compilers and version, etc. to the world for review. Offer a new car to anyone that finds a serious bug. 2) For all cars that drive by wire, (recommended for not just Toyota), install a kill switch, you know, like the old key switches cars used to have. When you turned off the ignition, the engine stopped - no if's, and's, or but's. It stopped.
Whether it's a complex interaction fo systems that can't be reproduced in QA, the uncovering of a hardware of software bug; or if something as simple as the user consistently clicking the wrong button -- or pressing the wrong pedal, if that is what happened.
On the surface, yes - in some of those cases, the user does the "wrong" thing. But what that really means is "the user did not do what I said they should do". So is that user error, or interface design error? Why would they do it wrong in *this* case, but not in other cases? WHy did the same user never have this problem with any other car?
A bug doesn't mean only that code is broken. It can occur in any number of steps in the process -- code, interface, expectations we have set for the users, design, assumptions, hardware, etc.
the author states that prius owners who get in accelerator accidents are old. But, since he doesn't tell us what the avg age of a prius owner is, this is meaningless in my town, newton MA, the avg age of prius owners looks to be >40, and possibly >50 so, that would mean his main conclusion is simply wrong
Toyota is suffering from a social phenomenon...rather than a clear technical issue.
If it was all over the news that Lincoln and Cadillac cars were accelerating uncontrollably, you'd have every one who accidentally hit the accelerator, or just plain crashed like an idiot making claims against these companies as well.
So you've fought the mechanical overlord and lived to tell about it.
[...] rhyming slang for yank. (Septic tank, got it?)
I get it, but I don't have to like it.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
Your '77 had a foot toggle? Huh. My '78 Olds (Delta 88) didn't. I miss that car; it was quite a luxury.
And yes, this van is a bit of an oddity. It's been rewired and whoever did it didn't do this right; there are two independent circuits for lights.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I certainly don't disagree, but I think the biggest problem in this thread is that we're not pointing how thoroughly wrong about statistics the people who are crying "small sample size" are.
People who complain about the small sample sizes of studies whose conclusions they don't like are operating under the false assumption that the thing that primarily determines the accuracy of an unbiased sample is its relative size, i.e., the proportion of the population that was sampled. But in fact, the accuracy of the sample is primarily determined by the absolute size, and the frequency of the outcome we're trying to estimate.
As a simple thought experiment, imagine a big, opaque black bag with a million marbles, half of them red, the other half blue, randomly scattered. If you put your hand into the bag and draw a marble without looking, you have a 500,000/1,000,000 chance of drawing red. If you drew red on the first one and now draw a second one, you have a 499,999/1,000,000 chance of drawing red; then in your third draw, the chance of drawing red again is 499,998/1,000,000, and so on. So each draw is has a roughly 50/50 chance of getting red, except that drawing red in one turn makes red slightly less likely in the next one.
So, what's your chance of drawing 27 reds on a row? It's easy to see that it's something in the order of 1/2^27, i.e. 1/134,217,728, except that that's actually an overestimate, given that earlier reds make later ones less likely. The formula that calculates the probability of drawing only red marbles from the 50%/50% red/blue bag is looks like an exponential function over the number of marbles you draw, with a relatively minor correction for sample size.
This is a crude version of statistical error estimates, but it applies pretty directly to the Prius driver age situation, because getting all 27 drivers to fall in a narrow age range is very much like drawing 27 red marbles in a row. Even if 66% of Prius drivers were in that age group, the chance of drawing 27 of them in a random draw is something like 1 in 56,800 (1/(2/3)^27).
So, repeat the mantra: Sampling error depends on absolute sample size, not relative sample size.
Are you adequate?
Ahh... so it wasn't supposed to be like that. That makes more sense.
Yeah, it looks like '77 was the last of the fourth generation Cutlass and the Delta 88 went into 9th generation in '77, so maybe those "new generation" cars lost the foot switch.
a nhtsa engineer involved w/ the audi uia investigation (which lead to the trans/brake interlock) told me 30% of the cars whose drivers claimed were "standing on the brake" actually had the accelerator ben out of shape by the driver.
and notice that incidence jumped after the september fan-hitting...
There are a few reasons why the analysis presented in the article is meaningless:
1 - Without knowing the age distribution of all drivers it's pointless to look at the age distribution of the drivers who had accidents. The age distribution could just be the same as the age distribution of all drivers.
2 - The same applies to the situations where accidents occurred. Without a comparison with data on all accidents you can't infer anything. The pie chart in the article could just be the same for accidents with other brands.
I am reminded of this every time I watch the idiotic ad that touts that with Toyota you now "do things the way you're used to".
No Toyota. The way I always start and stop a car is with an ignition key. It has been like that for more than half a century, before we even had computers and mice and whatever else is in that ad.
There has never been any question on how that is done until car makers start introducing new and cute ways of starting your engine, each different from each other.
> Personally, I don't pull into traffic if the conditions are such that I need to get from 0 to 60 in 8 seconds, but maybe that's just me.
So I suppose you never get on the freeway, because that's exactly what you need to do. You have about 200ft going uphill to get to freeway speed from a full stop, starting from those "traffic metering" stoplights in the middle of the onramp.
Vacuum-assist is minimal at high RPM, because there is little vacuum with the throttle fully opened.
A turned-off engine will stop the car fairly quickly (depending on what gear it's on) even without using the brakes.
Finally, at high speed the inability to steer quickly is beneficial when trying to slow down, as the car's speed amplifies the steering input. As a matter of fact, some cars even have this as a feature: speed-sensitive steering, where the faster you go, the less assist you have.
AT don't need a new clutch and they work fine if one changes the fluid regularly. I don't need to jack off my car to make it go and I can eat or play with my girlfriend when I drive. You manual drivers get such a thrill with playing with your stick
Without wanting to sound predudiced against either elderly people or Toyota, it's probably reasonable to say that as a sample of the population of "all drivers", drivers of Toyotas will be skewed towards the older end of the age range. You certainly wouldn't conduct an estimate of the average age of the population based purely on the drivers of one particular make of car, whatever it was, due to the very high likelihood of such a bias.
Given that reaction time does increase with age, it's again not unreasonable to expect that the occurence of incidents in which reaction time is likely to be a factor would show some correlation with age.
I think it's also reasonable to expect that in the case of an accelerator being stuck 'on', any resulting accidents are more likely to happen at low speeds than at high speeds. On a typical motorway / highway if your car suddenly went to full throttle then you would generally have more time to react, and more space to bring the car to a safe stop. The effect of going full throttle at, say, 70mph in a high gear is also much less dramatic than at 5mph in 1st gear. When maneouvering or driving at low speed there is a very high likelihood of there being traffic, buildings, trees etc around - hence the low speed in the first place.