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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."
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.
Yes but the Woz case is possible bug in the cruise control software, not the accelerator.
Right, because Cruise Control Software is in no way related to acceleration, right?
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?
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.
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.
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!
It's simply a matter of economics, my friend. Gasoline (petrol) is currently running about $3 (2.25 Euro) per gallon here in the States vs. the average price of gasoline in Europe, which has been running about $6 (4.5 Euro) per hallon in Europe (on average).
Europeans pay double what we pay for gas, so it only makes sense that they'd be driving smaller, higher efficiency cars.
When gas prices pushed over $4 a gallon range last summer, hybrids were selling like hotcakes.
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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).
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.
No, that's not the reason. The reason is that most people around the world drive stick. There are only a few countries around the world where people drive mostly automatic transmission. In most of the world, if you only know how to drive automatic, you'll be restricted to an license that only allows you to drive automatic transmission.
Where I live (Argentina) virtually no one drives automatic transmission cars. We get the same models you do, but with manual transmission. This is true in most of South America. I once made the mistake of renting a car in the UK. Driving on the wrong side of the road was fucking difficult, but the car had manual transmission (In the US is almost impossible to find a rental car with manual transmission, I know from experience, but in the UK they gave me one automatically, and without asking).
If you had this issue in MT, it would be:
a) Trivial to just hold the clutch and disengage the gears.
b) On the AT model, pushing the accelerator would switch gears, while in MT you would still be in your current gear.
You have way more control. Also, the whole calculation done is probably different, I'm guessing even completely different, so, maybe the bug isn't present in those versions.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Spoken like a true AT fan. Have you ever even tried driving stick? It's hard for about 3 hours, but once you get a feel for it you simply have so much more control over how the car behaves that it is actually hard to deal with not doing it. I feel like I'm going to die every time I pull into busy traffic in an automatic... they always seem to upshift too early, sacrificing torque for smoothness, which would be great if I didn't have some whacko barreling up behind me at 50 and I need to be going fast enough that he won't smash into me 5 seconds ago.
Oh, and when they flub going up steep hills, that's just terrific.
But you just go ahead and keep knocking people who are better at driving than their cars, I'm sure you know better than they do.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
If you want to use that kind of analogy, I'd suggest comparing an IBM Model M to a cell phone on-screen keyboard. The Model M is tactile, precise, and communicative. The touchscreen is none of those things, and you just have to hope the software does a good job of guessing what you meant to press.
I'd much rather switch gears myself. The car can't see the hill coming up, or spot the hole in traffic I need to merge into. I can, and having the ability to select gears for power or economy as I please makes handling those scenarios that much easier. The only place I'd prefer an automatic is when there's a string of stop signs on a hill, and there are morons behind me pulling right up to my bumper. I do sometimes roll back a hair, you know...
True. However many cars are drive by wire, meaning, there is no physical connection between the shifter and the transmission. So if there is a computer glitch, which may have happened with some of these cars, then you're SOL. Only option is to turn off the car -- unless it's a pushbutton start (like the Prius), then you're really up the creek ...