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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.

4 of 930 comments (clear)

  1. If they crashed, it's user error anyhow. by RedK · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    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
  2. Re:This assumes... by Aqualung812 · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    To date, 100% of the time it's driver error.

    So, the state cop that died with his family in California couldn't tell the difference between a break and gas pedal over the course of the time it took to call 911? Bullshit. I've also been in a late 90's Grand Cherokee that was at a complete stop, watched it suddenly accellerate forward and had the throttle wide open while the driver held both feet on the break. I knew it was the break, because we didn't move any farther forward once he put both feet on it, but it did take 15 seconds until the engine went back down.

    --
    Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
  3. Re:This assumes... by Vectormatic · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    saying dumb people should be removed from the gene-pool is perfectly compatible with demonstrating yourself (knowingly) to be dumb, one can certainly believe the world would be better off without one-self.

    anyway, a 1 in 100.000 error rate, combined with some of those being documented false-positives to me means driver error, coupled with some opportunism, the most that should be done about this is educating drivers on how to handle this (hard braking, selecting neutral etc..), as these kind of failures can happen to loads of cars anyway

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    People, what a bunch of bastards
  4. Re:This assumes... by 2obvious4u · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Also, does anyone remember the timing on this? All this news happened when Toyota was passing GM as the largest car company in the world. Oh and there were these things called bail outs happening at the time AND the government just bought something like 60% of GM's stock. The entire thing seemed dirty to me right from the start. Some conspiracy theories are just too easy to come up with.