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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.
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.
... 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."
...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!
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.
If it was purely driver error it would show up on quite a variety of cars, not just specific Toyota models.
Unless the heavy news coverage resulted in a bandwagon effect.
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...
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.
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
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 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.
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.
"driver error" or "a driver error"?
Nice that you took Toyotas talking points from their webinar. But it appears that all the professor did was short 3 wires together, all of which are in the same wiring harness. The evidence that Toyota has against this is that they claim to have found no damage or corrosion in the wiring harness in the cars they have inspect. Oh really? And we take their word for that? The professor stated quite clearly in front of congress that he was not claiming that this is exactly how the issues happened. What he was proving is that the car could malfunction, accelerate wildly while the driver was holding down the break and the computer would log none of this. I'm not saying these issues are not driver error... maybe they are. But to claim that the computer data is infallible is just silly.
No they didn't.
They got into a little hot water over not using the original tach reading do to there shaky quality they used en edited tach. They have since switched to the actually footage.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/toyota-recall-electronic-design-flaw-linked-toyota-runaway-acceleration-problems/story?id=9909319
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
So some dude rewired the car to short out the throttle position sensor? And then was shocked when it worked?
Basically he is saying that damaged wiring would prevent electronic records of a malfunction. But, duh, if there is damaged wiring before the accident, then there would still be damaged wiring after the accident, and Toyota/NHTSA would be able to find the problem.
hurr durr I'm a professor derp derp derp.
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.
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/
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
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...