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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?
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)
Or they are doing a Google: Users made a "mistake".
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
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.
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?
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 putting it in neutral make the brake work too? I didn't think it worked that way.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
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."
mod this one up.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
...Which may or may not work if the acceleration is in fact caused by a very faulty ECU, which also happens to be controlling your automatic transmission.
Driver error... Great! So all Toyota needs to do is issue new drivers.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
The problem with that is now there are cars out there where the shift lever has no physical connection to the drive train and instead just tells the computer to put the car into whatever gear you selected w/ the lever.
"Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live." - Mark Twain, "Taming the Bicycle"
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
Conspiracy theories aside (is your tinfoil hat on too tight?) I think you can attribute the government response to the issue as a ploy to prop up GM in tough times, but to say the government/GM/illuminati/bilderbergs/aliens/freemasons concocted the entire fiasco is a bit of a stretch... even for the level-headed *ahem* folks who frequent slashdot. :)
:)
Mainly I feel the conspiracy isn't all that profoundly deep in this because that this is the government we're talking about after all... what other bunch of bumbling idiots like the government do you know have the gray matter to pull this sort of thing off? The government is evil in many ways... but in many ways its just a fat retard who eats paste... In other words, we're giving these mouth-breathers WAY too much credit.
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
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
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?
Why would it need to ? Once the car is in neutral, it will slowly deccelerate instead of accelerating. You are then stress free from a stuck accelerator and can proceed to do whatever to safely stop the car on the side of the road.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
And that solves the stuck accelerator problem how?
By destroying your engine, that’s how. An engine with a blown head won’t keep going.
What if your car has a computer that is programmed to not shift the car into neutral at full-throttle no matter what the moronic driver tries to tell it?
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
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).
While your tone indicates you are trolling, I found it interesting that in the case where a driver called 911 while he had a stuck accelerator, the 911 operator immediately asked him if he tried turning the engine off. While driving with the engine off is not great (you lose steering), it is better than accelerating, so I thought that was some clear thinking by the operator.
In any case, don't these cars have hand brakes or park brakes to try?
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
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
And where is the documentation that says there is an issue with Toyotas that fail to drop into neutral when the shift lever is put in that position ? We can make up problems all day, but the fact is, putting the car in neutral is the proper course of action.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
No car computer is programmed to not shift into neutral with full throttle or any throttle position, that would be a huge safety hazard. And by your post, I get the feeling you care more about your car's warrantied engine than your safety and that of your passengers...
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Cause, I don't know, there might be something in the next 500 yards before the car stops, like a traffic light, a sharp turn, a pedestrian, another vehicle merging in your lane, etc etc etc. Have you never needed to stop suddenly, or do you always just let your car gradually drift to a stop?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Assuming the brakes work at all, they will continue work in neutral.
Fear trumps hope and ignorance trumps both
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
That's awesome if it's front wheel drive and pitches a rod sideways into the cabin, killing you. Not so awesome if it's rear wheel drive and pitches it sideways, killing some other guy. Mashed throttle in neutral == bad.
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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.
concocted the entire fiasco is a bit of a stretch...
Your words, not mine.
However I was impressed with how newsworthy the story was, especially considering the number of cases involved - what was it: 3? 7? In the single digits, anyway. Yep, less than a dozen cases got almost a good month worth of constant Toyota stories. Whereas the latest GM recall of 1.5 million vehicles because their cars were catching fire (5 cars) after another major recall (1.3 million cars) after at least 14 crashes due to defective power steering gets barely a mention in the news.
Truth is, recalls happen all the time, to all manufacturers. There's no conspiracy. Except that the news media were especially happy to engage in Toyota bashing in an apparently "buy American" subliminal campaign (as if Toyota wasn't an American company nowadays). Well that's ok, the truth will always come out in the end. And I am still never buying an American car again.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
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 makes all sense now! With current technology, the only thing that can make a machine CRASH is a faulty DRIVER!
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
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.
That's the point. Drivers claimed that the accelerator stuck and the brake didn't work. So unless putting it in neutral magically made the brake work, this is only a partial solution at best.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
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.
But yeah. Probably not related to the runaway acceleration deal.
Incorrect. You turn off the engine by turning the key only one click away from "start". Do not remove the key or place it in the lock position, and don't press the key eject button (which exists on manuals). Putting the car in neutral in an automatic reduces your braking power, which you will obviously need. Turning off your engine leaves your braking power intact, but turns off power steering. In many cars, power steering is off at any reasonable speed, anyways, so you won't miss it (and if it was one, you still aren't going to miss it).
Of course, if you have a manual, you could just press in the clutch.
You only need to shift into neutral first if you have one of these craptastic push-to-start cars where the push button takes 3 seconds to turn the car off (what an idiotically terrible design).
One click away from start is ON. Normally it's ACC-LOCK-OFF-ON-START or LOCK-ACC-ON-START or similar, where START is a momentary contact. You're looking for OFF or ACC (depending).
With ATX power supplies I like that the OS can shut down the computer, but it irritates me that to force a shutdown you have to hold the button for what seems like forever. If I wanted to request a poweroff I would do it via the OS UI. If I'm pressing the button I want it off NOW. With this stupid feature now it cars, there really is a safety issue.
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.
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 get the impression that a lot of these situations are not long enough to run through options. They're usually described as "sudden acceleration", and in what looks like the majority of cases, while trying to park. If you're running down the highway and are having a loss of accelerator control, ok, options - brake, shift, ignition, ebrake, etc. But when you all of a sudden are zooming toward a parked car 6ft in front of you, it's just a matter of the right or wrong reaction. If your foot is on what you thought was the brake, and you tried to slow down and suddenly accelerate, there's a fair chance you will press harder on what you thought was the brake, there's just no time to stop and think about where your foot is, you have to take action immediately. That's almost certainly what's been happening here. That last gal in the article, the ramp cameras show her brake lights coming on AFTER the collision. That was a case of the driver realizing their foot was jamming on the wrong petal a second too late. (and she STILL doesn't admit to it, despite the camera evidence!)
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
No car computer is programmed to not shift into neutral with full throttle or any throttle position, that would be a huge safety hazard.
You sound quite certain of that.
I get the feeling you care more about your car's warrantied engine than your safety and that of your passengers...
If it’s one or the other, then obviously the car’s engine is less important. However, the FIRST thing you do when you have a stuck accelerator should not be shoot the engine and ask questions later...
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
So all Toyota needs to do is issue new drivers.
Not sure about issuing new ones - but certainly, recall the faulty ones, as they pose a clear safety threat.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
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.
1. Get in a car. Any car manufactured in the last 2 decades. Drive around for a bit to warm it up.
2. Park the car. Put transmission in neutral or park.
3. Floor the accelerator.
4. Tell me how your engine did not get destroyed.
See, this is a trivial experiment. Very trivial experiment, that everyone can perform. Yet you spread lies. Shame on you. Please stop.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
The problem, as stated many many times, the brakes don't work.
did you forget to take your meds?
How is disengaging gears supposed to damage your engine?
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.
I'm also fairly certain all car ECMs produced in the last 20 years have a rev limiter that would protect the engine until you can safely shut it off, making it a moot point.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
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
Rev limiter says you lie. I don't recommend keeping it at the rev limiter for hours, but the few seconds it requires to immobilize the car won't result in any damage. That's the problem with discussing cars with nerds, they don't know crap about they work.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
The gui of a prius is not logically to put in neutral.
The (automatic-electronic) shift lever looks like this
R .. B
|
N--X
| . . |
D
(r=reverse, N=neutral D=drive, X=position it always is in when you do not control it, B=mountain)
Normally you never put it in neutral. To put it in neutral you have to put the lever 3 seconds into N before it works. Because you always move past the N setting into Drive or Reverse. To park there is a park button. Neutral is somthing you never need unless pulled through a car-wash.
In emergency cases putting it in neutral you could push the Park button, but it is nothing that is naturally. Because you normally only use that button when in complete stand-still.
An other thing you could do in a runaway vehicle is turn it off. However the Power button works like a PC power button, when driving it does not work. You will have to press it several seconds to turn the car of while driving. (Power steering and break-enhancement will turn off, so this should only be a last resort). This is also something you will never do under normal circumstances, and most people will not be aware of this.
The solutions should be user-training.
-How to put the car in neutral (and the manual warns never to put the car in neurtral because the HV battery is not charged in that case. This complicates matters, and there are already enough beeps in a prius).
-Test an emergency break. You should be aware how a car handles in extreme conditions.
-Turn the car of when driving. (And note that power-breaking and powersteering is missing then!!!!)
-Test all cases of the cruise control. Cruise control give very little feedback in a prius II and steve jobs also noted some errors in the latest model.
I volunteer to fly to Japan and lead the effort to solve this problem. With my hand-picked team of hot, I mean, dedicated Japanese women, I'll make sure lots of new drivers are produced.
"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.
I don't think you understood what I said. "tell me how your engine did not get destroyed". I disagreed with clone53421 who claimed that it would destroy the engine. I claimed the only thing he will tell me is how nothing bad happened.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
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.
It's a fiasco. Whether it's toyota's fault of the drivers is what will be resolved as time goes on (or it may never be... who knows?) The fact that the media covered it so vigorously is directly related to how Toyota handled the problem.. the "blood in the water" sort of vibe even caught the press.
As the proud owner of a dodge ram with 155k and a jeep wrangler with 230K... I don't mind American cars. And it's not like I'm unique in my experience. If this has taught us anything it is that no car is perfect... not even Toyotas. YMMV, but to swear of American cars is as silly as me saying I'll never buy a Toyota. (Never say never.)
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
Additionally, the fact that there were deaths had something to do with the reporting. There are no reported deaths w/r/t the GM fire potential that I've heard...(the fact that it affects 1.5 million cars isn't the significant part.. it's how many really caught fire... the Ford cruise control module fires were covered very extensively due to the number of fires the faulty part caused.) Toyota stopped selling/manufacturing cars completely after it was determined there might be more to this than "retarded old people driving Toyotas". That would get press even on Mars. ;)
If no one had died, and toyota hadn't been so flippant in the beginning (with all sorts of spin... even more than you'd typically expect from Toyota...) I think we'd never have seen so many reports on the matter. Toyota's been dinged for frame rusting issues and a major fiasco with quality back home in Japan, and this is just another in the long line of "time to attack #1" we see in world media all the time. If not Toyota, its Apple, or whatever. Part of what sells papers, I suppose. I'm not very pleased with the press anyway... because they seem to eager to accept the PR spin and not dig deeper into the root cause of these sorts of abuses and corporate hubris.
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
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!
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.
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.
Probably because you stopped the engine before you, say, blew the head gasket?
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
The emergency brake stopped working too? Amazing how so many unrelated things can go wrong at once. Or the driver pushed the wrong pedal and kept doing so as panic set in - something we have seen numerous times in numerous different cars, e.g. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/mar/22/license-suspended-elderly-driver-costco-crash/
The same way that dry-firing a bow is going to damage the bowstring.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
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.
Depends on the situation. In heavy traffic perhaps, but on a fairly straight wide-open road what’s the harm in letting it go as you have plenty of time/space to calmly asses the situation and attempt to fix it?
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
So, you're saying that you'd prefer to continue operating while accelerating at maximum rate because you don't thing shifting into neutral will make the brake pedal work??? You'd rather slam into the leading car at 90 miles an hour instead of 40? Is that how you handle most stop signs? "I don't know if my brake will work here, so I'll just stomp on the accelerator pedal!" I hope I never get in front of you.
Could someone come up with a car analogy for me?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
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.
Hand brake?
We both said a lot of things that you are going to regret.
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).
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?
I don't know if you're trolling or if there's a genuine misunderstanding.
All recent (as in 1-2 decades old) cars on the market have rev limiters. Thus you won't destroy them by over-revving them by applying accelerator alone.
When you shift into neutral, and the revs go to wherever the limiter keeps them at, there's no more engine torque applied to the wheels -- you should be able to apply the brakes and stop within a couple of seconds (assuming it's safe to stop).
You then turn of the screaming engine and no damage has been done. If you care about heat soak, you can then try and restart the engine to keep the water pump running for a bit -- perhaps it won't be stuck at WOT anymore.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
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."
So we've moved from car analogies to bow-analogies now?
Do you even know how the transmisiion works? Putting the car in neutral will disengage the engine from the wheels, which will be running freely on a bearing. The engine will not be capable of transmitting any torque. The car will slow and stop.
And even without the wheels working against it, an electronic engine will not rev itself past its redline.
You probably wouldn’t destroy the engine – and certainly not immediately or anything like that. It definitely wouldn’t be good for it, though, and there would be the potential for damage.
However from all accounts trying to turn off the engine, put it into neutral, etc. has no effect. Now maybe some of these are genuine cases of user error, but there seems to be enough evidence that this does indeed happen in at least some cases. By this token, what benefit would be had if you were able to put it into neutral if the engine then just continued to scream out of control and you couldn’t stop it? Only in the situation where you immediately needed to choose between the well-being of the passengers or the well-being of the engine, and of course the passengers would come first.
So yes, there would be some situations where it would be better to put it into neutral and let the engine go, meanwhile attempting to slow the vehicle. However, if there were plenty of space that definitely wouldn’t be my first inclination, and even if I did have the immediate need to stop the runaway vehicle, turning the engine off entirely would be greatly preferable to putting it into neutral.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
And that solves the stuck accelerator problem how?
By destroying your engine, that’s how.
Whilst that may have been true for an MGA, it's really not going to be the case for anything made since disco was all the rage.
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?
What I find strange, is that there have been about half a dozen of these strings of "Sudden unintended acceleration" cases, with different makes of cars in the last few decades, starting in the 1980s with Audi 5000.
The *only* thing they seem to have in common is that they all seem to happen in the US, despite the vehicles in question being sold worldwide.
So we've moved from car analogies to bow-analogies now?
Yes. Why? Is there any significance in the peculiar fact that only one of them is hyphenated?
Do you even know how the transmisiion works? Putting the car in neutral will disengage the engine from the wheels, which will be running freely on a bearing. The engine will not be capable of transmitting any torque. The car will slow and stop.
Yes, and I know how to spell it correctly also. It’s 3 S’s and 2 I’s, not the other way ’round. :p
And even without the wheels working against it, an electronic engine will not rev itself past its redline.
It’s still not good for it. A much better alternative would be shutting it off completely.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Yes, I was a bit over-dramatic. It’d be pretty bad for the engine, not necessarily (probably not) to the point of destroying it immediately but certainly contributing to the wear and tear and quite possibly causing (or contributing to) more serious problems then or in the future (since we have no idea how much wear to the engine had occurred prior to this situation).
Also, as RedK says in one of his replies, “I don’t recommend keeping it at the rev limiter for hours”. It’s bad for the engine. If a car won’t shift into neutral and won’t shut off, who’s to say even if it would shift into neutral that you’d then be able to turn it off? It might just keep running as close to redline as the rev limiter would allow until it ran out of gas (or until someone with enough knowledge of mechanics was able to get it shut down).
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
"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?
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
No your foot makes the brake work....
Is this asshole still a cop who is allowed to drive, or has he been turned into a meter maid?
I assume his drivers license was revoked after he died in the accident.
... 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.
it depends on the exact hypothetical scenario. If were referring to the cases were the engine goes full throttle, and the brakes fail to function at all (being in a affected model such as a Prius) the correct coarse of action would be to try to shift into neutral and to to power off the car. If however you are in some other car you would need to specify what type of car, weather it was automatic or clutch, and weather it was drive-by-wire or manual throttle control, as well as weather it had disc brakes, drum brakes, etc. there are many variables. Sticking strictly to the reported scenarios with the models they were reported in, (assuming driver error isnt at fault, which it most likely is, but for this "hypothetical scenario" lets rule it out). What would YOU recommend a driver do in this case? (Stuck behind the wheel of a Prius at 60+Mph, with no brakes, and the motor going full throttle, regardless of pedal input?) Toyota itself recommends shifting into neutral, pulling over, and trying to turn the car off...
source:
http://pressroom.toyota.com/pr/tms/document/Floor_mat_Owner_Letter_sample.pdf (instructs the user to shift to neutral and power the vehicle off)
http://www.caranddriver.com/features/09q4/how_to_deal_with_unintended_acceleration-tech_dept
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/resources/streaming/PDFs/cr_suddenunintended-acceleration_012910.pdf
oh and also most cars have "rev limiters" which should kick in preventing any damage to the engine while running full throttle in neutral, but even so, what is more important your motor, or your safety (and in the event it does total the motor and is found to be a fault in the car, im fairly confident that this would net you a brand new car from the mfg provided the car wasn't ridiculously out of warranty of anything).
Noone writes jokes in base 13!
You are still incorrect, shifting into neutral should not kill ABS or power steering, while turning the vehicle off will kill both, at high speeds power steering isnt as much of an issue, but abs would still be useful to have. Toyota itself recommends depressing the brake, shifting to neutral, and if all else fails shutting power off, then immedently pulling the car over and turning the car off.
sources:
http://pressroom.toyota.com/pr/tms/document/Floor_mat_Owner_Letter_sample.pdf (instructs the user to shift to neutral and power the vehicle off)
http://www.caranddriver.com/features/09q4/how_to_deal_with_unintended_acceleration-tech_dept
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/resources/streaming/PDFs/cr_suddenunintended-acceleration_012910.pdf
and to the GP
Most cars have "rev limiters" which should kick in preventing any damage to the engine while running full throttle in neutral, this should prevent any rods from being thrown, which while not usually fatal (their usually angled up and away from the seating cabin v6/v8, or are vertical/diagonal and aimed out the side of the vehicle inline4/inline6 which would most likely not make it out of the motor compartment after loosing force penetrating the head) could cause alarm.
Noone writes jokes in base 13!
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?
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?
The first thing I’d want to do would be turn the engine off, not shift it into neutral while it was racing.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
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."
Look, you can believe me/him or not if you want.
But here are the facts:
- He told me this happened to him in his brand-new Rav4 3 times while sitting at a stop while his foot was nowhere near the accelerator.
- Two months later, we start hearing reports about it on the news.
- I do not perceive my father-in-law to be a clueless idiot.
Thus, for me it gives credibility to others' similar stories.
"They said I probly shouldn't fly with just one eye," "I am Bender. Please insert girder."
There are separate issues at play here (with Toyota vehicles).
One is the 3 second hold time needed to STOP the engine using the START/STOP button. If you hit the button repeatedly, it doesn't do anything.
Separate thing is potential for drivetrain management software preventing you from shifting into neutral. I wish someone got off their behinds and actually did a test whether a WOT throttle-by-wire condition causes neutral lockout. This may be a deliberate, albeit retrospectively poor, design decision.
Yet separate issue that may be at play is the poor design of the analog pedal position transducer. The action of the spring makes a pedal really a force transducer. You measure displacement due to the action of some force. So the logical thing would be also to measure the bending in the pedal's beam (the plastic molded assembly) using a strain gage. That way you not only get redundant input from a different sensor, but also a diagnostic for the friction in the pedal's pivot. It seems like a very logical thing to exploit in a safety-critical sensor, but Toyota obviously decided not to play it safe.
Adding the human factor makes it all seem random and unexplicable. Surely there are simple, reproducible reasons for all this behavior -- the $1M prize available for reproducing the problem asks for a wrong thing: you need a random, irrational human in the loop to reproduce it.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
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.
Excellent post.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
"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
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.
Is there any significance in the peculiar fact that only one of them is hyphenated?
Yes. Clarity. You see, familiar compounds are often left unhyphenated, whereas uncommon or potentially confusing ones can be joined with a hyphen.
Yes, and I know how to spell it correctly also. It’s 3 S’s and 2 I’s, not the other way ’round. :p
Backing up your misconceptions about car engines by pointing out typos?
Good job that's not the only correct argument you have. Oh wait...
It’s still not good for it. A much better alternative would be shutting it off completely.
Wow. Way to miss the point completely.
Your first reply claimed it would fix the stuck accelerator by breaking the engine which would stop the car.
Yes. Clarity. You see, familiar compounds are often left unhyphenated, whereas uncommon or potentially confusing ones can be joined with a hyphen.
Right. Because we all know that “car analogies” is a well-known phrase here on Slashdot and “bow analogies” would be too confusing if not hyphenated. Also, “well-known” is too uncommon to leave unhyphenated.
Backing up your misconceptions about car engines by pointing out typos?
Good job that's not the only correct argument you have. Oh wait...
Too bad you don’t bother to spell things correctly.
Wow. Way to miss the point completely.
Your first reply claimed it would fix the stuck accelerator by breaking the engine which would stop the car.
No, I said it could destroy the engine if the car was still stuck at open throttle, which is partially true and partially an exaggeration. However it certainly doesn’t really help anything unless you’re in dire danger of immediately crashing – in fact it’s more likely just to cause more damage, which is why it is not the FIRST thing I would do if the throttle stuck open.
Good thing it’s so easy to put a Prius into neutral at 60 MPH... all you have to do is shift into reverse (yeah, reverse... a really great idea while traveling at high speeds – except the computer decides that you’re a complete moron and shifts it into neutral instead), or press the park button (once again, the computer decides you’re a moron and opts to go into neutral rather than damaging the transmission), or HOLD the lever in neutral for 3 seconds (because of course the computer figures you’re probably a moron who hit the shift lever accidentally. one mississippi, shift into neutral... two mississippi, yes I’m really sure... three mississippi, just fucking go into neutral already, thanks). Yeah, easy enough – if you know how...
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
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
Right. Because we all know that “car analogies” is a well-known phrase here on Slashdot and “bow analogies” would be too confusing if not hyphenated.
No. But it's down to the ambiguity of the word "bow". When writing "bow-analogy" I felt the need for hyphenation. You know, when you actually think about what you're writing.
Maybe it's not consistent, but I don't review my posts in fear of some smartass who thinks he's found a grammatical error to pounce upon.
Also, “well-known” is too uncommon to leave unhyphenated.
Apples and oranges. "Well" is an adverb. Maybe we should stop talking about this if you have no clue.
Too bad you don’t bother to spell things correctly.
Says th guy who no doubt has a spell-checker permanently on in his browser. Now if only it could fill in your missing words...
No, I said it could destroy the engine if the car was still stuck at open throttle,
Let me help you refresh your memory
And that solves the stuck accelerator problem how?
By destroying your engine, that’s how. An engine with a blown head won’t keep going.
That's just complete bull. A car in neutral won't keep going due to not having any transmission. Not because of what the engine is or isn't doing. Now, whether or not it's easy to shift to neutral is another question. I haven't driven enough automatics for a good comparison. So you can carry on and rant all day about it.
Re: last paragraph. Your problem isn’t the car keeping going, it’s the stuck accelerator. Making the car stop going MIGHT be profitable in the short-term (if you sense an impending crash) but if you have plenty of space, making the car stop going while the engine is still racing is a stupid alternative where better ones exist (stopping the engine).
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.