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Toyota Sudden Acceleration Is Driver Error

Posted by kdawson on from the fed-findings-fault-fat-feet dept.

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.

29 of 930 comments (clear)

  1. This assumes... by Gordonjcp · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... 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?

    1. Re:This assumes... by IflyRC · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I would think that verifying the validity of the data would be one of the first things they would do in a study such as this. This question would most likely be proposed in any aircraft crash situation as well when the black box is checked. If this study is right - it sounds almost like a bandwagon effect where everyone was trying to get out of higher insurance premiums, out of fault from an accident they potentially caused, etc. It's a lot easier to say "It wasn't me, it was my Toyota!" than "My bad, it was my fault. I'll take responsibility for pulling out in front of you."

    2. Re:This assumes... by MoeDumb · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well, you can say that about anything. It's correct until proven otherwise.

      --
      Mod Me Up. You'll make a grown man cry.
    3. Re:This assumes... by Jhon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The answer can be even more subtle. If this study is correct, then either there are a bunch of stupid Toyota drivers *OR* there is a problem with the PLACEMENT and/or SHAPE of the accelorator and break peddles. I'm leaning towards the latter.

    4. Re:This assumes... by vlm · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If this study is right - it sounds almost like a bandwagon effect

      Exactly. The Fine Article fails to raise that point, yet tantalizingly provides a graph of the number of reported complaints which follows a short term fad trajectory. Logically, if there were a bad batch of parts out there, the graph of the cars manufacture date vs complaints would look like that graph. Or if it were a bad design, the graph would resemble the very long term model year production graphs not a short term PR graph.

      The only common feature of the problem seems to be that people whom crashed their Toyota during certain months were very likely to blame the car. Basically just a witch hunt. I feel confident driving my wife's Toyota.

      --
      "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
    5. Re:This assumes... by maxume · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If 1 in 100,000 people cannot properly operate a device, it might be fair to conclude that the problem is with the people.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    6. Re:This assumes... by socrplayr813 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Given how many times things like this have happened, you're probably right. However, we also know the first part is true. There are some truly stupid people, as well as other people that just plain shouldn't be driving for various reasons. I'd like to see/hear/read some better evidence one way or the other.

      I do similar types of investigations for my job and almost everything I've seen so far (from both camps) is circumstantial and/or loaded with assumptions. Surely there must be SOME relationship between the cars this has happened with. If there is, we have our first step to recreating the problem in a controlled environment. Until we can do that...

      Actually, have any of these types of accidents happened in the rest of the world? I don't recall hearing/reading about them.

      --
      The confidence of ignorance will always overcome the indecision of knowledge.
    7. Re:This assumes... by Another,+completely · · Score: 5, Insightful

      But if the failure rate is lower on similar devices from other manufacturers, then it could have been designed better.

      Either there are so many Toyotas out there that they are showing up a general problem with people (all the other manufacturers sell so few cars that their uncontrolled acceleration problems don't count as a trend), or a disproportionate number of bad drivers buy Toyotas (the failure rates for different populations do not offer a fair comparison), or there is a problem with the car.

      It's also possible that the failure rate on other vehicles is the same, but that fact just hasn't been noticed by the media. I would have expected Toyota to point that one out by now, if it were the case.

    8. Re:This assumes... by Maury+Markowitz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      > Surely there must be SOME relationship between the cars this has happened with

      Why would you possibly suggest that?

      This happens all the time. There's a news story, and then suddenly everyone's complaining about the same thing. It doesn't make a difference if it's actually _true_.

      Its called "mass hysteria", although the term should be changed to be less loaded. But the effect is real, has been measured for hundreds of years, and effects practically all human endeavor equally.

      Maury

    9. Re:This assumes... by Captain+Hook · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There is another issue to be considered as well, if some of these accidents happened after the publicity started, then its possible some of the accidents are attempts at fraud and the driver has deliberately rammed someone/thing

      --
      These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
    10. Re:This assumes... by Stewie241 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's also possible that we're hearing about it with Toyota's because of the initial media report. This could have led to many people who got into accidents in their Toyota's to go public with a report to try and shift the blame off of themselves and onto the car. Also, the media, knowing there is a hot Toyota story, was actively looking for these sorts of incidents and could have imposed a bias.

      Meanwhile, the same things could have been happening in other cars (again, driver error) at the same rate but nobody really reported them because there wasn't already a story to piggyback on.

    11. Re:This assumes... by Maury+Markowitz · · Score: 3, Insightful

      > And the officer in the cop car side-to-side of the runaway car (in some instances) also failed
      > to notice that the stupid driver was mashing the accelerator instead of the brake.

      Umm, unless the cop had x-ray vision, how could you expect him to know one way or the other?

      The story in question is a hoax. Duh. I mean, it's _obviously_ a hoax.

      He said the gas peddle stuck, that he was standing on the brakes, and that he finally stopped it by using the parking brake. Ok, let's consider this...

      1) brakes are always stronger than the engine. There is no car in the world that will not stop when braked, even if the accelerator is held full down. It's a basic safety requirement. The Prius has an _additional_ system that cuts power when the brakes are held down.

      2) the emergency brake operates through a limited strength wire that pulls only the rear brakes (typically) and has far less braking power than the brake peddle.

      3) every car on the planet will mechanically cut all power to the drive wheels by shifting into neutral.

      So, in order for his story to be true, the gas peddle had to fail in a very peculiar way, the brake peddle had to fail in a very peculiar way, and the parking brake had to gain an order of magnitude in strength, all at the same time.

      Then, all of those problems had to mysteriously disappear when various engineers tested the vehicle over the next two days.

      Or he was pressing the gas peddle.

      Occam's razor.

      Maury

    12. Re:This assumes... by Attila+Dimedici · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Actually, the very first article I saw that suggested the "driver error" explanation gave a demographic of the drivers involved in these cases. The author of that article had done a similar investigation for a different car company (I forget now if he was hired by the car company--Audi, I beleive--or if he was hired by an outside agency) that had had reports of a similar problem except with cars using mechanical throttles and brakes rather than computer controlled. He discovered that the demographics of those with the problem with the Toyotas was the same as in the previous case, overwhelmingly people in their 60s and/or teens. The other thing he discovered about the Toyota cases is that the overwhelming majority happened when the car was starting out from a complete stop (parked, traffic light) which was also the same as in the previous case he had studied.
      Basically, in the previous case that involved mechanical linkages they were able to determine that there were no possible mechanical expalnations for the sudden acceleration when the driver stepped on the brake. He was able to find medical explanations that would acount for otherwise experienced safe drivers suddenly starting to hit the accelerator when they meant to hit the brakes, this accounted for a large number of the cases, most of the other cases involved young, inexperienced drivers or drivers who were driving the vehicle for the first time,

      --
      The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
    13. Re:This assumes... by Shakrai · · Score: 4, Insightful

      there's at least a chance that you'll be able to defend yourself against such Islamic pedo fucktards who would try and silence you with violence.

      Thank god for the 2nd amendment....

      --
      I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
      We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
    14. Re:This assumes... by AndersOSU · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If you design a device that is not properly operated by 1 in 100,000 people leading to severe injury or death, AND YOUR COMPETITORS HAVE NO SUCH PROBLEM, your users may be stupid, but it's still a design flaw.

      It may be that all things are equal, and the Toyota hysteria caused over reporting of problems with their cars and under reporting of problems on other makes, or it could be like the Audi 5000 - the consequences of a design decision weren't fully appreciated. (In that case, an engineer thought, "who doesn't want to be able to heel-toe?" The answer turns out to be senior citizens who buy full sized German sedans with automatic transitions.)

    15. Re:This assumes... by Kreigaffe · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And during the course of dialing 911 and explaining his problem nobody in the car ever thought to shift the car into neutral.

      That tends to solve uncontrolled acceleration problems easily and quickly.

      And, yes, I would be inclined to believe that someone who couldn't think of that may indeed have a problem telling the difference between the brake and gas pedals.

      --
      ... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about. :|
    16. Re:This assumes... by ultranova · · Score: 3, Insightful

      ... 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?

      You can't, obviously. However, since the logs agree with ECU, it's likely that the problem is in the throttle sensor, the throttle itself (maybe it stucks to bottom), or the placement of throttle (so the driver accidentally pushes it down without meaning to).

      In other words, the ECU works just fine, but the controls send it bogus data - namely, they send "pedal to the metal" when the driver didn't intend this.

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

    17. Re:This assumes... by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And my point isn't that a failure rate of 1 in 100,000 is obviously low enough to indicate a reasonable design, just that it may be low enough to indicate a reasonable design that is occasionally overcome by a user.

      Tell me, swami, would 1 in 50,000 be low enough? Would 1 in 10,000? How about 1 in 1000. I mean if only 1 in 1000 fails, it would seem to be a reasonable design.

      Nosiree, it's not that 1 in 100,000 failed and caused an accident, it's that there were 3000 reports of sudden acceleration. When that many people, even out of 10,000,000 vehicles have this dangerous situation, a manufacturer has a design problem on his hands.

      It's like saying, "Out of all the oil drilling in the Gulf, there was only this one major accident this year, therefore, deep-water drilling is perfectly safe, and you can't expect BP to have any liability. After all, it was a fault in the design of the floor of the Gulf of Mexico that really caused the problem."

      This news report is part of Toyota's public relations efforts in advance of dealing with the class action lawsuits. There's going to be more to the story.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    18. Re:This assumes... by AxemRed · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I agree.

      I have a 2009 Toyota Corolla. They have done two recall fixes. The first was the little metal piece that they inserted into the accelerator. Even after that fix was in place, there were still many reports of unintended acceleration, and the crisis was still escalating in the media. The second fix came later and was a software update that will stop the engine if the brakes and gas are fully pressed simultaneously (or at least, that's how it was described to me.) That second fix wasn't pushed out until reports of the problem were subsiding anyway, and it still didn't address any sort of cause.

      Despite the fact that no "real" fix was ever released, reports of unintended acceleration subsided. Problems like this don't fix themselves unless there was really no problem to begin with.

    19. Re:This assumes... by delinear · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It seems to me this should only be an issue if we didn't have anything to compare it to. In fact there are other car manufacturers, there are even other models manufactured by Toyota. If those cars don't suffer from similar claims (assuming the same percentage of stupid people buy them and there wasn't an unusually large number of new, stupid drives that immediately bought a Toyota) then it would be clearly evident that there is a design fault, even if the fault turns out to be user interface rather than engineering. I still smell a rat, of all the added complexity of motor vehicles over the last half a century, unless there is something radically different about the pedal configuration in this car, I would have thought a slight positional change would be the easiest thing for a driver to adjust to. If the failure rates are in line with other cars, it's clearly a user issue, if they're higher here, the issue is the car. I would think the fix would be as simple as keeping the pedal positions consitant with what they've tried and tested elsewhere.

  2. Not conclusive by OWJones · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. Re:I am not surprised.... by somersault · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Or maybe it shows that they were taking the customers' complaints seriously before realising the obvious truth. This has happened to me before when I start trying to diagnose IT support issues based on what a user is saying, I expect something horrific has happened, but then when I actually go to their desk and ask them to demonstrate the problem then realise that they've just been using the wrong terminology or simply are idiots.

    One user was complaining of a "blue screen of death!" on his computer and it just turned out that he hadn't turned his main monitor on, and the plain blue windows desktop was showing on his laptop's screen, which he assumed was the fabled BSOD.

    --
    which is totally what she said
  4. What Else did the Data Recorders Show? by Maclir · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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).

  5. Almost Always User Error by gotpaint32 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:Almost Always User Error by ctetc007 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      It was really funny to read that comment especially after I just finished reading this article on the misinformed believing lies over the truth.

  6. Bandwagon effect by Joce640k · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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...
    1. Re:Bandwagon effect by pnewhook · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Notice that all the problems happened at around the same time. It's not a constant failure rate.

      It's entirely possible that a couple of drivers did have a stuck throttle due to a floor mat or other issue. This made the news. Then a bunch of other people thought that this would be a great way to make money on a class action lawsuit by faking the same problem. It doesn't have to be a defect or bad drivers, just a bandwagon effect of people trying to scam money in tough times.

      --
      Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
  7. GIGO by wcrowe · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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
  8. Toyota cars seem to hate the elderly... by Nikkos · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.