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Toyota Sudden Acceleration Is Driver Error
phantomfive writes "The NHTSA has investigated data recorders from Toyota cars whose owners claimed to have crashed due to an accelerator error. They found that the throttles were wide open and the brakes weren't being pressed. The investigation looked at a sample of the cars, selected by the NHTSA." Jamie found this article with a superior headline at Balloon Juice.
... that the throttle and brake position logging was recording correct data. If there's a fault in the ECU or software, how can you guarantee the data logging is correct?
Just like windows
BP Also found that they would have less security Violations if people just looked the other way.
I'm sorry but anyone who willingly believes corporations over individuals forgets who has more to lose.
I am not surprised.... Same thing happened to Audi back in the day.
One thing for me that was a dead giveaway was that every single report regarding the Toyota sudden acceleration issue happened in the good old United States (Same for Audi, by the way). Statistically, it's very unlikely that such a problem would only happen in a single country even though these cars do not differ significantly between different countries. You'd expect a few deaths in Japan, France, German, the United Kingdom where Toyota cars are also very popular.
Too bad for Toyota that their brand has been permanently damaged in the US. (Just ask Audi how well it went for them the years after the accusations). GM, Ford and Chrysler are probably very happy about this.
While this is a useful data point, it's not conclusive. If the root cause is some electronics error whose symptoms are a sudden acceleration and (according to two victims) no response to the brake, it's not surprising that the black box -- presumably using the exact same input controlling the engine -- would claim that the accelerator was fully pressed and the brake was untouched.
I don't understand how these data recorders work - but I'm guessing they're electronic/computer controller rather than mechanical - in which case, surely it's possible for the brakes to not be pressed according to this recorder/computer even when they are? i.e. could that the root of the problem? (whatever control system is in charge can't "see" the brakes are pressed and hence the press isn't recorded either)
There is no need for more concern!! Toyota is known to be trustworthy!!
Certainly there were a large number of people who either purposefully, or subconsciously, blamed their accidents on this well-known issue that was plastered all over the news. There were probably a small number of people who had accidents on purpose to try and make a quick buck.
The real question is, statistically, are people more likely to be involved in these sort of accidents in specific models of Toyota than in other vehicles? At some point during all of this I did read news articles to that affect. Is that being debunked as well?
Better known as 318230.
The first thing to do if you get a stuck accelerator is to put the car in neutral. If you fail to do that, you deserve whatever you get.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Weren't some of these cars supposedly accelerating with brake-pads grinding away and smoldering from the friction?
Did anyone else read this article about the NHTSA not having software engineers or any ability to evaluate computerized systems? http://www.thecarconnection.com/marty-blog/1042836_nhtsa-has-no-software-engineers-or-ees-to-analyze-toyotas Makes this conclusion seem a bit sketchy to me? This is a good answer for Toyota, wonder how much it cost them?
This Toyota issue has me completed confused. Was this related to the same complaint Steve Wozniak leveled at them? I'm not a huge Woz fan but recognize that if anyone could empirically test an electronic device exhaustively he'd probably be good at it. These reports of undesired acceleration left me very confused as to what -- if anything -- all the cases had in relationship to each other.
Furthermore if we assume the same cross section of people buy Toyota as any other model, wouldn't we see this same brake/accelerator confusion among all other brands of vehicles at the same rate? I thought that cars had a pretty universal size and location for brake/accelerator/clutch in order to avoid confusion. Is this not true?
Usually when something like this happens I try to inform myself before making an opinionated statement for or against the company. With this Toyota thing I don't feel as if I'm any better off than when I first read the Woz article on Slashdot.
Is that a software driver?
Did any of the drivers, when they found that the car was not responding to them taking their foot from the accelerator, shift the car out of gear? You know, that position on the lever between "D" and "R"? One of the first things I was taught was to slow the car down in an emergency you put your right foot on the break pedal, pressing hard, and with your left foot, push the clutch pedal in all the way - that disconnects the engine from the driving wheels.
Now, I realize that most drivers in the US these days would recognize a clutch pedal or a manual gearbox if it hit them over the head - but in an automatic transmission the same principal applies - shift into neutral (and the "N" doesn't mean "Now we are almost ready to go"....)
I guess no one wants to make the point that poor driver training and lack of ability contributed to the accidents - hey, the ambulance chasing lawyers can't sue anyone over that, and besides, we can't have any restrictions on people driving (like, are they smart enough and capable of controlling a two ton vehicle that can travel at upwards of 80 miles an hour).
Does that mean software driver, or behind the wheels drive?
And what about the test they did on live TV in which a technician was able to cause a short, the car to accelorate exactly as described by people, and the computer logged it as if the throttle was wide open and no one was pressing the brakes... exactly as was found here? I can't find a link... anyone remember which broadcaster it was? I know it was one of the big 3.
... that the throttle and brake position logging was recording correct data. If there's a fault in the ECU or software, how can you guarantee the data logging is correct?
Toyota agrees with you: From TFA:
Toyota has always taken the position that the electronic data recorder system is not reliable," said Tab Turner, the Little Rock, Ark., lawyer.
A Toyota spokesman said the company considers the device "a prototype tool. It wasn't designed to tell us exactly what happened in an accident. It was designed to tell us whether our systems were operating properly."
A hard to replicate error with an incredibly low rate of occurrence... a government owned competitor who needs a boost... a regulator forcing a recall before anyone really knows what's going on...
Did anyone ever think this was a real problem?
I thought they finally found where the software glitch is. But nope, same old BS.
The other alternative is the drivers are wrong. I mean, isn't this turning into a conspiracy theory? "Oh, the engines are at fault". "What? the recorders say it's the driver? They're wrong".
From the article: Police in Sheboygan Falls, Wis., investigated and believe driver error was to blame, Chief Steven Riffel said Tuesday. He said surveillance video showed that the brake lights didn't illuminate until after the crash. But Mr. Riffel said that determination is preliminary and that his agency has turned over the investigation to NHTSA. Based on the black box data, NHTSA investigators found that the brake was not engaged and the throttle was wide open, according to a person familiar with the matter. Ms. Marseille sticks by her story. "It makes me very angry when someone tells me, 'She probably hit the gas pedal instead,' because I think it's a sexist comment, an ageist comment," she said.
Brake lights are controlled by a simple switch in the brake assembly. Regardless of how much TOyota may have jacked up the throttle system I doubt they were able to screw that up too. Sounds like most these idiots are too stupid to own a car
Nuclear war would really set back cable. - Ted Turner
The investigation looked at a sample of the cars, selected by the NHTSA.
I'm going to go ahead and assume that this sample did not include Wozniak's car: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/02/02/1458230/Woz-Cites-Scary-Prius-Acceleration-Software-Problem
Is anybody else having flashbacks to Apple trying to blame a hardware design error on people not holding the phone in a way officially sanctioned by His Holy Steveness?
If it was purely driver error it would show up on quite a variety of cars, not just specific Toyota models.
did you forget to take your meds?
Nothing surprising, every computerized system has driver problems.
The programmers here should know. If there is a bug, it won't show itself one in a million times!!! There is nothing random about code, and I am assuming code behind a car can't be all that complicated, at least with respect to the crucial components.
It's not like cars are being hacked. And if they were, then the cause is the hackers anyway, not the code (the code may have an exploitable weakness, but the exploitation is done by people).
Mid-to-late 80's, everyone was all over Audi's problems with sudden acceleration. The stories were clearly bogus -- couldn't stop a _manual_transmission_ car for instance. Much press coverage, "in depth reporting" on various newsmagazine shows, etc.
It's the exact same stories all over again.
People crash cars all the time. They often do it for stupid reasons, like confusing the gas peddle and brake. In the past, most would admit to themselves that this is what happened. But in today's "nothings my fault" era, you sue. And the press is just waiting to hear from you.
Maury
I could drive my toyota around without touching the accelerator for 5-10 minutes at a time when it was doing it. Cause the RPMs were pegged at 3500. Did not matter if you were on a hill or not. When I drove it to the dealership for repair, I drove the 10 miles without touching the gas once. Hard to be driver error if I didn't touch the gas. I saw the list of parts it was like about $1200 worth of stuff. I guess I got in at the right time of the year, the dealership took care of it.
The person that was able to cause a short was Dr. Dave Gilbert a professor at Southern Illinois University in the Automotive Tech Department.
It was shown on ABC's Nightline program.
link as follows http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/video/auto-professor-pinpoints-car-flaw-9916379 and http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/toyota-recall-electronic-design-flaw-linked-toyota-runaway-acceleration-problems/story?id=9909319
I mean it's got to be his fault, right? Due to their walled garden approach to their ECU software? And let's face it, I can get a Yugo for thousands of dollars less. Toyotas are just flashy and shiny objects to those who aren't smart enough to run and Yugo and those who are more concerned about being cool.
Too bad for Toyota that their brand has been permanently damaged in the US. (Just ask Audi how well it went for them the years after the accusations). GM, Ford and Chrysler are probably very happy about this.
Time to break out the foil hats...
This was all setup to help the domestic automakers regain the market share they've lost over the last 20 years.
Notice that all the problems happened at around the same time. It's not a constant failure rate.
The problem caused a massive amount of publicity and public awareness. Toyota drivers would most likely see problems where before they'd just shrug and carry on. I bet you'd see a similar effect for any manufacturer if you could create a suitable media storm.
No sig today...
Anyone who have viewed the millions of youtube videos of stupid drivers aren't surprised. Some people aren't fit to handle something like a car. Im often surprised by some people who drives like they cant keep two lines of thoughts at the same time. As soon as something unknown happens they panic and crash randomly instead of getting ready to break hard.
Toyota is very sensitive and nice about this. I guess they dont want to embarrass their customers but hey, somewhere you need to draw the line.
HTTP/1.1 400
It's not unreasonable that the driver has given up on the brakes. From the accounts I read, the drivers usually fight the engine with the brakes until the brake pads are so hot as to be completely ineffective.
Most people don't understand brake temperature and brake fade unless they've driven something larger than a normal car.
The driver might give up on trying the brakes after the brake fade and focus on steering alone. Obviously these people that have these accidents have fallen into some kind of hopeless submission or they would try things like shifting into neutral... it's not unreasonable that someone who has given up enough to not even try to kill the engine or shift to have also given up on the brakes.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Maybe what you need to do when you're in a runaway Toyota is to grab the antenna by the edges. That ought to slow you down by a few bars.
It's like the bus accident on the news where 50 people file claims of injury for a bus that only holds 40.
In 1988 or so I had a Pontiac Fiero that when you turned the cruise control on (just switching immediately when switching from "off" to "on"), the gas pedal would pin itself to the floor and the engine would go WIDE OPEN. Now this was easily and immediately remedied by switching the cruise control off again, but it DID HAPPEN TO ME. Electronic devices screw up constantly. Did you ever used and old MIDI instrument, that when it crashed all the data outputs would just start throwing data like crazy and all the notes would play at max volume continuously? Older musicians know this was common.
Also, I read that the reports of sudden acceleration in Toyotas have ONLY come from cars with U.S. made ECUs, and NEVER with Japanese made ECUs... I somehow doubt that all of the people supposedly "faking" look at their ECU first before determining whether to make a false claim.
Do I know for certain whether or not this is a real problem? No. But when electronics lock up, and they do all the time, anything can happen.
I was very wary when they started taking away accelerator cables, as I understand electronics all too well and prefer to never trust them with my life -- Airbus prefers to differ in their opinion, so I try to always use Boeing. And I will certainly NEVER BUY A CAR WITH FLY BY WIRE STEERING!!!!!!!!
I am not surprised with this outcome. I read an article from Car & Driver a while back where the specifically tested the scenario of trying to stop your car with the throttle wide open. Here's the link.
br> Key facts:
1) In a Toyota, shifting into neutral while the throttle is wide open, will disengage the engine from the transmission and slow the car down. So all of the people claiming that these cars are all computers and not mechanical so it still wouldn't work, are full of crap.
2) They brought a standard Toyota Camry up to highway speed (including a 100 MPH test) and hit the brakes while still holding down the accelerator. The result? The brakes were able to overpower the engine and slow down the car. The faster your initial speed, the longer it took, but the distances, even at 100 MPH, were reasonably safe.
C/D's conclusion without actually analyzing the specific reported incidents, was that the most likely cause of these accidents was driver error, specifically people hitting the gas instead of the brake. The natural instinct for any driver if a car starts accelerating uncontrollably is to hit the brakes, which C/D has shown is sufficient to slow the car on its own. If that wasn't sufficient, then the thing to do is to shift into neutral. This real data from the incidents seems to support the gas instead of brake theory, and the statistics showing a sharp spike (and subsequent sharp drop-off) in "unintended acceleration" incidents after Toyota instated the recall for sticky accelerators and at a time when the US auto industry has one foot in the grave, Toyota is looking more and more in the clear on this one.
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
US media. And GM/Chrysler are..? You don't see the huge numbers of complaints in any other country.
Stop watching fox news.
ANY such evidence would be EXTREMELY easy to spot. The police would notice it in a second as would anyone investigating the accident. The entire claim was that the brakes did NOT work. A toyota won't easily go through its brakes. It ain't super cars.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
-) A few stupid Toyota drivers, and
-) A bunch of litigious ones.
If there was a fault in the electronics, the data recorders could be recording incorrect data. If anything, this raises more questions. It is completely out of the ordinary for a driver to have the throttle wide open under any circumstances. And for it to be happening to so many drivers, is very suspicious.
Proverbs 21:19
Input from the pedals or output from the electronics?
Because there's a significant age correlation to these reports of sudden acceleration.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/OpEd-Contributor/I-am-not-afraid-of-my-Toyota-Prius-87361597.html
http://www.thecarconnection.com/marty-blog/1043440_toyota-sudden-acceleration-is-it-all-older-drivers-fault
Not definitive, but enlightening. Another group also proved that a runaway car with open throttle can still be stopped by the brakes anyway - they tried it with multiple cars - even a 500+ horsepower car.
I used to drive an old beat-up RX7 that had a mechanical throttle. It had a very large bar that would move forward when the gas pedal was depressed and with the age of the car and the design of the throttle, it had a tendency to get stuck wide open if the gas pedal was floored. Happened to me a couple of times in passing. Even the first time when I didn't expect it, my immediate reaction was to shift into neutral and turn the engine off at the key, pull into the breakdown lane and brake to a halt. Once I'd identified the problem, hitting the throttle assembly with WD40 every couple of weeks while checking the oil kept the problem from recurring.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
. I don't think you do. Electronic systems can incorporate various levels of redundancy in ways that mechanical systems can't. How many cars have dual push/pull systems on their accelerator cables? And, anyway, how do you connect an accelerator cable to a solenoid-controlled fuel injection system? - which is self-adaptive and far more reliable than any carb or mechanical injection system.
On my car, there are two accelerator position sensors and they have to agree before power gets applied to the wheels. I believe that's standard practice. However, not long after I bought it, the warning light came on and it was at the garage for two weeks. It turned out there was a Mexican standoff. The ECU was reporting a gearbox fault - gear changes were not happening fast enough. The manufacturer insisted on many tests including swapping out virtually the entire electronics before deciding to replace the gearbox. The old one was expedited back to Stuttgart where it was found that there was indeed a mechanical fault. As the electronic technician at the garage said to me "They just didn't want to believe that a gearbox could fail."
Airbus is, I believe, no less safe than Boeing. And, if cars with fly by wire steering are eventually allowed in Europe, I expect they will be just as safe as all those farm tractors around the place, and more reliable because an awkward mechanical assembly doesn't have to be fitted into a restricted space.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Ms. Marseille said in an interview Tuesday that she was entering a parking space near a library when she heard the engine roar. "I looked down and my foot was still on the brake, so I did not have my foot on the gas pedal," she said.
Police in Sheboygan Falls, Wis., investigated and believe driver error was to blame, Chief Steven Riffel said Tuesday. He said surveillance video showed that the brake lights didn't illuminate until after the crash. But Mr. Riffel said that determination is preliminary and that his agency has turned over the investigation to NHTSA.
Based on the black box data, NHTSA investigators found that the brake was not engaged and the throttle was wide open, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Ms. Marseille sticks by her story. "It makes me very angry when someone tells me, 'She probably hit the gas pedal instead,' because I think it's a sexist comment, an ageist comment," she said.
So, every piece of evidence we have, and we have many, shows this woman panicked and jammed on the gas instead of the brake, and yet she remains thoroughly convinced she didn't do it. It's drivers like that who give credit to the phrase "woman drivers". But in this case we just have a bad driver crying "sexism!" as a defense. No, ma'am, you just need to fix your brain-foot coordination.
It's also interesting to look at the graph of reported incidents. Although there was no related changes in Toyota production, just look at that two month spike. That's caused by people, not by hardware. The number of bad drivers remains constant, and the performance of the vehicles remains constant. The only thing that surged was the number of people trying to blame their bad driving on Toyota. I'd bet that had they not gotten all the media-frenzy publicity to start with, that spike would not exist, that's just people latching onto a scapegoat. I'd love to see the graph of media coverage on toyota below that graph, to see the correlation. Bet there's about a two week lag from media to claims. Gotta feel bad for them, they're taking a lot of unfair heat, AND they're doing a better job than I would in holding their tongue when you know they want to just flat out call it, driver error. I don't think I could have that kind of resolve given the situation. They've waited until a lot of time has passed and the amount of evidence is overwhelming before starting to take that position publicly. And then Ms Marseille still insists she was hitting the brake when the black box AND the ramp cameras both say otherwise. The only thing left to debate here is whether she's genuinely that mistaken, or whether she's just stubbornly continuing to cover for her bad driving.
The two remaining issues are slow-return accelerators and floor mat traps. I don't see how a slow return to idle accelerator is going to significantly contribute to a crash, you still have the brake. (and so far, almost all the accidents investigated have shown NO brake use) As for the floor mats, heck, *I* have had that happen to me once in my cutlass. That's not a Toyota problem. That's a problem of floor mat creep that goes unnoticed for a long time (weeks) without the driver readjusting it. Again, driver error.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I find it extraordinarily easy to press both pedals simultaneously in my wife's Camry and have never done it once in my BMW. It sounds like an engineering issue to me, not so much a driver issue, although driver's are involved in the driving.
Why are motorcycles fitted with a kill-switch, and cars aren't? A cut-out switch on the dashboard, like those on industrial machines, would seem to be an obvious feature in today's safety-obsessed society.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
The problem, as stated many many times, the brakes don't work.
did you forget to take your meds?
How many times it has happened to you? Not the unstoppable Toyota juggernaut. Minor thing like, you think you are in drive (or reverse) but the car moves the other way, you recognize it instantly, brake it and shift the gear and continue nonchalantly as if nothing has happened.Probably such in incident would not linger in your memory if it is more than a day or two old. Or even mistakenly gunning the engine instead of the brakes, but there was sufficient road space ahead of you and you quickly corrected the problem? This might linger in the memory for a longer period. Just use that as a sample and multiply it by millions of people and thousands of hours of driving. Suddenly 75 people mistakenly flooring the gas pedal instead of jamming the brakes does not seem all that unrealistic.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I recently had a "stuck accelerator" in a rented Kia. I don't know if the accerator was physically stuck, but it behaved as if it was still held down when I took my foot off it. Fortunately, I wasn't going very fast, although I came close to rolling into an intersection into the path of another car. I had to stomp the brake hard to bring the car to a halt. I could not reproduce the problem over a couple of days of driving afterwards. I inspected the floor mat, and it did not appear to be interfering with the pedal.
The brakes are not electronic, so unless the entire braking system along with the built-in redundancies have failed, the brakes can and will bring the car to a halt. The cases in the media are all almost certainly the result of drivers panicking and failing to properly engage the brakes when acceleration goes out of control.
is a really bad idea, i think the accelerator pedal should be run by a cable or linkage directly to the fuel injection or a throttle body directly (the old fashioned way) without any computer or electronics in between
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
"driver error" or "a driver error"?
There was a story a while back of Toyota attempting to open a plant in the Southern US, but the plans were scrapped when potential employees failed the aptitude tests... And the plant was built in Canada... And we question if it was the drivers or the company... I rarely side with the company, but this time, you have 3 systems that have to all fail in a way that makes it undetectable for failure (I am sure they checked the sensors to verify that they worked, or that adds a 4th system that would have also needed to fail), or a user pressing on the wrong pedal... Now is it the pedal's fault, or the manufacturers that the user can not figure out how to properly use the vehicle? Seriously, that can not be the way that we address every issue. Otherwise we will lose sight of objectivity, and never be able to account for our own actions.
Sad day.
Binding supplies located in the trunk.
Someone with a schematic of the car should have a look to see how those signals are generated and routed. If they go through the same microcontroller...
In my Chrysler-made minivan, I've learned that headlights have to be turned off BEFORE the engine is stopped. If I switch the lights off first (two steps on a rotary knob), things work fine no matter how fast I twist that knob; both switch-events are caught.
If I turn the key first, though, turning off the engine before shutting off the headlights, both headlight-switch events will be missed by whatever MCU drives the headlight relays. The lights are on, the door is open, the engine is off, but I get no chimed 'lights left on' alert unless I put that switch through another full-on-full-off cycle to resync the micro with the physical state of things.
My guess is that the same MCU is responsible for a number of tightly timed engine-shutdown sequence events during which it has to mask off switch interrupts, which is lousy embedded design on Chrysler's part.
Nothing says that the same crappiness of design isn't evident in Toyota's machines, in which case the timing of those brake lights coming on means exactly nothing: that pedal might have been pressed for some seconds before the MCU got around to noticing.
This is the first time I think I've heard of hardware acceleration as an error.
How would the throttle not be wide open if it was a sudden acceleration issue? You can't go faster (accelerate) without the throttle opening. Also, why does Toyota have an unusually large pool of drivers who suddenly don't know the difference between the gas and the brake?
I had a car with a sudden acceleration problem (NOT a Toyota) and when it happened the gas pedal would, no joke, depress itself to the floor. I'm certain that I was not pushing it because I would be fighting the acceleration with the brakes. I would be sitting at a stop light pushing the brakes as hard as I could trying to keep my car from launching into the car in front of me. If the car had had a computer, it would have shown that I was pressing the gas pedal while I clearly was not.
The car actually did have a computer, but it was the talking kind and it would often say things randomly while driving down the street like "ELECTRICAL MALFUNCTION!"
or else!
1) the same unit that controls the accelerate controls the transmission. So no, shifting may not help at all.
2) Same point as 1.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
true, however the runaway throttle will override the brakes. The part where the brakes also impact the accelerator is electronic. If that failed, then you could press the accelerate and then the brakes and still accelerate.
I'm not saying that happened, only that is is a point of failure in there redundancy.
So if the unit failed, then these exact problems would occur and NOT be recorded.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I know this is a technical site, but what's interesting to me is the way in which Toyota and BP are handling their respective loads of PR fall-out. Both are foreign companies with deep pockets that do large amounts of business in the USA and are great politician fodder when things go wrong.
I have already started to see BP ads about "facing up to their responsibilities" and I can see Madison avenue finding ways to spin these disaster stories so that they actually work to a company's advantage in the long run. That's a truly scary thought.
Nullius in verba
... with a boulder of salt. The fact is that people absolutely, positively, cannot keep their mouths shut, and the chance of a conspiracy being revealed goes up exponentially with the number of people involved. Something like this would require way too many people to keep quiet - which isn't happening.
You can't stop evolution, you can only have some ( albeit small) effect on the conditions that the population is adapting to. The more "dumb proof" you make products the more the environment favours "dumbness". In effect the "dumb" population has a competitive advantage and we therefore are selecting for dumbness.
Reminds me of an idea I heard of several years ago. During the middle ages, the first son was the designated heir, the brightest of the left-over sons and daughters were sent to join various religious organizations that practised celibacy. In effect the church was dumbing down the population while selecting its own members from the brightest of what was left.
Had a wide-open throttle condition, that happened with my wife driving from Charleston WV to Beckley, WV on the Turnpike. A limited access toll highway, where towing is really expensive.
She drove all the way to the Ford dealer in town, slowing at toll-booths with the brakes and throwing money at the staff. It was a 4-cyl Ranger and mostly uphill, which helped too. She shut the engine off to stop, and when she started it, full throttle. We were 12,000 miles and a year out of warranty and the Ford dealer replaced the ECM no questions asked. It wasn't even the shop where we bought the truck!
This was before cars had black boxes, but as others have commented, when a computer screws up, often the .log file is as screwed up as the rest of the output. But don't tell me that complex code can't have unintended results. Maybe Toyota outsourced the code to Elbownia?
Think of the Irony!
I'll make absolutely sure never to buy one of their vehicles and expose them to the threat of my potentially incompetent driving. The next time (if ever) I need to buy a car, I'm sure I can find some other manufacturer willing to put up with me (and my money).
He could reproduce the acceleration problem consistantly. I mean he's a good engineer, very technically minded. If he says he can reproduce it I tend to believe him.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Surely there must be SOME relationship between the cars this has happened with.
Yes, all of the cars held people that wanted Toyota to pay because they drove into something.
After the first case or two it was easy to join the bandwagon. But everyone forgets about the black box recording what they do...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I bought toyota recently. The position of the cruise control resume makes it very easy to hit accidentally and it takes a very light touch that you might not even notice. I've hit it twice and had my car surge ahead in a way that was scary. Add in a miss of the hitting the brake pedal and you have what many of the folks are describing. Course the black boxes should show this.
Here's a list (SUA) sudden unintended acceleration complaints to the NHTSA
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/nhtsa-data-dive-3-117-models-ranked-by-rate-of-ua-incidents/
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/02/05/sudden.acceleration.fact.check/index.html
Atop that, most of SUA complaints to the NHTSA are a sham.
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/89-dead-in-the-nhtsa-complaint-database-it%E2%80%99s-a-sham/
Its not about a design flaw, some people are on their cell phone, distracted, and in some cases plain DRUNK. One Toyota SUA had a driver with a blood alcohol level of .103 (link above). Its easier to blame the car rather then admit you were drinking or were texting on the cellphone.
In other cases it turned out to be a complete hoax (in the case of the California Prius incident):
http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/12/toyota-autos-hoax-media-opinions-contributors-michael-fumento.html
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/fox-is-sikes-a-balloon-boy/
I kind of believe that the overwhelming media reports affected some, if not most, of those drivers.
People might mis-press the pedals all the time. Normally, you realize that you mis-pressed and switch to the correct pedal.
With all the media hysteria and terror stories (911 recording anyone?), they panicked and immediately assumed it was the car, not themselves, so they stopped thinking/trying and gave up.
Why were there so many reports in the very short period of time when the media was focusing on this issue? Why are we not hearing this anymore?
This is a personal observation only but I am a reasonably tall person at 6 feet 2 inches and I normally drive a SUV (Jeep Grand Cherokee) but on occaisions where I rent a vehicle I often get a Toyota Corolla. Several times in these rental vehicles I have found that A. The distance between Steering Wheel and pedals is too small, My knee hits the wheel when I am moving my foot from gas pedal to brake and B. The pedals themselves I find too close together. One time this resulted in my climbing the curb while driving in to a parking spot. This is not only a problem with Toyota Corollas but many 'Compact' and 'Mid size' sedans as defined by the rental companies so I always specify a Full Size.
According to a newspaper article I read several months ago, sudden acceleration never happens with standard shift cars.
That thought the title was referring to device drivers (ie: firmware) as opposed to the person driving the vehicle? That kind of mis-interpretation pretty much reverses who's to blame.
Let's spend all this energy on better driver training and stricter licensing practices. That would surely save many more lives and reduce property damage more than whatever b.s. fixes have been made to Toyota acceleration systems. Drivers like this should be kept off the road for the safety of themselves and the public - and many more drivers who get into all sorts of similar accidents or nearly do every day could benefit from much better training.
I'm not as harsh as some around here who want to simply kill all stupid people - the way things are now lots of people really seriously depend on driving and so too many ill prepared teenagers, distracted soccer moms and near-sighted old people are on the road. But we can improve driver training - make it much more thorough, include more hours of practice. Most of all - at least when I was trained - there was almost NO focus on the technical aspects of controlling a vehicle. You don't need upper-division mechanics classes to learn good practice and intuition - how to brake early before a turn, how too much gas in a corner will cause your civic to understeer etc. Give people a chance to actually practice braking at the limits of traction. And yes, raise the standards for passing a driving test and maintaining a license.
Cars are serious and like many many useful pieces of technology, potentially deadly. It seems to me Toyota has unfairly been allocated too much blame over this thing - but of course it is still an opportunity to learn and improve the design of the vehicle. That being said - I think they've been criticized beyond reason and all of it is cheap political pot-shotting to make lawmakers look good. If they cared about people's well being they would pursue a course more similar to what I described above.
They better not make the same mistake Audi did when they proclaimed the otherwise utterly obvious conclusion that Americans are bad drivers. It took Audi how long to recover from that? Something like 10-20 years?
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." - Bertrand Russell.
Uh, no. Not driver error. Try again, Toyota.
My father-in-law had this problem happen to him in his Rav4 three times and told me about it months before the news or Toyota ever mentioned anything about it. Then they came out with the shim under the pedal, but this was really irrelevant to the problem he was having.
He describes it as he is sitting at a stop sign and the engine suddenly revs violently on its own and if you don't have your brakes on at the moment (which he did happen to have on) you could cause a serious crash by lurching out into the street into traffic. Said he didn't even have his foot on the pedal all three times.
Personally, I think they'll find it's a sensor error caused by something simple like moisture condensate, or that -1 on an mis-calibrated pedal is interpreted as "open throttle."
Sorry, I just don't buy it. And I won't be buying a Toyota any time soon, either. And I think their handling of this problem is deplorable.
"They said I probly shouldn't fly with just one eye," "I am Bender. Please insert girder."
I know several people who had cars in which the accelerator cable would stick with the throttle open when it got cold. Mechanical systems fail all the time.
Toyota is starting to take pages outta apples play book, blame the end users for their the company screw up's
Do Americans have bigger feet?
ok, so here's the question. Does the proportion of people who hit the accelerator instead of the brake differ by country/age/make/model?
Deleted
No.
My father-in-law had this problem happen to him in his Rav4 three times and told me about it months before the news or Toyota ever mentioned anything about it. Then they came out with the shim under the pedal, but this was really irrelevant to the problem he was having.
He describes it as he is sitting at a stop sign and the engine suddenly revs violently on its own and if you don't have your brakes on at the moment (which he did happen to have on) you could cause a serious crash by lurching out into the street into traffic. Said he didn't even have his foot on the pedal all three times.
Sorry, I just don't buy it. I believe my father-in-law more than Toyota or C/D. And I won't be buying a Toyota any time soon, either. And I think their handling of this problem has been deplorable.
"They said I probly shouldn't fly with just one eye," "I am Bender. Please insert girder."
From: sjobs@toyota.com
Subject: RE: Accelerator Problems
Just avoid pressing it that way.
- Sent from my iPhone
The 2009 Lexus ES 350 that California Highway Patrol Officer Mark Saylor was driving was a "loaner" vehicle given to him temporarily while his car was being repaired.
It has a "starter button" instead of an ignition key, and requires that the bnutton be depressed for 3 or more seconds if the car is in gear, or it may not function to turn the car off at all over certain velocities.
The shifter has a strange configuration which allows it to "emulate" a manual transmission while it is really an automatic transmission. The "N" position is also used to shift up a gear.
You can almost make it out in this photo at http://www.motortrend.com/roadtests/sedans/112_1004_2010_buick_lacrosse_2010_lexus_es_350_comparison/photo_22.html .
Article about why the starter button and transmission human interface may have been factors in the officer not being able to get the car out of gear:
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/starter-button-a-factor-in-runaway-lexus-es350/
Article about the crash :
http://www.sandiego6.com/mostpopular/story/Santee-CHP-officer-Saylor-killed-Lexus-accelerator/AzYjOhtvFE2mIuxTtxrK4Q.cspx
Slashdot posters confuse 'break' with 'brake'.
Is this related ?
I'm not a coward by any name.
The real root cause here is suspicion of all the inscrutable computers in the world. Car with electronic controls crashes - gee its probably a problem with the electronics. Analysis of the black box shows otherwise - gee, its probably a problem with the black box too!
No, and no. Deal with it.
Check out my new Toyota keyboaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Any kind of unexpected input has the potential to cause unexpected outputs. The whole Y2k thing is a prime example. The issue was there all along, but didn't manifest itself until years with final two digits > 99 started showing up in various data fields. And that was a fairly obvious problem. Cars have a fairly large number of sensors and input devices - it would be all but impossible to find and check every possible case through either analysis or testing.
Yeah, in this case, the problem was probably driver error. But the GP's claim is still incorrect.
If there was any kind of safety engineering applied to this at all, this wouldn't be possible. Processing involving IS_BRAKE_ON would be flagged as "safety critical", and it's standard practice not to allow such values to be represented by single-bit numbers. In fact, best practice is to not allow the true/false states to be the inverse of each other: so you shouldn't have TRUE represented by 1111 and FALSE represented by 0000, for example. Yes, IAASE (I am a safety engineer).
This STILL boggles my mind...
Cops (supposedly) have all this high-speed driving training as part of their basic training, and yet, this retard has to call 911 when a floor mat gets on top of his gas pedal? Is this asshole still a cop who is allowed to drive, or has he been turned into a meter maid?
I thought the recall on floor mats was just hilarious! I mean, who doesn't notice something like that? Take 3 seconds, Look at the pedals. You'll probably see why the accelerator pedal isn't returning. When you see it, yank that floor mat outta there.
My guess is that you'd have at least as high a chance of having a stuck accelerator due to a stuck throttle cable is you would as a result of computer error. In fact, I'm betting that the purely mechanical system would be significantly more likely to have this problem.
So, your car is the mirror universe equivalent of KITT?
That the car will LET YOU shift the car into neutral. Some modern cars ( like the drive by wire ones) don't actually have a physical connection between the gear selector lever and the auto-box. The TCU determines what and when the gear shifter works. This combined with the "push button" start systems ( that prevent you from accidentally shutting off or re-starting the car) where the ECU controls the engine 100% makes a safety situation not the best time to have to read the owners manual about HOW to shutdown the friggen car. How many folks KNOW what the shutoff procedure for their push to start , drive by wire cars is?
It's not the first time firmware and system requirements ( ala Airbus with touch-and-go's see Paris airshow ) haven't exactly captured ALL the real world scenarios. I suspect E-STOP and other corner case stopping scenarios were not a high priority on Toyota's system engineering test lists.
Drivers are apparently holding the steering wheel the wrong way.
I have experienced a stuck accelerator on two differfent cars. Both were caused by mechanicmechanical problems. On my old Ford Probe i just needed a bit of lubrication on the throttle body. On another vehicle it was due to the carberator sometimes sticking wide open. I think drive by wire might be more reliable since there's less chance of mechanical failure. I currently drive a Toyota.
The drivers were pressing it wrong.
I'm much more funny, interesting and insightful than the moderators think
Let's see... Mechanical linkage brake failure, but magically works right after accident. Brake lights fail, but work fine after accident. Driver reports pushing hard on "brake", yet ECU reports throttle at full open. It is demonstrable that at highway speeds full throttle and full brake at the same time will slow and eventually stop the vehicle.
Yep, sounds like manufacturing problem...
Take a bunch of chickens, choose one, and put a red dot of paint on it. All the other chickens believing it to be an injury, will peck it to death. Do you REALLY think the media is not exactly the same? Do a little Google search for Britney Spears...
The other manufacturers have similar issues. Toyota has the red dot.
Yet the ECU appears fine after the "incident."
Why would you ever be stopped in traffic without having your foot on the brake pedal in a car with an automatic transmission?
True, but they generally fail in more predictable ways. Also, on average they fail less often.
Every time I go to my mechanic's garage I become more convinced of this -- invariably he's got a dozen bays full of newish cars with some hard-to-pin-down computer fault, and one or none with some mechanical fault (usually plain old age, easy to diagnose). He's said the same to me himself -- computerization may be in some ways more efficient, but it's far less day-to-day reliable than the old mechanical systems, and breaks more often in less-predictable ways.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
"Also, on average they fail less often."
You'll have to provide a citation for that one. Your observation of your mechanic's shop is likely due to there being more computerized cars on the road than fully mechanical ones. His own complaint may be due to the difficultly of tracking down faults in computerized systems, not due to their rate of occurrence.
Anyway, I countered the original poster's anecdote with one of my own. I have seen several cars with fully mechanical accelerators suffer from non-driver error unintended acceleration but I have never witnessed such a thing with an electronically controlled throttle.
An contact-range RFID in your shoe needs to digitally sign a timestamp from the accelerator. So if you take your foot off the accelerator, the digital signature is no longer present. The accelerator shall log all digitally signed timestamps from your shoe to aid in investigation.
I don't know that I could come up with a cite, but look around -- there are millions of fairly ancient mechanical systems still in use, while electronic systems, even meant to do the same work and under the same load, just don't last as long. One that springs to mind are typewriters. Mechanical units (including old-fashioned electrics) lasted decades. Electronic units... I've yet to see one with over 5 years of regular use before it went tits-up. And if you get outside of major metro areas, take a gander at how common older vehicles, wholly mechanical, really are -- generally working harder than their modern city cousins, too.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Yup, people have been reporting this problem for years.
They even report it when in a simulator with a video camera watching their foot position.
They will stand there, while you show them footage of them pressing the throttle, and insist that they didn't do it. The video footage is wrong, they say, it must be, I don't remember that.
Our memories are _terrible_ they aren't created by storing what actually happened as it happened, but instead there's a consolidation phase, in which we "interpret" what happened. Our mistakes will often conveniently be erased because who wants to be the guy who makes all the errors?
Your typewriter isn't going to work very well unless you maintain it (oil, tighten screws, etc.). Same for electronic systems.
In general a well designed electronic system with fewer moving parts will work more reliably and longer than the corresponding mechanical system.
The mistake you're making is in comparing a well maintained mechanical system with an unmaintained electronic system. In most of your comparisons you're also comparing a given mechanical system with an electronic system that has vastly different capabilities as well.
You must be pretty young if you've never seen an electronic system last longer than five years. My father has a garage full of computers that have been sitting around for twenty years yet most would probably work fine if he plugged them in. A mechanical typewriter sitting in a garage for twenty years would not work without some maintenance.
I grew up in a rural area. Cars are a poor example since the mechanical parts of older cars that are comparable to new cars are likely mechanical on the new cars as well. One example I can think of is the ignition system. I had a car with a distributor. Besides replacing the spark plugs frequently you also had to replace the spark plug wires and whole distributor when it wore out, and it did, because a distributor has a little rotor and brush in it. My current car doesn't have a distributor, nor spark plug wires to wear out. The ignition coils might wear out some day, but nowhere near as often as the distributor, and they're a mechanical system anyway. The ignition control computer (the actual electronic component that replaced the distributor) will last a very long time.
Oh, and that car with the distributor would frequently refuse to start when it was wet. The need to route high voltage from central coils to each spark plug can be a problem in wet conditions. Since the electronic timing system lets you put a coil right on top of each individual spark plug, that problem is pretty much eliminated.
I never argued that the accelerators were not malfunctioning. Simply that when people say that they hit the brakes during unintended acceleration and nothing happened, might not be entirely truthful, or didn't realize they were hitting the wrong pedal (not lying, because they believe what they are saying to be the truth.
What you are saying, is that the engine revved unexpectedly without driver input, yet applying the brakes prevented the car from moving forward, thus avoiding an accident. Unless that's not what you are saying, I think we are in agreement. Applying the brakes will effectively counter unexpected acceleration. Many of the other posters are trying to say that a software defect also affected the functioning of the brakes and the brake lights. Both the article I linked to and your father in-law's experience are contrary to those claims.
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
... ever made. No toyota 2010 car has ever made a operational mistake or distorted highway information. They are, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error.
says they have experienced the sudden acceleration, I won't believe it.
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1248177/Toyota-recall-Last-words-father-family-died-Lexus-crash.html
If a state trooper never hits the brakes after several minutes and talking to 911 on the phone and then dying with all his family members in the car -- I don't know what universe we live in.
Sounds like a stupid report.
true, however the runaway throttle will override the brakes. The part where the brakes also impact the accelerator is electronic. If that failed, then you could press the accelerate and then the brakes and still accelerate.
Says someone who knows fuck all about electronics.
They're on separate circuits, separate I/O (it would actually be pretty difficult with no benefit to put them on the same I/O - I/O is plentiful), and operate in different functions within the software. In order for the brake to be overridden by the throttle there would have to be either a loop in the throttle function (which would show up a hell of a lot more than 7 times out of 100,000), or some obscure condition exists where the brake function actually sends its output to the wrong I/O, which is patently absurd. A brake function just isn't going to be complicated enough to allow for that kind of mistake - since the brake is controlled by the ABS, the ECU only has to send a very simple signal to the ABS to initiate the braking mechanism.
Add to that the brake function is almost certainly on an interrupt circuit, which causes the controller to pause whatever it is doing and run the brake function as soon as the brake pedal is pressed.
The only reason the signal from the brake to the interrupt would not go through is if the switch (actually almost certainly a potentiometer of some sort) at the brake was bad, and that hasn't been the case at all.
Just because it's electronic doesn't mean it is more likely to fail than a mechanical device. In fact, because there is less wear, they tend to be a lot less likely to fail than mechanical linkages - if you've got sound logic and a properly designed circuit, there isn't much to go wrong.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Actually, I'm 55 and I drive a 32 year old truck that's probably had less maintenance over its lifetime than anything modern gets... and has needed less, too.
But you point out something I'd like to emphasize: mechanicals *can* be maintained, and will usually continue to at least halfway work when worn or damaged. Electronics pretty much cannot -- you're stuck with whatever you started with, in a state that's either "alive" or "dead" or more rarely "malfunctioning unpredictably". Open analog system vs closed digital system, to put it into geek context.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
In that case you're either engaging in extreme hyperbole or have a seriously biased worldview - lots of electronic systems function perfectly reliably for much longer than five years.
I believe this falls into the "no shit Sherlock" category.
Self awareness - try it!
I thought they determined that the pedal was more than likely mechanically sticking and the datalogger was getting the reading from the same(only one) throttle pos. sensor???
FragHARD or don't frag at all
Sure, some do. But look around at consumer electronics (and what's onboard a car is just another form of that). The average lifespan has been dropping steadily for a broad swath of products. And what are the longer-lived ones? those with more mechanical parts, like a fridge or washing machine, or just about any part of a car that doesn't depend on electronics.
Interestingly, when a modern washer dies, it's usually the electronics, not the mechanicals. (I was specifically warned off 'em cuz of that, by my appliance repair dude, who seems to really know his stuff.)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Still I don't like Toyota cars.
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
Yes, but additionally, I can completely understand how even the braking system could be affected by the same or similar problem.
It's been said that the brakes can override the acceleration, but think about a system that is controlled by the computer.
It's also been said that the braking system isn't controlled by the computer.
But what about anti-lock brakes? What about when you put the hazard lights on? (flashes same tail lights) Or when the alarm goes off? (flashes tail lights)
I don't think brakes are completely isolated and manual as thought. But I'm no expert and I could be wrong. I just can open my mind to the possibility.
"They said I probly shouldn't fly with just one eye," "I am Bender. Please insert girder."
The two padel problematic is known in the computer industry as the two mouse button problem. "Any common user tends to press the wrong button any now an then thats why Apple invented the single button mouse." said Steve Jobs and Apple CEO. The similarity to cars is quite obvious therefor apple is now introducing the iCar with one food pedal. The pedal fills the whole foot space on the driver side and is used to accelerate and decelerate.
Further more the iCar does not have a steering wheel as this could lead to additional problems. The new Apple solution is a pad field where you can drag an direction bar to the left or right for that purpose. In addition the whole system works with iAd, App Store and iTunes so you can hear your music on the road and add new functionality to your car. As planned for next year a combination of iNavi and the front and back side cameras allow you to just click on a registered location and the car moves you there without any complicated handling.
For your safety you can buy iNsurance from the Apple Care program.
Thanks to location based driving unholy and questionable locations can no longer being reached by point and click as they are not allowed to be in the Location Store. As an add-on you can use 10 user defined locations for your friends and family. While this looks very limiting, it is not. Companies which want you as customer can place free locations in iNavi for their customers.
As jobs state, this will be a great step forward for all customers of Apple products as iCar is the most integrated Apple product ever. And it has a fancy design with aluminum highlights and a dark glass finish.
"I pushed the gas pedal to pass a car and it did something kind of funny," Sikes told reporters. "It jumped and it just stuck there. As it was going, I was trying the brakes ... It wasn't stopping."
California Highway Patrol spokesman Brian Pennings said police have no reason to doubt Sikes' account, based on officers' own observations and evidence of heavy brake use.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
I'm sure every case had someone drive full throttle into something just out of a lack of coordination. Even the one in California documented on the 911 call...
This happened to my ex with her 2000 Toyota Celica.
In her driving experience since 1989, she did a lot of fast driving (120 mph and up), and developed the reflexes needed for such.
QED: she would not have been a victim of this due to "driver error". She says her accelerator raced and her brakes failed. This had been confirmed by the garage that repaired the vehicle.
Also, it happened to her in *2004*, long before the problem was in the media.
I have said my peace.
Given that anecdotal evidence is not proof of causality, take the following with the appropriate buckets of salt:
I tested my own Prius by flooring both brake and accelerator pedals. The engine revved slightly from idol and the car didn't move. At all.
I then got on the freeway, floored the accelerator and gradually applied the brake (that pileup on I-9 was NOT me!), the car obeyed the brake and slowed down.
Here's the rub: the accelerator is nothing more than an input to the computer. The brake is not -- it is directly connected. You can prove this to yourself by disconnecting the battery (the 12v, not the hybrid pack), and having a friend mash on the accelerator while you examine the engine compartment. You will see/hear nothing moving. Do the same with brake and you will hear the master cylinder.
Yeah, right.
When I worked on recording rotation of a shaft or displacement of a piston, we used gray code interface devices. One feature of the gray code versus binary code, is that for any positional move to an adjacent one, only one bit changes. Logic in the form for gray to binary code is frequently done in groups of 4 bits or to base 10, (so we can get 16 distinct adjacent positions with only one bit difference between any two. The way it works is that when one digit (hex or decimal) reaches it's max value, the next decade changes and the code now starts to count down. As long as ALL bits are being correctly detected, gray-coding is flawless. But if there is a wiring connector problem, or if there is dirt between the detector and the transmitter, and a high order bit changes, the result can be a registering of a very large value, when the actual shaft position is around zero, the home position. The error can be random, and in a car, could be introduced due to static, due to high humidity, or just a read-failure. What is required, is duplicate encoders via separate datapaths. If one encoder shows low value, while the other shows high, it's time to record the problem and run to the repair shop. Naturally, all testing will only show that lab vehicles have clean connections, and that is a shortcoming in testing. The tests should examine what happens if the encoder is in a fixed position near zero, and one removes one signal at a time. My view, dual sensors with separate datapaths will be and must be required for the critical areas of accelerator and brake pedal position detection. Sorry to be pedantic. Just my rambling on about experience that I had 50 years ago, with gray-encoders.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Says someone who knows fuck all about cars.
Brakes are mechanical. A computer doesn't decide whether to operate the brakes or not. The ABS doesn't 'control' the brakes. It steps in in the event of a locked-up wheel. There is no way a car that will lose *all* braking from an electronic fault will be certified roadworthy. The ABS might fail, yes. But the worst that will happen is that you'll skid as you slow down, or the ABS will stick on, and you'll always stop really quickly.
Other than hydraulic failure, a snapped-off brake pedal or a broken linkage, there is no way a car will have no brakes.