Drivers Blamed For Out of Control Toyotas - Again

PolygamousRanchKid writes "An intensive 10 month investigation into possible causes of unintended acceleration in Toyota cars found no fault with the automaker's electronic throttle control systems, the Department of Transportation announced Tuesday." Didn't the NHTSA say essentially the same thing last July?

Comments

Just to clarify..

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Drivers Blamed For Out of Control Toyotas - Again

Since none of you actually RTFA's, I thought I'd do my good deed for the day and point out that they mean the people behind the wheel are the problem, not the gas pedal drivers.

Re:Just to clarify..

[Gohtar]

Windows has detected a Gas Pedal compliant device and is attempting to find the drivers for it. Windows could not find drivers for your device, the device may not function properly until the drivers are installed.

Re:Just to clarify..

[c0lo]

Since none of you actually RTFA's,

TFA

NHTSA also said it plans to propose requirements for standardized operation of push-button keyless ignition systems in cars and to require the installation of Event Data Recorders, devices that record various data including gas pedal and brake usage immediately before and after a major crash.

(WTF?) I think the black-boxes on the planes can benefit as well from being able to record various data after a major crash.

Re:Just to clarify..

[sznupi]

Well, recording efforts of some driver to, say, drive away after a major crash could be...revealing.

Re:Just to clarify..

[cheater512]

They probably want to record it in a ring buffer.

You have memory for x seconds of data, and you fill it up from the car starting up. When its full you loop around and overwrite the earliest data.
When there is a crash, logging stops and it all gets dumped to permanent storage.

Re:Just to clarify..

[blair1q]

Since one of the people behind the wheel was Steve Wozniak (previous slashdot story hyperlinked here), and he said he'd actually been able to replicate unchecked acceleration by the cruise-control system, I'm not trusting Toyota.

They have a vested interest in not finding a cause. He could not have any possible interest in making a claim of observing a misbehavior in a car he likes to drive.

Nor should anyone at Toyota trust Toyota.

Nor would I trust the government. They're not likely to be bringing A+ talent to the party.

Re:Just to clarify..

[blair1q]

They already do.

Re:Just to clarify..

[angelwolf71885]

WARNING: the device " Gas Pedal " has performed a fatal operation

Re:Just to clarify..

[c0lo]

When there is a crash, logging stops and it all gets dumped to permanent storage.

And the rest of the data after the major crash is captured by the extra added layer of "Telepathy Controlled Protocol" - good that we are forced now to tap into IPv6 address space.

Re:Just to clarify..

[c0lo]

They already do.

Yeap: collecting the pitch/roll/yawn as well as the engines RPM's and level of fuel-tanks... of the wreckage after the major crash. Does make sense and is achievable by... what method?

Re:Just to clarify..

[oracleguy01]

They have a vested interest in not finding a cause.

While I'm unsure if there is indeed an actual software problem, you kind of do have a point. If I'm not mistaken drive by wire type systems for other things like planes are more regulated and have more legally required testing.

Toyota and the other car companies do have a vested interest in it not being a software glitch because it would cause a huge public outcry. Lawmakers would probably add new regulations to make them put their hardware through more rigorous testing and possibly 3rd party code inspection. Which I'm not against actually but the car companies would hate it.

Not to mention that it would open the door for lots of lawsuits claiming such and such happened due to a software fault in the car.

Re:Just to clarify..

[amiga3D]

They have a vested interest in finding the cause....just not in making it public. Certainly in any system that relies on computer control glitches are possible. Finding an obscure bug can be next to impossible.

Re:Just to clarify..

[mirix]

Not every accident involves a car being ripped to 30 pieces. Seems perfectly feasible that the brake and gas pedal are still connected to the ECU shortly after the accident.

Whereas planes generally end up in pieces...

Re:Just to clarify..

[CapOblivious2010]

(WTF?) I think the black-boxes on the planes can benefit as well from being able to record various data after a major crash.

So here's my question: since the black boxes nearly always survive plane crashes, why don't they just build the whole plane out of that same material?

Re:Just to clarify..

[blair1q]

They run for a bit after detecting a crash so that they don't cut off in the middle of data that might be useful. Then they stop recording and start beeping.

Re:Just to clarify..

[Quiet_Desperation]

collecting the pitch/roll/yawn as well as the engines RPM's and level of fuel-tanks

The level of yawns might be a clear indicator of what caused the crash.

Re:Just to clarify..

[blair1q]

It's not just legally required testing for safety-critical systems, it's legally required /independent/ review and testing for safety-critical systems.

If Toyota is not giving their code to someone else, or allowing independent parties to test their cars with full diagnostic gear, then they're not making systems that could be certified for safety to the same standards as an aircraft's control systems.

Re:Just to clarify..

[nitehawk214]

Any crash you can walk away from is a good crash.

Re:Just to clarify..

[c0lo]

So here's my question: since the black boxes nearly always survive plane crashes, why don't they just build the whole plane out of that same material?

:) Gosh, I wish I would thought of it... On the same line: since the last carriage of a train is the least stable one, the obvious solution is to simply remove it :)

Re:Just to clarify..

[c0lo]

Not every accident involves a car being ripped to 30 pieces. Seems perfectly feasible that the brake and gas pedal are still connected to the ECU shortly after the accident.

Can you please define the meaning you give to a "major crash"?

To my mind, it's an event in which the driver is at least badly hurt or unconscious and/or the car involved is no longer functional. Does any data collected from the pedals brings anything insight after the major crash? If positive, how?

Re:Just to clarify..

[commodore6502]

I don't buy the National Transportation Board's results. Especially given Congressional testimony by one of those drivers that she *shifted to neutral* and the car still kept accelerating.

And then of course Toyota admitted that the car ignores such inputs. Seems like a problem with the control logic.

Also this isn't Toyota's first problem. They've had previous engineering mistakes, like a V-6 engine that ran too hot, turned the oil to sludge, and died after 20-30,000 miles. THEN to add insult to injury, Toyota blamed the drivers for "failure to change oil" even though drivers had dealer records proving they serviced the car on schedule.

That led to a class-action lawsuit - Toyota versus U.S. and Toyota lost.

Re:Just to clarify..

[mirix]

"No longer functional" is generally somewhat less damaged than ' body so badly mangled that the wires have broken off the pedals', the way I figure it...

If seconds after impact, the driver still has the pedal on full throttle... it could be somewhat insightful, don't you think? Or how close to / trailing the impact they applied the brakes, etc.

Re:Just to clarify..

[Anonymous Coward]

Since one of the people behind the wheel was Steve Wozniak (previous slashdot story hyperlinked here [slashdot.org]), and he said he'd actually been able to replicate unchecked acceleration by the cruise-control system, I'm not trusting Toyota.

*snip*

Nor should anyone at Toyota trust Toyota. Nor would I trust the government. They're not likely to be bringing A+ talent to the party.

It doesn't really matter what you think of Toyota, as you can ignore them and find plenty of other expert investigation into the issue that matches, government and otherwise.

Also despite how awesome of a guy Woz is, and all of the great things he has accomplished, are you Seriously going to believe a non experts word, who has personally been the fault of a plane accident in the past, and who has also suffered injuries that unfortunately would make him More likely to actually be the cause of a car acceleration??

You can believe what you want, but the circumstantial evidence is very much against what Woz claims here.

Re:Just to clarify..

[kurt555gs]

PEBKAC!

Re:Just to clarify..

[mikerubin]

I've had two Camrys, a 2007 (1.4 liter, 5 speed auto) and a 2010 (2.5 liter, 6 speed auto). I put just over 100,000 on each.
And yes, I agree with the 'sudden' acceleration under cruise.
But it (the cruise) always let go, either right away when I hit the brakes or a bit delayed when I shut it off with the control stalk.
It seemed to occur if the car was down-shifting as it climbed a hill (under cruise) if the down-shift happened just as (thereabout) the car was cresting the hill.
I could circumvent it by manually shifting the transmission to the next lower gear prior to the engine computer doing the down-shift.

I got a new Taurus now.
I can't wait for this lease to expire, going right back to the Camry.

Re:Just to clarify..

[Anonymous Coward]

They've had previous engineering mistakes

Of course, like all wise people, I prefer to buy my cars from companies who have never made any engineering mistakes.

And I don't know why you're bringing it up. After a damned long investigation, a third party has determined that this is not an engineering mistake. It could be a damned Pinto for all it matters - this is not an engineering fault that human effort can identify. Of course, you can piss on Toyota just because you don't like them, but previous lawsuits over oil changes could not be more unrelated to the issue at hand.

Re:Just to clarify..

[fractoid]

My fear in this case would be that the black box would say "The accelerator pedal went down 30 seconds before the crash and stayed there on full throttle. No brakes or other inputs were supplied." Their lawyer would then say "See, the driver did it deliberately" and that's likely to close the case right there.

People have a scary scary tendency to believe a machine over a person, even if there's no evidence it's not operating in some failure mode. In this case, say there was a design flaw which made some sensor boxes partially short out, just enough to shift the accelerator pedal range from 0-100 to 80-100 say. In that case, the central computer would be receiving believable signals that the pedal was pressed down, even though the driver was doing nothing.

Home electric car conversions have always required a prominently placed e-stop switch that physically disconnects the battery from the motor. Factory cars (electric or otherwise) with fly-by-wire throttles and transmissions should require the same. Building a large, powerful machine without an authoritative stop switch is madness.

Re:Just to clarify..

[Electricity Likes Me]

The lack of skid marks indicating braking action should be a fairly good indication it wasn't the care though. The braking system in all cars is power-assist, but still directly mechanical. Couple that with the observation the brakes can overpower the engine in all the Toyotas this complaint is aimed at, and it's a fair guess that "dangerous stupidity" is being rewritten into "car fault! Clearly! I'm calling my lawyer"

I mean, we have a model of this type of event before. Just now we have a new boogieman in the form of computers.

Re:Just to clarify..

[FrameRotBlues]

In this case, say there was a design flaw which made some sensor boxes partially short out, just enough to shift the accelerator pedal range from 0-100 to 80-100 say. In that case, the central computer would be receiving believable signals that the pedal was pressed down, even though the driver was doing nothing.

Extremely unlikely. Since the throttle position sensor is nothing more than a potentiometer, it's always "partially short[ed] out." Potentiometers fail in the zero and infinite ohm positions, either of which would throw a fault in the ECM for the resistance being out of range.

Home electric car conversions require nothing of the sort, but most that build their own electric cars install them for safety. Just like those who build their own gasoline cars, everyone has their own kill switch. That doesn't mean the general public will use them with any greater frequency than they use the ignition switch to shut the engine off in an emergency.

On the contrary, I believe installing a large red mushroom operator in plain sight of the driver would induce a feeling of paranoia, to the point where they would hate to drive the car. IMHO, it would not be a positive selling point.

Re:Just to clarify..

[fractoid]

I wonder how much force it would require on the brake pedal to stop the car, assuming full throttle and no power assist? I wouldn't be surprised if it was beyond the capacity of some drivers. Have you ever tried to stop a car with the braking assist not working? It takes lot of force to slow you down even gently.

From the link you posted:

Analyses conducted in the mid to late 1990s on Jeep Cherokee and Grand Cherokee vehicles concluded that hundreds of reported sudden accelerations in these vehicles were likely caused by an undesired current leakage pathway that resulted in actuation of the cruise control servo. When this occurred, typically at shift engage (moving the shift lever from park to reverse), the engine throttle would move to the wide open position.

That's not 'dangerous stupidity', that's 'dangerous design flaw' even if it's technically possible for the driver to correct if he they know that the fault is about to occur.

Re:Just to clarify..

[fractoid]

Throttle position sensors can be potentiometer based, Hall effect based, or optical encoder based. Potentiometers can fail in ways other than open or closed circuit - for instance, if a pot gets partially wet, the resistance reading can be affected without taking the measured resistance outside of expected values.

Electric vehicles used to legally require an emergency stop, at least in Australia, but apparently that's no longer the case. Either way, a big red button on the dashboard would be a lot more comforting to me than some smug showroom guy telling me "oh don't worry, it never ever fails."

Re:Just to clarify..

[tbannist]

Frankly, I stopped believing it was likely to be an engineering problem when someone did an analysis of all the complaints and showed that the "random" "sudden acceleration" events overwhelmingly happened to the drivers most likely to make driver errors. In other words the distribution was significantly biased towards drivers who were under 25 or over 65.

Of course, it could all be a coincidence, but as far as I understand, it's been independently investigated 3 times, and Toyota has been cleared in all three investigations. Of course, you can always hope for best 4 out of 7, but those odds aren't very good.

Re:Just to clarify..

[Anonymous Coward]

I can replicate this (and I do, every day in fact) in my 1993 Nissan 4WD. Its electronic control system has something in it that keeps the RPMs on the engine above 1500 after I've been driving on the freeway for a little while and I put the clutch in. I can press and release the gas pedal all I want, and it will not drop below 1500, even if I brake to a stop (as I do on an off-ramp when I come to a light) with the clutch in or in neutral. The only thing that'll make it drop back down to 750 RPM when it's in that state is to load the engine by pressing on the brake or applying the emergency brake and letting the clutch out.

I don't think NASA examined the code that handles artificially raising engine RPM, but I'm certain it's there.

Re:Just to clarify..

[FrameRotBlues]

But you'd have to know what it does, and then trust it to work as expected. If it were to disconnect the batteries, would it also remove the power of power-assisted steering and/or brakes? Headlights or hazard lights?

That circuit would also introduce more expense, more wiring points, and therefore more points of failure. If someone thought it was fun to hit the e-stop while the car was under load (going up a steep hill), and it failed (contacts welded together) after the 99th time of that kind of practice, who would be at fault? Does that qualify as operator abuse? How would that/could that be logged?

I wrote this farther down and I'll copy and paste it here:
I work with industrial controls for a living, and while I understand the necessity of e-stops in an industrial situation, those situations are not encountered by the public - the operator requires extensive safety training of that machine first and foremost. Just like you wouldn't expect your 5-year old to operate your table saw with no prior training, you cannot expect an e-stop button to solve the problems that a mentally incompetent operator can bring to the table. Drivers already have a way to disable their vehicle - the ignition switch. Whether or not they think about using it is a training/human issue. Providing one or 10 local emergency stops does not change the fact that it is a training/human issue.

Re:Just to clarify..

[damnbunni]

So here's my question: since the black boxes nearly always survive plane crashes, why don't they just build the whole plane out of that same material?

The Straight Dope was asked this at one point. I quote from the response they got:

'They must get this question all the time at the National Transportation Safety Board. The guy I talked to didn't miss a beat with the answer: because the interstates aren't wide enough.'

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/909/if-aircraft-black-boxes-are-indestructible-why-cant-the-whole-plane-be-made-from-the-same-material

Re:Just to clarify..

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah it turns out Woz was a fat pig who didn't understand that toyota prius uses a different cruise control algorithm compared to conventional systems. and you are a fat pig for believing another fat pig making claims about a system he does not understand. FYI this saga is well documented. Perhaps you should check it out instead of clinging to baseless outdated falsified claims.

Re:Just to clarify..

[tbannist]

I'm not sure Steve Wozniak's story is relevant. After doing a bit of research, I found another site that paraphrased Wozniak's own (alleged) explanation of the problem that should be linked from the story you linked. It seems his acceleration problem is that if he presses the "go faster" button on the cruise control 10 times (or more) in a row in rapid succession, the car goes faster than he wants it to go.

I'm not sure that's actually unexpected behaviour.

Re:Just to clarify..

[Anonymous Coward]

WARNING: the device " Gas Pedal " has performed a fatal operation

The BSOD on every one of the 11 LCD screens in your smoking Prius after a certain MTV show has pimped up your hybrid, now pink and flaming.

Re:Just to clarify..

[Calibax]

I don't know what your criteria for A+ talent is, but at the press conference they claimed that "specialist engineers on loan from NASA" were responsible for the tests. I have to disagree on your point that Toyota have a vested interest in not finding the cause, but that doesn't matter as this was run by non-industry engineers.

Strangely, this software problem has been reported by folks in North America only, and overwhelmingly by older drivers. Why are European and Asian drivers not experiencing the same problems?

Also, please note that the insurance industry has not raised their prices for insuring Toyota vehicles - probably a good indication that they don't think there's an ongoing vehicle or software related issue.

Remember back in the mid-'80s when Audi in the US and Canada was totally destroyed by many reports of unexpected acceleration? People couldn't dump their Audi cars quickly enough, 2 out of 3 local Audi dealerships went out of business and the other one downsized. That turned out to be driver error, but others who got into accidents after the reports surfaced found a ready-made scapegoat. Just saying....

Re:Just to clarify..

[DavidTC]

I think that all cars should have, mandated by law, a physical engine switch on the right side of the steering wheel, that you rotate counter-clockwise to turn off the engine.

For non-push-start cars, this would be the actual key itself.

For push-start cars, it's just be a switch, with roughly the same amount of force needed as a key, and stays on all the time, and you can utterly ignore it. But when you need to turn the car off, you know where it fucking is.

Instead of these cars, which you apparently had to hold the button down four second to get the car to cut off.

I hope everyone a) bothered to learn that in advance, and b) had an extra four second to spare.

It's absurd they're allowed to sell cars like that.

Re:Just to clarify..

[fractoid]

I strongly agree. I think, in addition, it should be mandated to use a certified, safety-rated system which physically disables the motive force behind the car. None of this "it's a digital input into the car's central control computer" bullshit, it has to disable the ignition, disconnect traction batteries, whatever is required to remove the car's ability to accelerate, and it has to do this even if the car's central computer disagrees.

Re:Just to clarify..

[Anonymous Coward]

Since one of the people behind the wheel was Steve Wozniak . . . and he said he'd actually been able to replicate unchecked acceleration by the cruise-control system . . .

Steve Wozniak discovered that when using the cruise control at high speed, the cruise control system of the Prius will queue up commands to go faster. So if you're going 80mph (Steve's example was about this fast or faster), and you hit the switch to speed up 15 times within two seconds, by the time you're done hitting the switch you'll be at 82mph, but the car will keep accelerating until it gets to 95mph (which is how many mph you told it to accelerate).

While in a sense this is "unintended acceleration", it isn't at all related to the reported cases of the gas pedal stopping responding. It only made the news because Toyota Deathmobiles Run Amok was the headline of the month.

Re:Just to clarify..

[AK Marc]

I wonder how much force it would require on the brake pedal to stop the car, assuming full throttle and no power assist?

Quite a lot. A trained person could do it, even old ladies. The problem is that training isn't done to help people survive when things go wrong, only when they are going fine. Also, if you were to have a working car and the brakes "failed" at the same time the accelerator stuck, you'd still have brake assist. Only if the brakes failed *before* the accelerator stuck would they both go out at the same time, making the likelihood of that happening almost impossible.

A person who pushes the brake as hard as they can will stop a car, even with wide-open-throttle and no assist, assuming the brakes don't have additional problems. However, often people will cause additional problems by riding the brakes for some period before actually applying them firmly, resulting in brake fade. But for a parking-lot problem from a stop, as many are, most such confounds are irrelevant.

Re:Just to clarify..

[DavidTC]

I was just sorta assuming that it would cut power to the central computer, which would obviously result in the computer unable to do anything at all. But maybe that's not a good idea, as that controls things like braking and anti-lock and stuff too.

But, yes, however it does it, it should not be possible to accelerate the car forward or backwards with that switch off.

Some part of the electricity of all (Hybrids have two) motive systems should run through there, and turning it should result in a physical disconnect of the power to them.

And, while we're at it, it can turn on your hazard lights too. ;)

Re:Just to clarify..

[Macman408]

I'm a Mac geek. I love Woz. But I trust Toyota more than I trust him on the matter, and here's why.

I own the same car as the one Woz noted his problem on; a 2010 Prius V (now called the Prius Five for 2011), with the Advanced Technology package. This means it has the radar cruise control.

The way cruise control works in some cars, like my dad's old Honda Accord is this: you press the button/lever to set a speed. Then, you press and hold a button/lever to accelerate. When you release the button, that's the new set speed, and there's no more acceleration.

In the Prius Woz and I have, it's a bit different; there's a screen a bit to the right of the speedometer that shows the radar cruise control status, including the set speed. Each time you nudge the cruise control stalk up, the set speed goes up by 1 mph. If you hold the stalk, it jumps up in increments of 5 mph. This has no relation to your current speed; if I'm at 50 mph, I can nudge it 5 times to set it to 55 mph, and my actual speed will only be at 51 mph by the time I'm done - so the car keeps accelerating until it gets to 55, a while later. If the car is at least 5 mph below the set speed, it'll open the throttle all the way, and accelerate much more rapidly than normal; so if you nudge the cruise control stalk up enough times, eventually it'll accelerate as fast as possible, until reaching your new setting. This is probably the "unintended acceleration" Woz experienced: After nudging it enough times, the difference between the set speed and the current speed is >5 mph, causing faster acceleration. In a different car, nudging it repeatedly like that would repeatedly accelerate a fraction of a mph, then keep the current speed as the new set speed, and would never continue accelerating past the time that you release the cruise control lever.

Steve also mentioned that nudging the lever down has no effect until he's done it 10 times or more - well of course not! While he's in his rapid (perhaps not intended by him, but it's what he told the car to do) acceleration, he nudges the lever down 10 times - and by that time, the car's speed and the set speed are back at the same level, so it stops accelerating.

I can't say I blame Steve though - he's not the type of guy that's likely to have the time to read the manual for his car (he admitted being very busy, otherwise I expect the nerd in him would be like the nerd in me, prompting him to read it at least twice). He probably assumed it behaves like his last car (or my dad's Honda Accord, or many other cars), where it will stop accelerating once you release the lever - rather than increasing the set speed on the screen while you hold the lever, and then continuing to accelerate to that speed after the lever has been released. (Rereading his comment on /., I note he also said this: "I am sure you can't turn the car off with the keyless power button..." This is certainly wrong - when the car is in motion, you can turn the car off by holding the power button for 3 seconds - another behavior mentioned in the manual.)

Finally, Steve told Wolf Blitzer that his problem was more akin to a button on the radio not working, as he could always cancel cruise control or press on the brakes and it would stop accelerating - so even if you believe his assessment, it's his personal opinion that it's a "surprising behavior", and not a safety issue. He also clarified that after he initially mentioned the problem, it became clear that his issue was distinct from the others reported in the media, and he didn't know if it was a widespread problem, or confined to his single car - but in any case, using the brakes always worked to stop the car, unlike most of the unintended acceleration cases in the media.

Re:Just to clarify..

[Waldeinburg]

Yet, the only reason I clicked the headline was because I read it as: "[Software] Drivers Blamed "

Re:Just to clarify..

[Richy_T]

You should actually try this sometime. It's harder than you think. I had a car where the assist failed and it was surprising how long it took to come to a stop. It didn't have ABS and even stamping the brakes as hard as I could with both feet, I was unable to lock the wheels and it was a slower stop than with the assist.

Re:Just to clarify..

[winwar]

"For push-start cars, it's just be a switch, with roughly the same amount of force needed as a key, and stays on all the time, and you can utterly ignore it. But when you need to turn the car off, you know where it fucking is."

Last time I checked, the stop button is the same as the start button. If you don't have the time to hold the button down, I really doubt you will be able to stop a real problem. My evidence is the made up scare involving the Audi 5000. They had keys and it sure as hell didn't prevent people from pressing on the gas thinking it was the brake.

It's absurd that people don't apply historical knowledge to proposed solutions. It's absurd that we attempt technical fixes to training issues. It's absurd that people buy and/or operate expensive pieces of deadly machinery and don't have the slightest clue how to operate them in other than the most basic of conditions. Hell, the first time I sat in a car with push button start, I wondered how the fuck to shut it off during motion and at park. Manuals are wonderful things. It's absurd that most people don't consider that.

Re:Just to clarify..

[Eivind]

It's not that hard to do. If you don't love your brake-pads you can test it yourself, simply push both brake AND gas-pedal to the metal. It'll be easy to reduce speed, and a bit-harder but still reasonable to cause a full-stop.

Automatic transmissions make it harder though, because they'll downshift as speed is reduced, thus upping the torque on the wheels.

Stopping a manual car that is in a high gear, by braking-with-full-throttle is embarassingly easy - even WITHOUT brake-assist working.

Re:Just to clarify..

[tibit]

A safety rated emergency stop system can be in fact all-digital. Such systems are in daily use in industrial machinery. Heck, the e-stop signals are even routed on "black networks" such as general purpose ethernet gear! The intelligence is in the end nodes -- the safety rated I/O points and safety PLCs. They can cope with the network mangling the data or losing connection. They behave then as if the e-stop was actuated.

Of course the safety controller has usually to be one a separate CPU, since it's hard to demonstrate proper partitioning on general purpose microcontrollers.

Re:Just to clarify..

[Anonymous Coward]

Parse error within GasPedal.c
 
Panic.

Re:Just to clarify..

[Electricity Likes Me]

From the link you posted:

Analyses conducted in the mid to late 1990s on Jeep Cherokee and Grand Cherokee vehicles concluded that hundreds of reported sudden accelerations in these vehicles were likely caused by an undesired current leakage pathway that resulted in actuation of the cruise control servo. When this occurred, typically at shift engage (moving the shift lever from park to reverse), the engine throttle would move to the wide open position.

That's not 'dangerous stupidity', that's 'dangerous design flaw' even if it's technically possible for the driver to correct if he they know that the fault is about to occur.

In that case, yes. But the point is that a fault in the vehicle was actually traced and found in analysis. Despite extensive investigation, no such fault has been identified in Toyotas, and the "runaway car" claims consistently display a lack of braking action, under circumstances where a driver should have been able to brake and/or shift the car into neutral.

While these claims should be followed up extensively - if no fault is identified, the circumstance is rather like how the biggest factor in recovery times for workplace injury is whether there is an outstanding worker's compensation claim.

Re:Just to clarify..

[cynyr]

They have those already, they are called "a clutch", some cars have them, and they are a mechanically linked driver operated way of removing the power to the input side of the transmission. These work regardless of what the cars computer is telling the rest of the systems to do.

Don't most parking/ebrakes still use a mechanical linkage? If so the steps are then, "press clutch, apply brake, hunt around for how to torn the damn thing off once you have stopped"

Re:Just to clarify..

[AmiMoJo]

I imagine they are only looking for a basic flash memory record of the data that the car collects anyway. No cockpit voice recording or anything like that.

The privacy implications are huge but I expect they will be brushed aside in the name of safety. That and manufacturers wanting to protect themselves from people claiming their car malfunctioned when really they just screwed up.

Re:Just to clarify..

[drinkypoo]

OBD-II vehicles (everything since 1996 and a couple earlier models too) record a "snapshot" of what was happening during any fault which may affect emissions. Many of them will also take this snapshot in a collision. Some of them already record data in an endless loop and at snapshot time they store a minute of logging data, 30 seconds before and 30 seconds after. As long as the key is on then the PCM is on and still able to log, provided power is still making it to the PCM and also to the PCM via the ignition switch simultaneously. It takes a pretty major collision to affect that wiring in most cases, but most front-end collisions of any severity have the potential to destroy and/or short the battery. This varies by vehicle; my 1982 MBZ has none of that computershit (EGR is disabled and that's the only control computer in the vehicle) but the battery is up against the firewall and not up by the core support like it is in my 1992 F250 which has some computers but still no logging except for trouble codes.

Re:Just to clarify..

[drinkypoo]

I think it would make the most sense to mandate a kill switch of the type they have in racing, a big red mother mounted in the dash. It would be a massive boon to rescue personnel in cases where the vehicle is still running after a crash. Some EVs are implementing something similar, I hear, but it ought to be standardized and installed in everything. There's no particular need to retrofit but it could be done to any vehicle. (It can be a bit spendy, you usually need a fair bit of copper and the labor can be intensive.)

Re:Just to clarify..

[commodore6502]

>>>it's been independently investigated 3 times,

You mean ONCE.
And I'm not convinced the US investigation was truly "independent" given how corporations control the government. Also it was rather flawed - they are investigating software which, as we engineers realize, can appear to be 100% operational and yet suddenly crash/act buggy at random times. The NTSA doesn't have the skillset necessary to declare "software was bugfree".

Re:Just to clarify..

[commodore6502]

>>>you can piss on Toyota just because you don't like them

Toyota is a THING - I neither like nor dislike it, but merely observe the quality of its product has gone to shit since the 90s. The megacorp has experienced one failure after another, such that even an american company like Ford makes higher-reliability cars.

Re:Just to clarify..

[leuk_he]

Cars with regenerative braking, like the toyota prius, do not have a direct mechanical link. The first part of the braking the breaks do not engage, but instead of this the wheels are connected to the generator.

Only in a fully electric fail mode (no power at all), a direct mechanical link is available.

so in `normal operation` these cars are brake by wire.

Re:Just to clarify..

[oh_my_080980980]

Nice one zippy.

It still remains that Toyotas had problems. It still remains that not all problems can passed off as "user error."

Combing through lines of code looking for a "mistake" is like looking for a needle in a haystack, except you don't know you are looking for a needle!

There has already been an engineer that reported a fault in the electronic braking system based on certain conditions. That in of itself is evidence of a problem. But it is being ignored.

And the argument, "well the drive hit the gas pedal instead of the brake," doesn't fly. Seriously, you want us to believe that ALL these people who have been driving a car for decades suddenly forgot how to break! Really. I can see people mistakenly put the car in drive when they meant reverse but accelerate when they meant to brake....I don't think so.

Re:Just to clarify..

[tehcyder]

Haven't you ever seen Wild at Heart?

Re:Just to clarify..

[tehcyder]

Why not just have a kill switch like on motorcycles?

Re:Just to clarify..

[Quirkz]

I don't know why you don't have a million mod points. I'd missed all of that background from Woz and hand been wondering about just that stuff. You answered all my unasked questions and then some, and thoroughly explained that particular issue. Thanks.

Re:Just to clarify..

[Golddess]

Shouldn't that be PEBSWAS?

Re:Just to clarify..

[Anonymous Coward]

Woz's observed "bug" was different than the gas pedal acceleration problem. Also, his observation is something I noticed after the first couple times driving on cruise control in my Prius. But my conclusion was quite different from his (and, I believe, mine is correct.) Which is quite odd, since he is definitely "a computer guy."

In essence, the cruise control stick has a typematic rate. If you hold it up, after a half second or so it starts to act as though you were pushing it up repeatedly. Also, the reset point (where it stops thinking you're still holding it up) is much closer to the rest position than I imagined it would be. So I tapped it up four or five times, to increase my speed by 4 or 5 MpH, and it acted as though I had held it down for well over a second, probably giving me 12 MpH or so of increased top speed. I disabled cruise control before finding out how much for sure. I tested some, and the behavior was repeatable UNLESS I allowed the lever to return about 1/2" closer to center than I was allowing it to initially. If I did that, no problems at all.

I read Woz's blog post and said "wow, how on Earth did he come to the conclusion that there's a software fault? It's obvious that the reset point on the switch is lower than he (or I) expected." But as far as I know he's never figured it out. The threat of a lawsuit (for this reason) is laughable though.

Re:Just to clarify..

[DavidTC]

That is essentially what I'm talking about, along with a standard location.

But having a 'button' is a good way to have it pushed by accident, having a rotating switch is saner, and as we're already used to having one to cut power in a car, I say we just mandate it in the same location.

Re:Just to clarify..

[Cederic]

More to the point, just wtf is wrong with putting the car in Neutral?

I've never owned a car - manual or automatic - that couldn't be put into neutral in a fifth of a second (usually much less) by the driver, at any speed, and in so doing disable the drive train.

Re:Just to clarify..

[DavidTC]

They had keys and it sure as hell didn't prevent people from pressing on the gas thinking it was the brake.

Cars will always go out of control. Usually it is people, sometimes it's mechanical failure.

It's absurd that people don't apply historical knowledge to proposed solutions.

Yeah, like cutting power to the engine, like they were taught in school. Oh, FUCK, pushing the power button doesn't work. They pushed it and the car doesn't turn off. Maybe push neutral...nope, the computer won't let it switch.

You're insane if you think the solution to 'people do not know how to cope with emergencies' is 'everyone should read the entire manual of every car they ever drive'. That is utter nonsense. There's a reason we standardize car controls.

You're right in that idiots do not know how to stop normal cars that are out of control, and those people should rightly be called idiots and indicates we probably should have tighter driver licensing. Anyone who's ever had an 'out of control' car with standard ignition, and weren't going down a 40 degree slope with no tires, should lose their license, they are not knowledgeable enough to drive.

But, you see, there are plenty of people who do know how to stop an out of control car. They know exactly how. They were taught in school, and they listened. And that way is to 'cut the ignition, and if that doesn't work, shift to neutral'. That is the actual stated manner, it's in the fucking driver's manual.

That is how you are supposed to be able to stop a runaway car, and anyone who doesn't know to do that is a fucking moron who shouldn't be on the road.

But anyone who designed a car where you can't do that is also a fucking moron who shouldn't be allowed near auto design. You do not get to build 1 ton 70 MPH machinery and require people to read the fucking manual to figure out how to disable it when it goes out of control. You either follow the standard design or you have a fucking big red switch.

I mean, hell, why are we assuming that only 'drivers' turn off cars? Maybe there was an accident, the driver is dead, and the EMT needs to turn it off because it's attempting to drive through another car they need to get into. Or maybe the driver passed out and has their foot on the gas and the passenger needs to turn it off.

Maybe everyone should read and memorize how to cut off every single damn car...or, and I'm just throwing this crazy idea out there, we could have a standard way to cut off a car engine, like we used to.

Re:Just to clarify..

[DavidTC]

The gear shift is apparently entirely computer controlled also. Pushing neutral won't do anything if the computer doesn't want it to...like if you're driving down the road.

The real problem here isn't the cars, it's that slashdot, the all-might-dancing-and-singing technical site, apparently doesn't bother to actually make any sort of primer on this so everyone in this discussion is uninformed, or the editors are so ignorant of technology that they are not utterly horrified by the idea of a car that cannot be disable without permission of the computer. (Like anyone who knew the slightest bit about computers would be.)

Re:Just to clarify..

[Cederic]

I do however struggle mightily to believe that
- accelerator is jammed 'on'
- brakes are disabled
- putting car into neutral is disabled
- ignition 'off' switch fails to work

All at the same time? Due to a software error? If the entire computing system crashed/hung/infinite looped, and had default 'no signal' behaviour of 'accelerate' then sure, but if Toyota designed their system to work like that I'll let you fly me to Japan to punch their chief software engineer in the head myself.

Re:Just to clarify..

[DavidTC]

Oh, and as for time, I don't know about you, but I can flip the ignition off about half a second without looking. (Getting the key out is sometimes a hassle, but just turning it off is not.)

Whereas finding a button on the dash, and holding it down? While steering through traffic or trying to slow the car by driving off the road?

Priuses can go 0-60 in ten seconds. Assuming three second response time to discover the car is actually out of control, that means you could be going roughly 40 mph faster than everyone else by the end of holding that button down. they'll be going 35 and you 75, or they 60 and you...whatever the top speed is, 90 or so. That is not going to be a fun trip.

Re:Just to clarify..

[drinkypoo]

I bought a race car for the suspension and gave it away to someone who cut it off of the roll cage and scrapped it, but when I got it, it had a rear seat battery relocation with a dash-mount kill switch, and yes, you have to grab and turn it.

Re:Just to clarify..

[pnewhook]

When there is a crash, logging stops and it all gets dumped to permanent storage.

Absolutely not!!! I had a moron developer who took this approach and the result was logs that looked like this:

Good data

Good data

Good Data

System entered Fail State

log ends.

Completely useless! The log stopped when an error occurred and the jackass didn't even think to actually log the data that caused the error itself, just the fact that the system entered the fail state. No information as to why at all. Couldn't get him to understand what the problem was.

Re:Just to clarify..

[pnewhook]

A safety rated emergency stop system can be in fact all-digital.

Not in any industry I've seen. Any automated device around people where the device has the potential to kill must have an all mechanical e-stop system. In the medical industry the safety system cannot have any software whatsoever. In most industries, if an 'e-stop' is all digital, then it cannot be legally called an e-stop - it's usually called a soft-stop or something similar.

Re:Just to clarify..

[pnewhook]

And don't forget that simultaneously with all those errors you mentioned, the black box data loggers failed in such a way to falsely incriminate the driver.

Re:Just to clarify..

[CapOblivious2010]

:) Gosh, I wish I would thought of it... On the same line: since the last carriage of a train is the least stable one, the obvious solution is to simply remove it :)

Similarly, I heard that most accidents happen within 10 miles of the home... so I moved!

Re:Just to clarify..

[Cederic]

Actually I can believe that bit. :)

Re:Just to clarify..

[pnewhook]

Combing through lines of code looking for a "mistake" is like looking for a needle in a haystack, except you don't know you are looking for a needle!

That's why NASA did that because that's what NASA does best. NASA mandates code walkthroughs of it's safety critical code so they know exactly what to look for. They do this all the time on any software that goes anywhere near an astronaut. If NASA did a 10 month safety analysis and code walkthrough and said it's ok, then you can be damn sure there is absolutely nothing wrong with that code.

Re:Just to clarify..

[cbiltcliffe]

I've driven two different Impalas, a 2000, and currently a 2003, and they both behave similarly to what your Prius does, with one exception.

When you press and hold the accelerate button, it speeds up until you release it, at which point, whatever speed you're doing is the new set speed.
If you rapidly press and release it 10 times, though, it mashes the accelerator to the floor until it's got up to 10 MPH faster, that it was going before, just like yours.

Although, I should imagine the time span of +10MPH acceleration is a little shorter in an Impala than a Prius. Just guessing.....

Re:Just to clarify..

[FredFredrickson]

I think the hard part about stopping in that scenario is how much extra pressure you have to apply to the brakes. It's not that it's too hard, it's that you're not anticipating having to use that extra pressure. My assist failed in the freezing cold one day, and I was certain my brakes were broken and I was going to die. It took me a few moments to realize the brakes still worked, and that the pedal wasn't stuck, it was just harder to press.

After that, I expected it on -10 F days, and it was always easy to stop. (and then I got my power system fixed.)

Re:Just to clarify..

[kurt555gs]

OK, you're right Goldess

Re:Just to clarify..

[DavidTC]

Putting the car into neutral is already disabled while it's moving. The computer ignores presses to change gears.

The ignition button is already disabled when the car is not in park. The computer ignores presses to turn it off. (Unless you know the secret to hold it down four seconds, which no one does.)

Neither of those are 'errors'. That is how the system is designed, by utterly insane people who are sure the computer knows better than you.

The brakes presumably do work, but actually braking a car that's accelerating is fairly tricky. You have to be very forceful and sure of what's going on, and slam them down, and hold them down. If you're at all hesitant, you will likely burn up your brakes before you stop.

And, of course, that leaves you with an out of control car you've got to stand on the brakes of to keep it from getting away again. I guess you could set the e-brake, but I'm not sure what the solution is there except to run out of gas.

I have no idea if it's actual electrical error or not. Considering that just one system has to fail, it's entirely possible the accelerator cable got stuck or something. That sort of thing is not uncommon in cars, which is why we have a standard way to cut off the engine by turning the key. Except not anymore.

Re:Just to clarify..

[Macman408]

Although, I should imagine the time span of +10MPH acceleration is a little shorter in an Impala than a Prius. Just guessing.....

Depending on which Impala, it might not be as big a difference as you'd imagine. The 180-hp 3389-lb 2003 base Impala has a 0-60 time of 8.9 seconds, while the 135-hp 3042-lb 2010 Prius has a 0-60 time of 9.8 seconds. If you add in the fact that the Prius is an eCVT and has no fixed gear ratios, the Prius might actually be faster to accelerate through a short range, if the Impala runs in an unfavorable gear or has to spend time shifting.

What you're probably familiar with is how a number of us Prius drivers move like slugs. That's just because accelerating fast is a great way to waste fuel. It's more obvious in a Prius because the mileage number drops faster (20% below 50 mpg is 40 mpg, 20% below 20 mpg is 16 mpg), and there are lots of displays to tell you how much gas you're using this instant, this trip, and the past half hour. However, other drivers have discovered this too; my brother drives a Volvo (an older S60 perhaps?) with a turbo. When he first got it, he loved to floor it as often as possible, enjoying the feeling of getting thrown back in your seat and the noise of the engine. These days, he's a bit more like grandma, once he noticed how much more often he had to fill up his car when he accelerated faster. Some of us will also coast for a long way to a red light, and laugh as others get frustrated behind us, floor it, zip around, only to have to slam on their brakes when they notice the red light too.

Of course, not every Prius driver is as annoying as us. I know one who is as crazy a driver as they come, and he pays for it by getting "only" 35 mpg.

Re:Just to clarify..

[tibit]

Those E-stop systems are rated by the same agencies that rate your electromechanical E-Stop switches. Those are not overnight hacks, the code running on those devices is often formally proven to be correct.

Besides, there is plenty of machinery where an electromechanical E-Stop that removes power would result in sure destruction. There are machines that you can't just safely stop by removing power. To a point where there are redundant, diverse drive/actuator systems that get activated to safely stop the machine. Some of those are designed to actively harvest the power from the spinning-down system (using regenerative drives) to keep the shut-down function running when power feeds and UPSes are down.

Re:Just to clarify..

[cbiltcliffe]

It's not the 0-60 time that's great in the Impala, although it's certainly no slouch. It's the fact that the acceleration doesn't slow down.

You can go all the way through first and second gear, by which time you're doing ~ 95 MPH, and your acceleration at the top of second isn't much slower at all than in the middle of first. So no, if you're drag racing a Prius in a 1/4 mile, it seems like the Impala should be faster than it is, but if you're doing a 50-75 MPH passing maneuver, which is much more useful performance than 0-60 in real world driving, there's not much that will touch an Impala for a reasonable price.

Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[ustolemyname]

What they also confirmed was that mechanical issues were a factor. Just because there is no fault with the electronics doesn't mean the machines were perfectly fine.

So far there are three known causes of unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles: improperly installed floor mats, sticky pedals, and driver error.

That's the second paragraph of TFA. What, submitters don't RTFA anymore?

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[treeves]

That does not conflict with the summary or the /. headline. "Driver error" is included in the list, and the submitter did not say that was the ONLY cause.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[arcsimm]

The summary is reasonably accurate: the NHTSA noted that while those are known problems, the "vast majority" of reports were most probably caused by driver error. NASA even noted that the frequency of reports was most directly correlated to the amount of media attention the issue had received, and not at all with design changes.

In short, this was the Audi 5000 all over again, and people need to learn how to drive instead of blaming their mistakes on their cars.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[Anonymous Coward]

Its called Toyota went for fly by wire. There was non of this when the throttle body was an actual link to the accelerator. If you do not do proper control system design you do not get an F-16, you get a fly away Toyota. Cars can get away with such because the link between the throttle body and the accelerator has always been physical until a few years back. There have been numerous complaints, recordings and evidence. What you get a blue screen the problem is between the keyboard and the chair, well in a sort for getting windows, so yes in a sort those people are responsible for buying a toyota. Its called instability points in the root locust.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[h4rr4r]

No, this is a simple user error. Besides mechanical linkages get stuck all the time. I used to have a 1987 corolla that had that problem in its old age. As I am not incompetent I was able to unstick it by popping the gas. If I could not have unstuck it I would have put the clutch in or shifted to neutral.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[Labcoat Samurai]

In short, this was the Audi 5000 all over again, and people need to learn how to drive instead of blaming their mistakes on their cars.

Wow that takes me back. My grandpa had that car and I remember talking to him about it at the time.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[Jafafa Hots]

I just have to wonder that if it IS indeed driver error, why so many more incidents with this make?
Could it be driver error that is made more likely as a result of a design issue in the car? Pedals too close together, feel too similar, some shit like that?

Could this be a user interface issue in the oldest sense of the term?

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[MasaMuneCyrus]

Your entire point is moot because
1.) In a drive-by-wire system the brake always takes priority over the accelerator and there is at least double, if not triple redundancy in anything that could ever possibly fail. In the even more unlikely scenario of all redundancies failing, all drive-by-wire systems I'm away of cut the engine. In addition, brakes are never brake-by-wire, and the handbrake works, too.
2.) Toyota's drive-by-wire system didn't fail even once.
3.) The chance of every piece of a drive by wire failing in such a way as to cause your car to accelerate uncontrollably is probably similar to your chance of being struck down by a falling meteorite. In the unusual even that it does happen, you can shift your car into neutral to stop.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[Anonymous Coward]

And the first two causes were ones that had been fixed in earlier recalls. If you (driver of recalled car) didn't go in and get the free fix, then had your car run away on you because of that unfixed issue, it was definitely a driver error.

But, of course, rationality still doesn't prevail. I saw one Toyota driver's comments about it saying that while she was in a "panic trying to stop her runaway Lexus," she still had the presence of mind to carefully note that she had checked and she was "not" accidentally pushing on the accelerator pedal.

Rationalization wins again!

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[StikyPad]

So far there are three known causes of unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles: improperly installed floor mats, sticky pedals, and driver error.

"But I repeat myself." (With apologies to Mark Twain).

Just because there is no fault with the electronics doesn't mean the machines were perfectly fine.

True, but just because the machines weren't perfectly fine doesn't mean it's not the driver's (or owner's) fault. Essentially these are all issues that the operator is responsible for, *especially* ensuring proper operation of the controls before taking the vehicle out on the road. Even in the (thus far) fictional scenario where an electronic malfunction sends the vehicle into WOT, if you don't know how to mitigate that by shifting into neutral and/or turning off the engine then you've directly contributed to the end result. Yeah, sometimes people panic and do the wrong thing, but that's still the individual's fault.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[noidentity]

Yes, but the fact that two separate studies (haven't RTFA) arrived at the SAME conclusion CLEARLY shows that they are just covering over the real problem. I mean, what else could explain them coming to the same conclusion?

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[Random Destruction]

In the unusual even that it does happen, you can shift your car into neutral to stop.

Or firmly apply the brakes. These are toyotas after all, not 800hp supercharged corvettes*.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[AmberBlackCat]

How are improperly installed floor mats and sticky pedals two separate issues?

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[DrLang21]

brakes are never brake-by-wire, and the handbrake works, too.

Not to say that I disagree with your post. However, electronic brakes are quite common. That said, it's always possible to "push through" and mechanically activate the brakes should all of the redundancies fail. Electronic park brakes are also coming onto the scene that are only activated by a simple switch. I know the Volt has one.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[demonlapin]

A couple of incidents made the news, a few stations publicized it, and a bunch of people jumped on the bandwagon thinking they'd get big bucks in a settlement.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[k6mfw]

>Its called Toyota went for fly by wire. There was non of this when the throttle body was an actual link to the accelerator.
>If you do not do proper control system design you do not get an F-16,

At least with a F-16, you have an ejection seat in case your fly-by-wire system gets a BSOD. Cars don't have ejection seats, except for government issued Austin Martins but only for passenger seat.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[amiga3D]

Actually the F-16 had an inordinate number of problems. Unfortunately since it's a single engine fighter (idiotic) these generally resulted in lost hardware. We nicknamed it "the lawn dart."

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[hawguy]

Its called Toyota went for fly by wire. There was non of this when the throttle body was an actual link to the accelerator. If you do not do proper control system design you do not get an F-16, you get a fly away Toyota. Cars can get away with such because the link between the throttle body and the accelerator has always been physical until a few years back.

Hasn't electronic fuel injection been around since the 70's? It's been almost 20 years since I've had a mechanically controlled accelerator:

http://www.honda.com/newsandviews/article.aspx?id=2003112035704

2003 Honda Accord -- Drivetrain

Electronic Throttle Control
Another factor that contributes to the world-class performance of the Accord's new V6 engine is an all-new electronic throttle control (ETC) system. This system controls the throttle during transmission shifts for improved smoothness. It also allows for throttle control to be incorporated in the traction control system and integrates the cruise control function into the ETC. This computer controlled drive-by-wire (DBW) package is a feature that will be incorporated into other future Honda powerplants. Key system components include an accelerator position sensor, electronically controlled throttle body, DBW driver unit, and the main electronic control unit (ECU).

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[Kalidor]

It just would have been nice if they gave some figures. I seem to remember some early reports indicating of the massive number of cases they had investigated only 6 were attributable to mechanical/physical issues.

Additionally, I've always thought the floor matt problem was a bit of a red herring cause the incident consistently referenced had a rental agent accidentally put a matt in a particular model car, that belonged in a completely different model and class vehicle. In other-words, the agent put a square peg into a round hole and handed it off to someone who had driven the car for maybe two minutes. That said I do give credit to Toyota for at least going back and installing the same clips my 20 year old car has to keep matts in place, but I doubt that would have done anything to prevent the pedal getting stuck in the accident that started the whole mess with the matts in the first place.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[hawguy]

It's been almost 20 years since

Whoops, that should be 10 years. I was off by a factor of 10. (*)

(*) I know a difference of 10 is not actually a factor of 10 but hey, it's slashdot, what are the chances someone will notice?

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not so much that people need to learn to drive, it's that old people need to have their licenses revoked unless they can prove competence behind the wheel anually.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[burnin1965]

There was non of this when the throttle body was an actual link to the accelerator.

From the NHTSA recall database...

CHRYSLER SEBRING 1997 ON CERTAIN PASSENGER VEHICLES EQUIPPED WITH 2.5L V6 ENGINES, THE THROTTLE CONTROL CABLE CAN FRAY CAUSING THE THROTTLE TO BIND OR STICK. THIS COULD POTENTIALLY RESULT IN A LOSS OF THROTTLE CONTROL, INCREASING THE RISK OF A CRASH.

DODGE RAM 1995 PICKUP TRUCKS EQUIPPED WITH DIESEL ENGINES. THE THROTTLE CABLE COULD UNRAVEL (FRAY) OR BREAK RESULTING IN LOSS OF THROTTLE CONTROL. A THROTTLE THAT DOES NOT RETURN TO IDLE COULD RESULT IN UNEXPECTED ACCELERATION, INCREASING THE RISK OF A CRASH.

FORD ESCAPE 2001 SPORT UTILITY VEHICLES EQUIPPED WITH SPEED CONTROL. THE SPEED CONTROL CABLE CAN HAVE A CRACKED OR MISSING SPEED CONTROL CABLE SERVO CAP LOCATING TAB. THE LOCATING TAB COULD ENTER THE SERVO CLUTCH CAVITY AND INTERFERE WITH THE SPEED CONTROL SERVO CLUTCH. ALSO, WATER COULD ENTER THOSE UNITS THAT CONTAIN A CRACKED OR MISSING SERVO CAP LOCATING TAB, EVENTUALLY CAUSING CORROSION THAT COULD INTERFERE WITH THE FUNCTION OF THE SPEED CONTROL. IF EITHER OF THESE CONDITIONS OCCURS AND THE SPEED CONTROL IS USED, THE SPEED CONTROL COULD PREVENT THE THROTTLE FROM RETURNING TO IDLE, RESULTING IN A STUCK THROTTLE. A STUCK THROTTLE COULD RESULT IN A CRASH.

FORD F150 1998 THE THROTTLE IS UNABLE TO RETURN TO IDLE DUE TO ICE FORMING IN THE THROTTLE BODY WHEN THE TEMPERATURE RANGES FROM -10 TO -40 DEGREES FAHRENHEIT. INCREASED BRAKE PEDAL EFFORTS OR SOME INCREASE IN STOPPING DISTANCE COULD RESULT.

KIA SPORTAGE 1996 THE ACCELERATOR PEDAL ASSEMBLY COULD BIND OR STICK DURING OPERATION. THIS CONDITION CAN CAUSE THE ACCELERATOR TO HOLD THE THROTTLE PARTIALLY OPEN, RESULTING IN LOSS OF VEHICLE CONTROL INCREASING THE RISK OF A VEHICLE ACCIDENT.

CHEVROLET CAVALIER 1996 THE ACCELERATOR CONTROL CABLE COULD HAVE BEEN KINKED DURING ASSEMBLY CAUSING HIGH ACCELERATOR PEDAL EFFORT, STICKING ACCELERATOR CONTROL CABLE, OR A BROKEN ACCELERATOR CONTROL CABLE. IF THE ACCELERATOR CONTROL CABLE STICKS OR BREAKS, UNWANTED ACCELERATION AND/OR LOSS OF THROTTLE CONTROL CAN RESULT INCREASING THE RISK OF A VEHICLE ACCIDENT.

FORD F600, F800 1990, 1991 THE THROTTLE CABLE WHICH RUNS FROM THE ACCELERATOR TO THE GOVERNOR ASSEMBLY HOUSING MAY HAVE BEEN KINKED DURING ASSEMBLY, CAUSING EXCESSIVE WEAR OF THE CABLE HOUSING INNER LINING. THIS COULD RESULT IN EITHER FRACTURE OR STICKING OF THE CABLE. IF THE THROTTLE CABLE FRACTURES, ENGINE SPEED WILL RETURNTO IDLE. IF THE CABLE JAMS OR STICKS, THE ENGINE WILL REMAIN AT THE SPEED ATWHICH IT WAS RUNNING WHEN THE JAMMING OCCURRED. A STUCK THROTTLE COULD RESULT INLOSS OF CONTROL AND AN ACCIDENT.

FORD RANGER 1990 THROTTLE LEVER MAY CONTACT THROTTLE BODY AIR INLET TUBE, WITH THE POTENTIAL FOR THROTTLE REMAINING OPEN FOLLOWING RELEASE OF THE ACCELERATOR PEDAL FROM THE FULL-THROTTLE POSTION IN TRUCKS WITH 4.0 L ENGINES. UNCONTROLLED ACCELERATION COULD CREATE LACK OF CONTROLAND CAUSE AN ACCIDENT.

VOLKSWAGEN RABBIT 1984 THE THROTTLE SHAFT OF THE CARBURETOR MAY CRACK AND EVENTUALLY BREAK AT THE THREADED HOLE FOR THE THROTTLE PLATE CONNECTION DUE TO EXCESSIVE VIBRATION OF THE THROTTLE SHAFT. CONSEQUENCE OF DEFECT: IF THE THROTTLE SHAFT BREAKS, THE THROTTLE WOULD NOT RETURN TO ITS IDLE POSITION. THIS COULD RESULT IN LOSS OF CONTROL AND AN ACCIDENT.

So the accelerator problems started before fly by wire, I guess its time to give up on those new fangled throttle cables and springs, maybe go back to the buggy and whip. Just be sure to carry a pistol to shoot that horse if it accelerates out of control.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[fractoid]

I just have to wonder that if it IS indeed driver error, why so many more incidents with this make?

The error in question was choosing to drive this make? :P

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[Zancarius]

3.) The chance of every piece of a drive by wire failing in such a way as to cause your car to accelerate uncontrollably is probably similar to your chance of being struck down by a falling meteorite. In the unusual even that it does happen, you can shift your car into neutral to stop.

That's what I don't understand. There was at least one incident where the individual(s) involved in a fatal crash had sufficient time to phone 911 and describe their emergency but it didn't occur to them to pop the vehicle into neutral, use the handbrake, and pull over to diagnose the problem with the vehicle stopped?

I'm sorry, but if (if) the vehicle did anything unexpected to me, that'd be my first reaction. To hell with the engine--if it blows, it blows--they can be replaced, lives can't.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[noidentity]

Who is this Matt, and why is he being blamed for this?

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[noidentity]

I just have to wonder that if it IS indeed driver error, why so many more incidents with this make?

Could it be driver error that is made more likely as a result of a design issue in the car? Pedals too close together, feel too similar, some shit like that?

You assume that every make of car has an equally-distributed demographic of user. Let's say that a particular model appeals mostly to teenagers, and another appeals mostly to old people. If you saw an increase in wrecks in one or the other, it could be due to the model, or teens/old people.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[mikerubin]

On your point #1 (and I will verify tomorrow AM) - My 2011 Taurus will not drop the engine output when both the brakes and gas are pressed. I hit a curb when this happened (driving with over sized steel-toe shoes).
The 2010 Camry I had, after the reprogram/recall, would drop to nearly idle if you tried to 'power brake'.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[Anonymous Coward]

Picture this: You're a 65-year-old lady with shaky hands, a strong sense of dignity, and poor reflexes.

You drive into something. You're scared, humiliated, and looking for someone to blame.
Good news! You're driving a Toyota.
How long do you think it would take for you to convince yourself that the car drove into that storefront on its own? It's really easy to believe something you really, really want to be true, especially if people would be inclined to believe you.

Anyway, that's my theory on 75% of these events.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[fractoid]

Exactly. For a mechanical throttle that gets stuck, there are multiple ways in which you can prevent the undesired outcome (ie. uncontrolled acceleration). You can blip the throttle, or physically pull the accelerator pedal up, to try and unjam it. You can turn it off at the ignition. You can push in the clutch. You can shift the car to neutral. Any one of those, even if the others fail, can prevent uncontrolled acceleration.

In a drive-by-wire car, all of those are controlled by the computer. There's no physical input with which the driver can disconnect the drive train. There's no physical switch in the ignition that cuts power to the spark plugs. Unless the problem is an accelerator pedal which is physically stuck down, which the driver can pull up, EVERY recourse that you had in your Corolla has been removed and replaced with "ask the car's computer very nicely to stop doing that."

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[Kalidor]

Yeah, I knew something wasn't right when I was typing. I'd mod up the funny if I could.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuel injection doesn't control how much air is let into the engine.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[Eskarel]

Well, a few things.

1. The study determined there were other causes than just driver error(the mat and pedal issues they fined Toyota for last week) so there actually is a problem with this make.
2. Toyota is or at least was the most popular make of car in the world, so even if there weren't other issues at work, proportion would mean more Toyota issues than others. When you slice out all the car models whose intended market is people who enjoy driving and are at least theoretically less likely not to know how to do it, I'd say this proportion is even higher.
3. People don't like taking responsibility for being stupid. When they hear people talking about problems with Toyotas, and especially when Toyota got fined they'd blame everything on it.

In essence, Toyota did have problems, but that doesn't mean that some Toyota drivers didn't make mistakes and that some of those drivers didn't try to avoid responsibility.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[paimin]

Ah, you've never driven a Prius. The shift knob and the ignition are both controls that appear to activate software functions. Neither is mechanical. Perhaps there is some kind of mechanical override possible, but I sure didn't see it the two times I was behind the wheel of a Prius.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[mug funky]

it was not the pedal. it was the throttle inside the car.

my old '88 did it too.

fucking love those old things. too bad a thief loved my last one too.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[DavidTC]

To be fair, the correct response of an out of control acceleration is to cut the engine, not shift to neutral. It will stop you faster as momentum now has to fight the engine, and it won't risk any transmission problems. (Engines are designed to be cut off when running...as that is, obviously, how you're supposed to turn them off anyway. Automatic transmissions are not 'designed' to be shifted to neutral while running, although it usually won't hurt.)

Also, if your engine was out of control, you'd feel pretty stupid if it caught fire while you were stopping. Just turn the damn thing off, and leave it in gear if you want to stop quick, and put it neutral if you don't. (Like you're trying to get out of the road.)

And, yes, your power brakes will have enough power in them to use them to stop. Your power brakes have enough power in them to stop the car once, always, so unless you're stupid and let the stopped car then coast down a hill, you're fine. Of course, you can stop the car without power brakes, I'm just pointing out the 'power' won't run out until after enough 'brakage' has provided to stop the car anyway. Power brakes are a red herring here.

And don't attempt to break with the handbrake unless you really need to stop this very second. I suspect that was implied, but I thought I'd mention it anyway. The car will stop pretty quickly fighting an engine, and throwing the handbrake at even moderate speeds is a good way to go into a skid, as evidenced by every driving movie ever made...your handbrake does not have anti-lock.

In this specific case, if they decide to cut the engine, it's entirely possible that they didn't know how, because for some reason, the US government lets companies build push-start cars without obvious mechanical 'cut off the engine' buttons. You have to hold the button for four second, and have fun doing that while dodging drivers...if you happen to know that secret, that is.

But, anyway, they should have gone to 'shift to neutral' as a fallback position, so I don't understand that either. I don't understand anyone who gets 'trapped' in an accelerating car.

There's about ten seconds of danger as the car starts going crazy that I can see involving fatal accidents, and obviously people can get hit by other cars after they cut off the engine but are, for example, in the middle of the express way, trying to make it to the side on momentum...

...but I simply do not grasp getting 'trapped'. Going down a mountain where you've burn out your brakes, sure, but that's not your engine. Anywhere else, no.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[adolf]

IIRC, that individual had already roasted the brakes in the course of several half-assed attempts at slowing the vehicle.

Stopping a car stuck at WOT once is easy: Mash the brake pedal hard, and stand on it until stopped while letting ABS sort out whatever difficulties that might entail. Eventually, shift into neutral and/or kill the engine whenever available brain power permits -- either before or after the car comes to a safe rest.

Stopping a car stuck at WOT using more than one half-assed attempt to slow down, as that individual tried, is hard: Mash the pedal, car slows down but doesn't stop as swiftly as normal. Panic. Release pedal, try again. Pump brakes. Act stupid. Dial 911. Try again. Etc.

Each time you do that, the brakes get warmer, until the brake fluid boils and pads turn to muck. In my experience, an average not-so-special passenger car only has a couple of 80-90MPH stops in quick succession before the brakes turn to goo. So, after sufficient fucking around with the brake pedal (instead of actually being stubborn and insistent on it stopping AT ONCE), the pedal gets soft and the brakes don't even appreciably slow the vehicle -- maybe not at all at WOT. After that, panic more. Add this new panic to the existing panic, and shifting to neutral might rationally be the last thing you'll be thinking of. (IIRC from the 911 recording, he started praying instead.)

Also, remember, some of these (most? all?) Toyotas had a funky push-button start configuration which required one to push and hold a button for some number of seconds before the engine would shut down while in gear. This point is obviously an RTFM sort of problem, but that doesn't mean that it's not a problem....

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[adolf]

BMW 325I 1995 THROTTLE OPERATES SLOWLY WHEN COLD. THIS CONDITION CAN CAUSE THE ACCELERATOR TO HOLD THE THROTTLE PARTIALLY OPEN, RESULTING IN LOSS OF VEHICLE CONTROL INCREASING THE RISK OF A VEHICLE ACCIDENT.

I made that up, of course -- AFAIK there's no NHTSA verbiage about the problem. But I just wanted to chime in and say throttle cables can have issues, too, and they can exist outside of the realm of NHTSA reports. I experience it every day that it's cold outside, every time I shift gears, until the radiant heat of the engine warms up the cable and/or return spring (and after that it works properly).

In my case, the car is old, has lots of miles on it, and is simply due for a cable replacement. Parts wear out, etc. It's no big deal to me (I know how to use the clutch pedal, the brakes are awesome, and I trust the rev limiter to keep the engine from eating itself if it came to that), so I'll just fix it sometime after it warms up outside.

For the less-initiated, I can easily see how issues like this could become a real and unexpected problem, however.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[adolf]

Aye.

Even my 1995 BMW had the shift-lever connected electronically, and it wasn't* a particularly fancy transmission: Just a GM 4L30E. The shift lever was just a fancy electrical switch, despite feeling chunky and solid as you pushed it between gear selections.

If a Prius, modern as they're supposed to be, is any different in this regard I'll eat my hat.

*: Past-tense, because the car now has a Getrag 5-speed manual gearbox. This change was the only reason I even had an opportunity to see what the AT shift lever looked like...

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[demiurg]

frequency of reports was most directly correlated to the amount of media attention the issue had received

Do I really have to remind you that correlation does not mean causation ? It can be the other way around - the more incidents are reported the more media attention gets drawn to this issue.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[arcsimm]

Correlation does not imply causation, but it it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively. The Toyota unintended acceleration problem has all the hallmarks of a self-perpetuating media feeding frenzy, and none of the empirical evidence that's come to light suggests that, beyond a few mismatched floor mats or a very rare mechanical defect in the gas pedal, the real problem is that most of the American driving public would rather have a convenient scapegoat rather than own up to the fact that they can barely distinguish the gas from the brake.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[ShakaUVM]

>>3.) The chance of every piece of a drive by wire failing in such a way as to cause your car to accelerate uncontrollably is probably similar to your chance of being struck down by a falling meteorite. In the unusual even that it does happen, you can shift your car into neutral to stop.

My old car (an 84 Caprice Classic) went into a bout of uncontrolled acceleration when I was driving around the campus loop. Nearly killed a few people before I cut the engine power. It's a terrifying feeling having the engine racing out of control, with your feet pushing as hard on the brakes as you can... I thought the floor mat had caught on the accelerator, but apparently it was a known issue with them (called "The Flying Dutchman Syndrome" back then) but they never issued a recall for it. Problem was with the cruise deciding to engage arbitrarily, at an arbitrarily high speed.

It launched me through a stop sign right when I was braking, with pedestrians in the intersection. I could easily see how someone would panic when that happened... and yeah, the brakes absolutely did not work.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[Dahamma]

Yeah, but those other causes almost seem like someone claiming a murder defense due to the gun having a "hair trigger". Threre was still some bad driving involved. Neither floor mats nor sticky pedals prevent someone from stomping the brakes (and if you don't believe brakes trump accelerator go try it on your car, it might not be pretty but you won't be barreling down the highway at 80mph...)

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[ShakaUVM]

I had a bout of uncontrolled acceleration in my 84 Caprice Classic, which was supposedly caused by a short in the cruise control system causing it to try to accelerate to arbitrarily high speeds.

I also had the throttle cable break on me, another time, and limped home in Drive.

I really wish people on here would stop pretending to be experts and claiming uncontrolled acceleration can "never happen". It can, it does, and it's terrifying to have your car unresponsive to your commands and refusing to brake. I killed my engine, but not everyone has the presence of mind to do that.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[im_thatoneguy]

I just have to wonder that if it IS indeed driver error, why so many more incidents with this make?

Also could someone please look into why BMW vehicles make their drivers such assholes.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[Zoxed]

> Neither floor mats nor sticky pedals prevent someone from stomping the brakes

And selecting neutral.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[newcastlejon]

Even a BMW has at least one part that doesn't work: the indicator stalk, usually, but the driver would do in a pinch.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[vlm]

To hell with the engine--if it blows, it blows--they can be replaced, lives can't.

If the engine computer doesn't want the RPMs above 7000 or whatever, it simply shuts off the injectors on any post 80s car. Go ahead, try to overrun the rev limiter. Good luck.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[LordKronos]

Do I really have to remind you that correlation does not mean causation ? It can be the other way around - the more incidents are reported the more media attention gets drawn to this issue.

Possible, but consider this. Toyotas from all model lines and from multiple years, some just a few months old, some more than 5 years old, suddenly all started failing at roughly the same time. If each vehicle had started failing when it was 6 months old or something like that related to the age of the vehicle, that would be understandable. The fact that vehicles with such a diverse range of ages suddenly all had problems at the same time indicates a very high probability of some sort of outside influence.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[LordKronos]

The floor mat issue was that the bottom edge of the pedel was touching the mat and getting stuck. The sticky pedal issue was that 2 pieces of metal in the upper linkage (above the part where you put your foot) were becoming wedged together and not releasing.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[pizzach]

From the number of people who think that a speed limit sign means a minimuim speed and from how when people do get into an accident they comment how the size of their large car saved them instead of how their speeding and the size of their car killed te other driver...

this investigation outcome sounds more reasonable than you would think.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[LordOfCoffee]

My father-in-law's Avalon had the rapid acceleration happen as he was merging onto a highway. He ended up slowing down by throwing it in neutral, which caused the engine redline protection to kick in and drop the engine out of gear. This happened on their way to FL for the winter.
We visited them a few weeks later and while we were there, one night we started examining the car. I had thought the floormats causing it was kind of a funny reason, but after seeing how the acceleration pedal goes into a recessed hole, I could maybe see how that would happen. My FIL was aware of the floor mat issue, especially because he added his own rubber mats to the car. He remembers kicking the floor mat backwards when he had the sudden acceleration, and when he did get it stopped, the mat was not under the pedal. It's a weird pedal design that they have on that car, and I could see how a mat might get wedged there, but I still think there is something else contributing to it.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[theBuddman]

"I do know that the slickest way to lie is to tell the right amount of truth at the right time — and then shut up."

-- Robert Heinlein

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[Anonymous Coward]

So far there are three known causes of unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles: improperly installed floor mats, sticky pedals, and driver error.

If the first or second causes contributed to large periods of unintended acceleration, it's still driver error: all a driver has to do is to put the transmission in neutral and the unintended acceleration would cease. If the ECU were functioning properly, the rev limiter would keep the engine from destroying itself even if the pedal were stuck. Of course, this doesn't prevent an accident that happens shortly after the unintended acceleration begins. Such an accident could be very bad if the driver was approaching a red light at the time the malfunction occurred.

Drivers should know enough about the multi-ton high-velocity vehicles they're responsible for safely piloting to deal with dangerous situations when they occur. There are many more common dangerous situations that most drivers don't know how to deal with either (hydroplaning, fish-tailing, evasive maneuvering, failed brakes, etc). Unfortunately, driving is so necessary in the USA that just about anyone over fifteen years old with a normally functioning brain can obtain a driver's license. We really should have stricter standards. It's harder to obtain a motorcycle license than a standard license, yet a typical car is capable of doing far more damage to others than a typical motorcycle.

Disclaimer: I used to write control software for jet engines, so I may be involved in the conspiracy to cover up the flaws in Toyota's ECUs ;)

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[JimFive]

It's not so much that people need to learn to drive, it's that all people need to have their licenses revoked unless they can prove competence behind the wheel anually.

FTFY. -- JimFive

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[Anonymous Coward]

People don't report these things because (a) no one listens, (b) everyone blames them (see below), etc.

You get more reports about anything when there is media attention because people have a hope that the problem will be fixed and they now have a point of contact.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[Cederic]

Top Gear (reputable BBC television programme that assesses and reviews cars) stated a couple of years ago that the arseholes all now drive Audis not BMWs.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[Zancarius]

Very interesting points, thank you.

Though one question does arise: What, precisely, would happen to the steering control in the circumstance that the engine is shut off. I realize it's possible to steer (with some difficulty) if the engine is cut off, but I would assume that it is impossible to accidentally engage the steering wheel lock (such as when removing the key at a complete stop) while the vehicle is moving?

Pardon my ignorance, but this certainly isn't something I've actually tried, but it is something that I'd be interested in knowing. The other thing implied by my original post was that if I--a generally mechanically disinclined individual--can figure several ways to slow the vehicle in an emergency, why someone who was supposedly a former state trooper couldn't.

Re:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary.

[DavidTC]

Oh, if you're talking about the state trooper, I have since learned that he was in a car with an 'automated' system that switches into gear by push-button...so apparently, the controller won't let him shift while moving.

Like I said, it's absurd they allow such cars on the road. They mandate rear-view windows, but not an obvious emergency cut off.

My comment that 'anyone caught in a runaway car' still stands for all cars with actual engine cut offs, but this guy had both the normal ways of cutting off the car removed from him. (And he was, in fact, in a rental.)

As for cutting off the engine in a normal car, it's all fine. The steering lock of a car is base on if it's in park or not, not whether or not the engine is running.

And you won't be steering 'with some difficulty'. Power steering works off the vacuum of the engine, and that keeps being created as long as the engine is being turned (Which is a while, when you're using it to stop the car.), and on top of that the vacuum doesn't go away until 'used' by steering. Same with power brakes.

Basically, as long as you (And your engine) are moving at a reasonable speed, you'll have vacuum-assisted steering and brakes. Once you're almost stopped, they'll go away, but, then again, you don't need them at that point. (Actually, you probably don't need them before that point, stopping without them is not that hard. It's the different between the 'light tap' we have to give brakes down, and 'hold down'.)

My mother lives down a rather long sloped hill, at the end of the dead end, so often when I visit her I sometimes cut my engine at the top and coast all the way, about a quarter mile...and I have power braking at the end to stop.

I actually recommend that people find an abandoned parking lot, in the rain, and figure out exactly what their car does in weird circumstances. Skid, hydroplane, attempt to stop the car with the engine off, cut the engine off and back on and see if it restarts (Mine does, apparently many don't.), etc. (Just don't try shifting it into reverse while moving forward. Odds are what that does in your car is grind the transmission and then slam you into the steering wheel.)

Heard this before a few times

[rasper99]

Same result starting with Audi 25 years ago and many more since then.

PEBSWAC

[MrEricSir]

Problem Exists Between Steering Wheel And Chair

Re:PEBSWAC

[v1]

so, more evidence supporting the popular conclusion that people are just looking for someone to blame for their panic-stomp-on-gas-instead-of-brake reaction.

Either trying to avoid the insurance deductible, or the embarrassment of public knowledge of your bad driving I suppose.

Re:PEBSWAC

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer the definition of a drunk driver
"The nut behind the wheel was too tight"

Re:PEBSWAC

[Midnight Thunder]

So do we conclude pure user error or should we be considering a user interface design fault as well?

Good design should aim to reduce avoidable user error.

Re:PEBSWAC

[MrEricSir]

We can start by requiring alcohol manufacturers to make their bottles and cans an unusual shape that doesn't fit in any car's cup holders.

Re:PEBSWAC

[h4rr4r]

If you cannot handle your car getting the throttle stuck wide open you should not be driving.

Re:PEBSWAC

[DudeTheMath]

Well, sure. When the interface was designed, speeds were low and it was safe enough (and quite easy, with the upright posture that lasted into the '50s and '60s) to look at your foot on the pedal to make sure you were using the right one.

Unfortunately, we're dealing with a century of backwards-compatibility issues. Throttle and brake pedals lie next to each other, and even though drivers can no longer easily see them, unless you can convince an entire industry to adopt your obviously superior user interface, there they will remain.

I can think of one alternative interface right off the bat, similar to the personal watercraft: pulling the steering wheel towards you accelerates, pushing it away brakes (and releasing it returns it to the closed, "braking," position). In a panic, I'd expect humans to naturally brace themselves, pushing the wheel away, or cover their heads, releasing it.

The best interface, of course, is the one where I tell the car where I want to go and then work, read, sleep, etc. until the GPS says, "You have reached your destination."

Re:PEBSWAC

[h4rr4r]

This would result in braking in tight corners at speed, the last thing you want to be doing. This is because to turn the wheel you will end up pushing it in somewhat.

Re:PEBSWAC

[EdIII]

You know normally I would agree.

However, I remember the case of Koua Fong Lee who ended up in prison. I sincerely have a hard time believing that somebody with no history of mental problems, in a car with relatives, in a car with his wife and unborn child, would accelerate down an offramp into another car... on the way home from church.

In order to believe that Toyota has no defects I would have to believe this man just lost it and started screaming "no brakes! no brakes!" to his family while plowing into another car at 70-90mph. He also purportedly had plenty of time to stop starting at the beginning of the offramp, so it would have been a very prolonged panic-stomp-on-gas-instead-of-brake reaction. Which is strange, because if I recall correctly one of the reasons he ended up in prison was the very lack of tire tracks showing that he did brake which the prosecution used to show intent, not manufacturing defects in the car *because the onboard computer could not be wrong*.

So I still don't know about this and I have a vested interest in it not being true since I love Toyota. Had a Prius and hybrid Highlander. I want to get another one, but this situation still gives me pause.

Re:PEBSWAC

[Anonymous Coward]

Not necessarily. It's called "Human Factors". I have a 2008 Toyota RAV4. Something about the relative height and size of the brake and accelerator pedals has lead me to unintentionally rev up the engine when I meant to ease on the brake. I only happens when my attention is focused intensely outside the car - like I don't want to go into a ditch as I'm U-turning on a country road. I've had probably 10 times as many incidences with this car as with all my previous cars put together (otherwise I like the car).

To me, there seems to be a subtle design issue about the pedals' height and position. It's not just the driver here, I'm sure.

Re:PEBSWAC

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the proper term is: There's a nut loose behind the wheel.

Re:PEBSWAC

[DudeTheMath]

Hmm. We have different driving styles. I find myself pulling on the wheel slightly during a powered turn. Anyway, that's what stability and traction control systems are for, right?

Re:PEBSWAC

[arcsimm]

Anyway, that's what stability and traction control systems are for, right?

No, no, a thousand times no. Traction control and stability control are intended, basically, to modify control input when the driver does something that puts the vehicle outside the envelope of safe control. If you're going to drive as though the TCS/ESC systems magically make it safe to drive that way, you're essentially saying "I'm incapable of controlling my vehicle, but that's OK because these computers will save me from myself!" The end result is like what was observed when anti-lock brakes first came on the scene -- at best, no net gain in safety. If you're going to trust a electronic system to protect you from your own mistakes, it's only a matter of time before you find yourself in a situation that exceeds the capabilities of that system.

Re:PEBSWAC

[RogueWarrior65]

Problem exists between head and ass. Solution: remove head from ass, then drive.

Re:PEBSWAC

[v1]

that's talking about no brakes. no brakes and stuck gas are different things, I thought stuck gas was the issue being discussed here?

Re:PEBSWAC

[Mspangler]

"So do we conclude pure user error or should we be considering a user interface design fault as well?"

I would. Given there is no clutch, and no direct mechanical link between the transmission "lever" and the actual transmission, I won't be buying one unless there is a BRB. (Big Red Button, otherwise known as an Emergency Shutdown.)

And no, holding in the shutdown button for five seconds does not count. I want it like my table saw. Whop, power off.

That's just "drive motor off" too, leave steering and power brakes live if they are not driven off the engine.

I'm glad this all happened. Now I've had a chance to think about it. So if the second generation Leaf has enough real world range to use as a commuter, I'll know what I want.

Re:PEBSWAC

[QuantumBeep]

Remember, as compelling it is, you have one story there. It's not data, I'm afraid.

But it does bear considering.

Re:PEBSWAC

[FrameRotBlues]

True drunks don't care about convenience. If they're so inclined, they will duct tape some shit to the armrest to hold their beverage; if not, they will drive with one hand. Make no mistake, that is a human issue and it needs to have human solutions.

Re:PEBSWAC

[FrameRotBlues]

Another commenter brought up the e-stop idea, and I have to disagree from a consumer's vantage point: A large mushroom operator placed in visual range of the driver is, IMHO, going to cause paranoia or at the very least uncertainty about when to use it. I work with industrial controls for a living, and while I understand the necessity of e-stops in an industrial situation, those situations are not encountered by the public - the operator requires extensive safety training of that machine first and foremost. Just like you wouldn't expect your 5-year old to operate your table saw with no prior training, you cannot expect an e-stop button to solve the problems that a mentally incompetent operator can bring to the table.

Drivers already have a way to disable their vehicle - the ignition switch. Whether or not they think about using it is a training/human issue. Providing one or 10 local emergency stops does not change the fact that it is a training/human issue.

Re:PEBSWAC

[jo_ham]

Even with no assist from the engine, the brake pedal is physically connected to the brake pads via hydraulics. There is no way for software to prevent the brakes being applied if you put your foot on the pedal. If the engine is running, this will also supply vacuum assist too, since that is a purely mechanical system for force multiplying your effort on the pedal. There's no software to go wrong or stop you - if you stamp on that pedal, your brakes will engage unless the hydraulics are faulty.

The brakes are also much more effective at stopping you than the transmission is at making you go forwards - easily demonstrated on even a slight incline - it requires almost no effort (with the engine running) and little effort (with the engine off) to stop a car rolling down the incline, yet moving the car up via the engine is much more work (for the engine, obviously). Even at full throttle, in gear, the brakes on a family car can overpower the engine, and then either the engine will stall or the clutch will slip (or your automatic transmission will shred).

Unless the guy's brake lines were defective, and he had no hydraulic pressure at all, "no brakes" just isn't an excuse for a car being unstoppable due to a stuck accelerator. Accident investigators would have carefully checked for this. There is a slight possibility that all of his brake lines failed at once (or failed at the master cylinder) but it is unlikely, especially combined with a *second* unlikely event - uncontrolled acceleration.

Re:PEBSWAC

[sjames]

That case is a disgusting display of how much justice has decayed in this country no matter how you look at it. Either the car malfunctioned and Lee was completely blameless or it was a genuine error on his part. Brain lock if you will. Either way, being in jail for 3 years (out of the 8) and having his youngest children not really knowing who he is is outrageous. Essentially he is in jail for felony being human. The court says loud and clear that we are expected to be perfect automatons at all times or else.

Re:PEBSWAC

[green1]

And if your car's interface does not provide for any of the normal ways of handling it, the car shouldn't be allowed on the road.

Unfortunately, many modern cars have no easy way of shutting off the engine except when parked, the same computer that handles accelerator inputs also controls gear shifting, and ignition, and the emergency-brake (what part of EMERGENCY brake do designers no longer understand????)

So your only hope is that standing on the brake pedal will a) actually work, and b) work well enough to overcome the throttle fast enough to avoid a collision.

This is way beyond poor automotive design, and well in to things that should be criminal.

Re:PEBSWAC

[green1]

"Paranoia" as you put it, while driving, is a GOOD THING. The single largest danger on public roads right now is that people don't realize how dangerous it truly is to operate a several thousand pound machine at speeds more than 10 times faster than they can run. Anything that makes people realize this, and gives them a way to safely bring a malfunctioning (for any reason) vehicle to a stop, is welcome in my books.

Beyond that, your assertion that people can disable their vehicle with the ignition switch is basically false in the vehicles being described here. To disable the vehicle you have to press and hold the start button for 3-5 seconds, this is not labelled in any way, is not intuitive, and is not something the driver has ever had to do in the course of their normal activities. In addition it is no where near "quickly", and it also relies on the same computer operating properly that you may be trying to shut down for a malfunction.

This is way beyond poor design, and in to things that should be criminal.

Re:PEBSWAC

[FrameRotBlues]

I see. I'm familiar with ignition switches that actually apply or remove power to specific systems, rather than an input to a computer. Thank you for clarifying that, it definitely makes a difference.

Re:PEBSWAC

[MrEricSir]

Fine. In that case, I'll sit in the car, and whenever the driver takes a swig I'll give him a stern look and shout "NO!"

Re:PEBSWAC

[DavidTC]

Drivers already have a way to disable their vehicle - the ignition switch.

Forget driver's licenses...how about poster licenses, where people have to answer basic questions before making idiotic fucking comments?

The push-button cars HAVE NO IGNITION SWITCHES.

That is, in fact, the entire point of the post you're replying to. There is no way to cut the power, except for secret 'hold the start button for four seconds' method, which no one knows, and is obviously not that useful in emergencies anyway.

Of course, the solution isn't a 'emergency button'.

The solution is to put a fucking switch that rotates counterclockwise on the right side of the steering wheel that cuts power to the engine, exactly in the same place, and exactly the same way, as an ignition switch, like everyone has, as you put it, been trained to do. On a push button car, it would not have a removable key in it, and would stay 'on' basically all the time, but it would be exactly where everyone already knows it is.

Re:PEBSWAC

[FrameRotBlues]

I don't own a Toyota, so I'm not familiar with that system. Only just recently in this comment branch has it been explicitly stated (by green1) that the vehicles are keyless. What I'm familiar with are actual mechanical switches that connect and disconnect power to certain subsystems, and they're usually attached to a lock cylinder that is operated by a key, just as you describe.

There are serious safety issues posed by using what amounts to a digital computer input going high for "turning the car on and off." How engineers could justify making a choice like that, I'm not sure. But it's not the direction I would have gone.

Re:PEBSWAC

[adolf]

Even with no assist from the engine, the brake pedal is physically connected to the brake pads via hydraulics. There is no way for software to prevent the brakes being applied if you put your foot on the pedal.

One word: ABS.

Give the pedal a good hard push on ice with bad tires, and you'll quickly see that there most assuredly is a software method to prevent the brakes from being applied.

Anecdotally, I've also experienced reduced braking power on more than one vehicle with malfunctioning ABS due to wiring faults and/or bad wheel sensors: If the system disables itself as it is supposed to, this isn't a big problem. If it has not yet detected the fault (and, mind you, it resets the fault indicator every time you start the vehicle), stopping even on dry pavement can rather more interesting than anticipated.

I'm not suggesting that this is a part of the Toyota problem. I'm merely suggesting that your absolute generalization is generally not absolutely correct.

Re:PEBSWAC

[DavidTC]

Yeah, sorry I went off on you, it's just astonishing that companies are allowed to sell cars like this, even after these problems, whether or not they actually exist or not.

It's a blatantly obvious solution. It's is literally so obvious that it pissed me the hell off when I discovered they didn't do this and were allowed not to do this.

It is literally the most important fact about this, and the fact that every single damn newspaper and the entire fucking Congress weren't leaping in and saying 'Hey, wait, why were you allowed to make a car without an actual off switch, and can we change that law by, oh, eight o'clock tonight?' makes me insane with rage. The fact that this place isn't screaming that question makes me insane with rage.

But instead we get idiotic committees attempting to find out what the problem is. Hey, morons, we know what the problem is: It's that people can't turn their car off when random unpredictable shit happens, like it always does.

It's always the rule, though, isn't it? People who know about computers know they fuck up, and you need a goddamn mechanical control on them if they control something 'real'. It's true with automobiles, it's true with electronic voting, it's true with radiation machines.

The fact this isn't instantly obvious to the editors or the vast majority of posters here rather demonstrates how technically illiterate this place is, how full of wannabes is it. That really should have been the entire thrust of the article, so I understand that a lot of people didn't realize how goddamn stupid the cars were, because the assumption is that the editors would tell us about the stupid shit.

Re:PEBSWAC

[on the 8ball]

His initial idiot defense attorney failed to present evidence from an insurance company investigator that showed the brakes WERE applied. Also his car had ABS brakes so there would NOT be any skid marks due to how they work. A total shaft job on this poor guy by the local prosecutor who deserves a spot in hell for it.

Then you have the state patrol officer in CA who was unable to stop his Toyota despite all his efforts. As captured by a 911 call during the event.

Also there is a college engineering professor in IL (?) I think, who demo'ed a way that the electronic control board could fail WITHOUT notifying the black box.

Finally, the govt report relies totally on the black box data, but if that was bypassed then all their conclusions are worthless.

Also if this is just due to driver error, why it is only happening mainly on Toyotas? Answer me that!!

Re:PEBSWAC

[adolf]

I, for one, agree almost completely.

However, I think drivers should be informed of the function of the switch as intuitively as possible (who honestly R's the entire FM on a car except for my wife?). It also needs to be designed in such a way as to prevent accidental shutdown, so that the car doesn't shut down unexpectedly on a busy highway (which has its own safety problems).

Here's my idea for making it work:

Instead of a stop/start button with push-and-hold functionality, like we have now, plus an e-stop, as you suggest, let's do the following:

First, make it a toggle switch, with obvious visual and tactile indications of "go" and "don't go."

Second, cover it with something spring-loaded. (There's a wealth of military and industrial design knowledge covering this that I needn't go into.)

Third, eliminate the delay: Hit the switch, engine dies. End of story.

Fourth, put it central-ish on the dash, so that it could be reached by a passenger in the event that everything goes wrong and the driver is already busy dealing with that (or goes into insulin shock, or whatever).

Fifth, ensure that in the event that the e-stop is activated on accident, that putting the switch back into the "go" position will automatically restart the engine and resume normal operation.

Thus, starting the vehicle normally will consist of the following: Open cover, activate switch.

Shutting off the vehicle, whether in motion or parked, will also normally be as follows: Open cover, deactivate switch.

In this way, the operator is already familiar with the operation of the switch, because they have to use it every time they drive. Meanwhile, unintended operation of the switch (by bumping it somehow, a kid being an idiot, or whatever) is precluded by the cover, and is safely reversible in an understood fashion.

It's a little less convenient than the unprotected "Start" button in question here, but I don't think that it is unduly so, and it would make it both plain and obvious how to shut down the car if the need were to arise.

Instructions on the switch's exact behavior can be printed on the sun visor right next to the stupid airbag warnings, which should eventually let the complete idea of the concept be absorbed by the populace in general.

(I'd patent this, but I can't afford to. Consider it prior art.)

Re:PEBSWAC

[nedlohs]

Also if this is just due to driver error, why it is only happening mainly on Toyotas? Answer me that!!

Because there was lots of media attention. Hence people who accidentally pressed the wrong pedal and happened to be in a Toyota now reported that it happened to them too, while people who accidentally pressed the wrong pedal and weren't in a Toyota just said "shit I'm dumb, I pressed the wrong pedal".

Yes there were some design issues which caused the pedal to stick in some cases which triggered the media attention - but the bulk after that are just people blaming anything but themselves.

It's not the first time this has happened and it won't be the last.

Oh and you can't use the words "only" and "mainly" at the same time - if it is "only" is isn't "mainly" and if it is "mainly" is isn't "only".

Re:PEBSWAC

[nedlohs]

It's a girl's car. It's to cramped for a man to drive safely. (and yes, this is slashdot, you are hence a male)...

Re:PEBSWAC

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need to believe this guy suddenly flipped out. You said he had just come from church, where he might have spent about an hour thinking about how he couldn't cope with his situation and deciding that a car accident that he could blame on Toyota might be the easiest way out. Having family and being Christian do not prove ones sanity and plausible deniability allows people (and governments) to bypass all sorts of morality self-checks.

Re:PEBSWAC

[AK Marc]

I see your previous points as valid, as well as the response. Though I would have to say that training isn't really needed for how the large red mushroom buttons are supposed to be used, even if you need training for the devices that they are attached to. "Is there a dangerous situation?" "Yes." "Push the button."

Having that there for an idiot driver who makes an error with training to "hit it if you think the car isn't working in a safe manner" would possibly help the situation. Though the problem is that a bandsaw that is disabled is not very dangerous. A car on a highway that's disabled is possibly more dangerous than before.

Re:PEBSWAC

[winwar]

"I sincerely have a hard time believing that somebody with no history of mental problems, in a car with relatives, in a car with his wife and unborn child, would accelerate down an offramp into another car... on the way home from church."

So it would be easier to believe if he had a mental illness, didn't go to church, was divorcing his wife, etc?

"In order to believe that Toyota has no defects I would have to believe this man just lost it and started screaming "no brakes! no brakes!" to his family while plowing into another car at 70-90mph. He also purportedly had plenty of time to stop starting at the beginning of the offramp, so it would have been a very prolonged panic-stomp-on-gas-instead-of-brake reaction."

Why is this so hard for people to believe? We all make mistakes. And having your car accelerate while you think you are pressing on the brakes can be pretty panic inducing. I doubt most people would consider the idea that they might actually be pressing on the accelerator. And that belief can be pretty powerful, especially if it prevents you from being responsible for a fatal accident (legally and/or mentally). It is enough for you to blame a car rather than a person making a mistake.

Re:PEBSWAC

[thegarbz]

On that same token the Toyota Koua Fong Lee was driving was a 1996 model Camry with no other reported problems. It's only recently and on recent models that people are comparing anything. Back in 1996 car computers were a LOT simpler and ABS was a luxury. No idea if his car even had it or not, but it's only very recently that it has become an almost standard option on cars. The two incidents, just like the existence of ABS may have had nothing to do with the case. But you raise a perfectly valid point in general. Should or IS ABS already a completely separate processor?

Re:PEBSWAC

[winwar]

"It is literally the most important fact about this, and the fact that every single damn newspaper and the entire fucking Congress weren't leaping in and saying 'Hey, wait, why were you allowed to make a car without an actual off switch, and can we change that law by, oh, eight o'clock tonight?' makes me insane with rage. The fact that this place isn't screaming that question makes me insane with rage."

You are insane with rage because the off switches aren't instant? Seriously? And, yes, the cars do have off switches. The same push buttons that start the car also turn them off.

Instant switches are not a certain fix. Audio 5000's had keys and that didn't help in the face of crappy drivers. And you obviously haven't worked around machinery (vehicles and stationary) with disconnects. Because when people panic they routinely fail to use them. And their most common usage is to annoy coworkers. I don't see why cars would be any different.

"The fact this isn't instantly obvious to the editors or the vast majority of posters here rather demonstrates how technically illiterate this place is, how full of wannabes is it."

Did you ever consider that you may be a legend in your own mind?

Re:PEBSWAC

[Anonymous Coward]

Could still be mechanical though. The brakes wouldn't work very well at full throttle, due to loss of engine vacuum.

Re:PEBSWAC

[tibit]

And people think I'm crazy when I drive automatic cars with two feet (left on the brake, right on the accelerator). Seems to take a whole failure mode out of the equation now, doesn't it, huh? (puts on a smug expression) I can't imagine what it'd take for me to press the accelerator instead of the brake. If my feet would shift such that the right foot would actuate both pedals, the left food would immediately sense the brake pedal going down. Never mind that changing lanes on a crowded freeway (think Chicago) is way easier when you don't waste time by moving one foot between pedals.

Re:PEBSWAC

[tibit]

Using a digital computer in and of itself isn't a "serious safety issue". The safety problems, if any, result from poor system design taken as a whole. Digital computers, when applied correctly, are just as reliable as plain-old electromechanical logic. I'm perfectly happy routing emergency stop signals using safety-rated digital computing modules, on an office ethernet network no less. The rating of the safety stop is SIL-3. This is on a machine where the e-stop by itself won't cause issues (shutdown is always safe) -- of course there are machines where an abrupt shutdown is not what you want and then you need a more robust connection for the e-stop signals.

My nitpicks:

1. The user interface needs to be intuitive in light of people not reading the manual: pressing the start/stop button for many seconds to turn the car off -- WTF were they thinking? And what's wrong with a rotary switch, like, you know, the good ole ignition switch?

2. The control system needs to detect conflicting inputs: when brake is depressed, cut the throttle no matter what.

3. The accelerator pedal needs two kinds of sensors -- not only to detect sensor issues, but also to detect mechanical malfunction. A gas-by-wire pedal is essentially a poor-man's force sensor: a spring converts actuation force to displacement, and the displacement is then measured. I say put a darn strain gage on the pedal assembly so that you measure the bending moment as well, and then not only you have diverse inputs, but you can actually detect seizure of the pivot bushing -- the hysteresis loop on the force/displacement graph widens as the bushing friction increases. You'd think it's a no-brainer, but maybe not -- maybe I should patent that or something ;)

Re:PEBSWAC

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who has been rear-ended in a similar situation to this, by a fairly old car with no electronic brakes, and by a driver who freely admitted "i didn't realise traffic was stopped infront of me", I have to disagree with your conclusion that there cannot possibly have been human error involved. I stopped behind the four stationary cars ahead of me, looked in the mirror and saw him a few hundred meters back. Looked in my mirror again 3 or 4 seconds later, and saw he was about to crash into me at speed.

I also have a family friend, who rear-ended a stationary car at 80kph (rendering them paraplegic). She also didn't see the car parked in the break down lane, and crashed into it.

Drivers do really stupid things all the time.

Re:PEBSWAC

[Anonymous Coward]

He didn't do it on purpose. The way this works is that people mistakenly stomp on the gas, thinking it's the brake. When it doesn't work, their brains don't think "durr, wrong pedal!". They think "Oh shit, better stomp on this brake pedal even harder!". It's a common occurrence in these accidents that the driver never touches the brake until after the crash, because their brain thinks they were standing on the brake the whole time.

If it were mostly a mechanical problem, then why do these reports of unintended acceleration correlate with driver age? That's right, the older you are, the more likely your Toyota is to accelerate out of control. The average age for people reporting this was something like 60+ years old. That smacks of driver error, just like when the Audi problem correlated with driver age and height. Shorter people were more likely to have out of control Audis. It's all mass hysteria with no basis in fact. Added to the people who accidentally crashed by pressing the wrong pedal are the people who want attention (like the guy who claimed he was out of control on the freeway) and a healthy smattering of people who were trying to weasel out of accidents where they were at fault.

Re:PEBSWAC

[Anonymous Coward]

Always seemed odd that brakes are done by a pedal next to the accellerator... I mean nowdays why not put it somewhere else? Oh then everyone would have to learn to drive again.

Logically speaking, if you wanted to reduce accidents, all vehicles on the road should brake at the same rate... then it would be a lot harder to smash into someone. Cars, Lorrys and all machines brake at the same rate. Of course this in not acceptable as I wouldn't want my car to be as slow as a 10 ton lorry!

What really gets me is the difference in the mx speed of wagons, such that one will overtake and only manage 1mph more... due to differences in the top speed (limiters). So it take friggin ages for them to overtake!

Re:PEBSWAC

[Anonymous Coward]

I always had trouble with Lee's story because his car was 10 years older than the batch of recall cars. I don't doubt that the car had a problem, I just don't think it was the same as the recent issues.

Re:PEBSWAC

[elrous0]

I would also have to believe that Toyota has created the world's first flawless electronic system, one that never fails. Myself, I've never seen a piece of absolutely perfect, infallible software in my life--and yet that is essentially what this report claims that Toyota has created.

Re:PEBSWAC

[LanMan04]

To disable the vehicle you have to press and hold the start button for 3-5 seconds, this is not labelled in any way, is not intuitive, and is not something the driver has ever had to do in the course of their normal activities

It's only a feature of every personal computer since the dawn of personal computing. Certainly something they've never encountered before.

Re:PEBSWAC

[green1]

the cars do have off switches. The same push buttons that start the car also turn them off.

This is only partially true. The push button start does allow you to turn off the car, but only under 2 conditions.
1) the car is parked and you touch the button briefly
2) the car is not parked and you push and hold the button for 4 seconds.

The problem is, because people don't read manuals (nor should they have to for this) and because under normal circumstances they never try to turn off a car that isn't parked, nobody knows about method 2. so people HAVE tried to shut off the vehicle by touching the start button, often repeatedly, with no success.

Beyond that little issue is the fact that the shutdown is controlled by the very same computer that may, or may not, be malfunctioning causing the very emergency you are trying to get out of. If a computer stops properly responding to 1 input (the accelerator) can you trust that it will respond properly to another (the shutdown command)

I hope I am never forced to drive a vehicle where there is no manual shutdown for the computer in case of emergency.

This is borderline criminal interface design.

Re:PEBSWAC

[jittles]

Well you know... if you used cruise control on the highway, you could just take your foot off of the gas and put it on the ground in front of the brake pedal. Either way, you are crazy for using both feet because you really are likely to hit both pedals in the case of a panicked stop. Sure the brakes may over power the engine, but you won't slow down nearly as fast.

As for the brakes being stronger than the engine... I had a light turbo powered car that I could have easily driven with the brakes on. It would have just taken a lot of gas. I've even moved a truck with the brakes on before. Your brakes may or may not be able to out power the engines, especially once they get hot.

Re:PEBSWAC

[DavidTC]

Digital computers, when applied correctly, are just as reliable as plain-old electromechanical logic.

We don't use any sort of 'logic' to turn off a car.

There's all sorts of relays and whatnot that operate the car, but rotating the ignition switch physically disconnects the power to the fuel pump, so gasoline is not longer supplied to the engine. In cars that have ignition switches, that is.

All cars should have a switch that physically cuts power to the motor(s), just like all computers, in addition to the soft power switches, have one at the back of the case that actually physically cuts power.

Re:PEBSWAC

[lsatenstein]

I am not a mechanic, and I have not studied the Toyota gas pedal linkage. But it would seem to me that the pedal would communicate with a shaft position encoder. These encoders are usually designed with some form of graycode to binary convertor. The graycode allows a detection of physical displacement such that between any two positions, the maximum change is a single bit of data.

This works perfectly for shaft position encoders and similar devices. But suppose one of the digital sensors was flakey, (intermittant). Then it is possible that more than one bit could change, and when the gray code is converted to binary, the change can be very substantial. This would tell the computer to signal a rapid acceleration.

What I am saying is pure conjecture, but it is plausable.

Re:PEBSWAC

[adolf]

On my car(s), it's a separate system.

The 1995 BMW, for instance, has a braking system made by Ate. From the rotors to the pads to the calipers to the hoses to the master cylinder to the electronics, it's all Ate, and is almost (!) independent from the rest of the car. (In this particular example, the ABS system has the ability to also close a secondary throttle to reduce engine output, though it has no ability to open the main throttle to increase it...)

My 2002 GMC van has a system from, IIRC, Bosch. It's the same sort of gig, minus the extra throttle body: All separate and independent.

At any rate, a failure of one system should not impart a failure of the ABS system, at least in these examples. I don't have anything newer to take apart and peer at, however -- I suppose it's possible, or even rather likely, that newer systems are more integrated and might be more susceptible to cascading failure.

I disagree with the notion that ABS is unusual. It's been a pretty standard item on most GM cars for over a decade, and even the not-special-at-all 1995 Chevy Beretta I used to have was equipped with ABS.

Re:PEBSWAC

[h4rr4r]

You can always put the car in neutral.

Re:PEBSWAC

[green1]

please read the comment you are replying to before spouting off like that. I clearly stated that on these vehicles gear shifting is controlled by computer. So no, you can't necessarilly shift in to neutral.

Re:PEBSWAC

[green1]

Your "dawn of personal computing" must have been very late. this is a relatively new feature. Additionally, one that most people I've encountered are unaware of. It's great for us geeks, but the average person doesn't even know it exists. Additionally, I have, more than once, had a computer that failed to respond to that input and required me to use the physical switch at the back, or in the case of a certain IBM laptop, pull both the power cord and the battery.

These are not viable options for the average consumer on a vehicle.

Re:PEBSWAC

[Anonymous Coward]

Having had a "panic stomp on gas instead of brake" reaction when I was 16 or 17 (one of my first - and very few so far at 31 - "panic" situations behind the wheel) I can say for sure that when you expect the car to stop and instead it surges forward, your first reaction is PANIC MORE! STOMP HARDER!

Fortunately, I did recover in time to avoid a collision, but I do NOT accept your hypothesis that it's not possible for a person with no mental health problems to have an extended panic reaction. Mine was recoverable because I was in a parking lot going less than 5 MpH when I hit the accelerator, so it was quite obvious that I was doing something wrong. If I had started out at highway speeds, it could have been a very different story.

Re:PEBSWAC

[thegarbz]

These days yes, but out of the 5 cars we've owned in the last 15 years (up until 2002 we had one leased car which was replaced with a new model every 2 years), only the 2002 Holden Astra Convertible came with ABS as standard. Even our 2002 Mitsubishi Magna has no ABS (though the 3.4L engine model did). These days you can barely get a car without it, but we're talking about 15 years ago and it was still incredibly hit and miss. Some strange ones like cheap Hyandis came with ABS, and some expensive cars like the Ford Falcon didn't. Also the VS Holden Commodore (1995-1997 Holden being GM in Australia) also only had ABS as an optional extra on the Executive model.

Also I'm not surprised that the systems are separate. I don't know much about the ECU of a car, but "emergency" systems in most industries are mandated to be completely independent. It would surprise me that governments who mandate so many minor inconveniences wouldn't have also stuck their meddling fingers into this pie too.

Re:PEBSWAC

[DavidTC]

The same push buttons that start the car also turn them off.

Me: 'People here are idiots because they don't understand the problem is that X is true'

You: 'X isn't true'

As X is true, so thank you for proving my point. The button does not turn off the car.

If you hold them for four seconds (and there is absolutely no indication that this is what to do), they will send a signal to the computer to cut off.

That is not the same as turning off the car (If the computer is ignoring the throttle, it could just as easily ignore the off button.), and it is not how you normally turn that car off in the first place, which normally requires a single press.

Re:PEBSWAC

[Cederic]

on the way home from church.

Ok, so you've just given us some strong evidence that he is in fact an idiot. Suddenly the rest of the story makes more sense.

Re:PEBSWAC

[Cederic]

Traction control and stability control are intended, basically, to modify control input when the driver does something that puts the vehicle outside the envelope of safe control.

Sadly the intention is difficult to put into practice. I have to disable stability control to safely control my car when driving on snow.

I also have to disable traction control when I want to have fun but I'm more open to suggestion that I'm pushing the envelope of 'safe' control on that one.

Re:PEBSWAC

[arcsimm]

See, the diefference is that in both of those situations you're aware of the limits of your car, and have some idea of the effects of the electronic systems involved. It's the general attitude of "stability control makes me invincible in spite of myself" that's dangerous.

For my part, it's a rare thing that I ever drive something that even has anti-lock brakes, so I make a point of being acutely aware of where the limits of adhesion are, and knowing how my car behaves when it's near to them. I know that safe control of my car is entirely in my hands, and take that a serious responsibility.

Re:PEBSWAC

[DudeTheMath]

Sorry for leaving the "sarcasm" punctuation off that last sentence of mine.

Re:PEBSWAC

[h4rr4r]

Except yes you can. It matters not that the shifting is done by the computer, no one has reported that these cars ever failed to shift. The drivers just did not even try it.

Re:PEBSWAC

[green1]

You stated that drivers who can not deal with a stuck open throttle should not be driving.
I maintain that any vehicle that does not allow for a "manual" way of doing such should be banned from public roads.

If it is entirely driver error, than it doesn't matter if you can shift in to neutral, as you could also simply take your foot off the accelerator.
If however it is a computer issue, then it DOES matter, because the same computer that would be malfunctioning in regards to the accelerator must now be trusted to NOT malfunction in terms of the gear shift and/or ignition.

Many vehicles have safeguards to prevent over-reving the engine, it wouldn't surprise me if keeping your foot on the accelerator would prevent a shift to neutral when it's working properly, let alone when it's misbehaving for any reason.

I maintain that I do not want to ever be forced to drive a vehicle without a manual way of stopping it, no computer intervention required. I need a way to disconnect power from the wheels without ANY computer being involved. Otherwise I am trusting my life to code that has not had anywhere near rigorous enough testing behind it.

Re:PEBSWAC

[Whorhay]

ABS still leaves skid marks. The difference being that ABS leaves a series of very short skid marks spaced pretty evenly. If I remember right they aren't actually that much more effective at stopping your vehicle either. What ABS offers though is continued steering control of your vehicle rather than entering an uncontrolled slide when you floor the brakes.

Re:PEBSWAC

[tibit]

Much good will that do to you in a hybrid vehicle -- cutting fuel pump power, that is. You need to have safe stop functionality in the motor controller, too. I do agree that the ignition switch/button and the elements it controls (safe stop circuitry in the controller, fuel pump solenoid) should be monitored and all rated to SIL-3. The communications path between the elements can well be digital.

To give you an idea of how much the components would cost if you wanted to implement it all by yourself as a safety mod to an existing car: on the order of $2000, give or take for brand new components. With luck on eBay you could get it for 30% of the price. That's for the following (all safety rated, mind you):

- (1) safety PLC with at least 3xDI and 5xDO (DO must be via monitored contacts of course)
- (1) 2xNC ignition switch with extra contacts to stand-in for existing switch
- (1) SPST monitored contactor for fuel pump
- (1) SPST monitored contactor that can interrupt DC going to motor controller (you need rating on the order of 200ADC, that's no small feat)
- crimp terminals to attach battery wires to the contactor

Making it in larger volume would of course shave on the cost, but we're still talking industrial components that would have to be redesigned for automotive use. They would still cost around $500 per vehicle I bet.

Re:PEBSWAC

[tibit]

Either way, you are crazy for using both feet because you really are likely to hit both pedals in the case of a panicked stop

Never happened to me and I had a few involuntary close calls. I don't buy the possibility, sorry. Could happen if I was getting a seizure of some sort. Normally -- no way. As I've said in the post you replied to: with two feet on two pedals, I use the left foot to monitor that the right one doesn't press on brake when it shouldn't, and vice versa: right foot makes sure that when the brake goes down, accelerator doesn't follow. It's very, very obvious when cross-actuation happens. You just have to get used to it and you then pick it up by reflex action.

if you used cruise control on the highway

LOL, good luck driving in downtown Chicago during normal commute rush hour with cruise control.

Re:PEBSWAC

[adolf]

Perhaps the market is just different.

My folks bought a Mercury Villager in 1993 that had ABS as a standard item.

My sister had an old (96?) Chevy Monte Carlo with standard ABS.

I dated a girl with a 1996 Grand Am once, which had standard ABS.

I married a girl who came with a 1996 Pontiac Firebird, which had standard ABS.

And, of course, the '95 BMW has standard ABS. Plus the aforementioned Beretta.

I've driven far more American cars from the 90's that had ABS as standard equipment, than cars that did not.

That all said: Holden is about as American as vegemite is.

I've actually had this conversation:

Me: You should check out the new GTO. It's pretty awesome.
Other: What's so cool about it?
Me: It's got a big engine, decent handling, it's rear-drive, and the car itself isn't so big. It's based off the Monaro.
Other: The what?
Me: Monaro. From Holden.
Other: What's a Holden?

Re:PEBSWAC

[thegarbz]

Yeah we say the same thing about Chevy Opel etc. It's a strange car industry we have. At least we both have Fords which are called Fords :-)

Re:PEBSWAC

[adolf]

At least we both have Fords which are called Fords

Sometimes. Not always.

Not always at all.

Re:PEBSWAC

[ukyoCE]

Also if this is just due to driver error, why it is only happening mainly on Toyotas? Answer me that!!

I heard on the radio last year that the rates for Toyotas were almost identical to the rates for every other manufacturer. There are a lot more Toyotas out there than most brands so you hear a lot of Toyota anecdotes. But percentage-wise, Toyota was unremarkable. The other car manufacturers are/were scared shitless that there would be a high-profile incident of driver mistake in their cars that caught the media's attention.

Feel free to hunt down the stats and correct me if I'm misremembering.

Toyota's new slogan

[Anonymous Coward]

We are moving forward - even when you don't want to!

Re:Toyota's new slogan

[Fluffeh]

We are moving forward - even when you don't want to!

We are moving forward - only when you want to.

There, fixed that for you...

wait what?

[s4ltyd0g]

If it was American drivers faults, why then did we not see a rash of similar accidents with other manufacturers vehicles?

Re:wait what?

[h4rr4r]

It can be all kinds of things, the design of the pedal or which brand of idiots by what car. What I do bet is that this does not happening in stick shift vehicles. I suggest banning slushboxes as a solution.

Re:wait what?

[zAPPzAPP]

If I would crash a Toyota because of my own idiocy, I know what I would claim... "Yes, the car accelerated on it's own, just like in the news!"

Re:wait what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the article and find out. kthxbai

Re:wait what?

[Anonymous Coward]

1) They did not say that drivers were the only cause of faults, just that the electronic control system was not a cause.
2) Some people are attention whores and jumped on the bandwagon and lied about having the problem.

Re:wait what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because PolygamousRanchKid (and, presumaby, Roblimo) didn't RTFA. Oops!

Re:wait what?

[Dachannien]

If it was American drivers faults, why then did we not see a rash of similar accidents with other manufacturers vehicles?

If you had R'ed TFA, you would have R'ed this:

"Unintended acceleration is not exclusive to Toyotas," [NHTSA deputy administrator Ron] Medford said, pointing out that two-thirds of the unintended acceleration reports the agency has received in recent years involved vehicles by other automakers.

Re:wait what?

[Gohtar]

Because that is not how the average american makes his fortune. You got to hop on the bandwagon while the hopping is good, and get your chunk of the media frenzy induced cash flow from the lawsuits.

Re:wait what?

[s4ltyd0g]

Sir,

This is Slashdot. What is this article of which you speak? (-;

So from the Article, (thank you for quoting it) they appear to say that Toyota Vehicles are involved in a full third of all unintended acceleration reports, with the other two thirds spread out amongst all the other manufacturers? That's what the quote seems to imply.

regards

Re:wait what?

[h4rr4r]

Which is easily accounted for with them selling a huge percentage of cars sold, and their incompetent 60+ target demographic.

Re:wait what?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it was American drivers faults, why then did we not see a rash of similar accidents with other manufacturers vehicles?

I realize this is Slashdot, but... seriously. Had you read the article, you'd have seen this:

"Unintended acceleration is not exclusive to Toyotas," Medford said, pointing out that two-thirds of the unintended acceleration reports the agency has received in recent years involved vehicles by other automakers.

Re:wait what?

[pjbgravely]

I was just thinking about that. Has anyone heard of a standard shift vehicle having sudden acceleration?

If it is driver error, could it be that people that drive automatics tend not to be the best drivers?

I do realize that people living in citys would go crazy driving a stick shift.

Re:wait what?

[Nocuous]

Excellent subject line: wait, what?

Please tell me you didn't mean that studly humanoids who have the brains and the ballz to drive a manual transmission automobile are less likely to stomp on the wrong pedal. In my experience, they poll a little lower on the intelligence scale.

I love shifting on my bikes (Triumph's and Honda's), but they're toys, riding them is for fun. Automatic transmissions for cars is sensible, since the main objective is to get where you're going safely, not engage in some ritual of manhood comparison. Calling them slushboxes is on par with posts against Windoze, or M$.

Re:wait what?

[h4rr4r]

I live in a city, I do fine. Most Europeans live in cities and they all drive standards.

Re:wait what?

[h4rr4r]

A standard transmission driver would have just pressed the brake and clutch at the same time. This means even if he was holding down the gas by mistake the car would have slowed down.

Automatics are terrible at getting you where you are going safely. I constantly see people using the brake in bad weather when down-shifting would be far safer. The same with going down steep inclines.

If you cannot put down the cell phone and big mac to shift you are not responsible enough to be operating a motor vehicle.

Re:wait what?

[natehoy]

Thereabouts, probably. On the other hand:

1. There was a great deal of publicity and anyone involved in an acceleration-related accident who happened to be driving a Toyota probably tried to blame it on the car instead of themselves.

2. Toyota accounts for a consistent 15% or so of the overall US sales market, and that's AFTER the crisis and drop in their sales figures related to this incident.

In other words, their reporting of a specific problem that they've gotten massively bad press on is "only" double their corresponding sales numbers.

You know, a lot of car manufacturers would give the left testicle of their CEO to only have problem reports double after accusations like this...

I'm not saying their handling of the problem was perfect or that all is fluffy bunnies, but they seem to have done a decent job of investigating the problem, and all the brouhaha seems to have been over mechanical issues (like floor mats, which they recalled and fixed very early on).

I don't own a Toyota (well, technically I guess my Pontiac Vibe sorta qualifies, since it's a Matrix in disguise), but I have several friends who have had Toyotas with issues and Toyota puts a lot of stake in their reputation. One friend had his Tacoma recalled for rust on the frame, and Toyota took his 8-year-old truck and completely rebuilt it around a new frame for him, even fixing some other problems they discovered (new shocks, etc) for free, and gave him a really nice brand-new Lexus for the month it took to do the work. When they were done, they apologized profusely for his inconvenience. He'll be a Toyota driver for life.

Compare that to my repair experiences with Ford on brand-new cars with defects, and it's just no contest.

Re:wait what?

[amiga3D]

I've wondered that myself. Considering most of the true idiots I see on the road are mostly driving Honda Civics, that's where I'd expect to find the problem. Note I do not say Honda drivers are idiots, only that for some reason the civic attracts more than it's fair share.

Re:wait what?

[Surt]

Incompetent drivers choose toyota for their safety record.

Re:wait what?

[PortHaven]

So wait...

66% of incidents occur with Ford, GM, Chrysler, Mercedes, BMW, Nissan, Mazda, Honda, Audi, Hyundai, Mitsubishi, Porsche, Kia, Saab, Volvo & Volkswagon.

And Toyota by itself accounts for 33% of incidents. Let's do the math. Based on marketshare (16% for Toyota), they account for 33% percent of the incidents. That is DOUBLE the number of incidents they should have.

Re:wait what?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it was American drivers faults, why then did we not see a rash of similar accidents with other manufacturers vehicles?

Might be because you have your eyes closed, or are purposely ignoring it.
I'm sure there are other possibilities why you aren't seeing it too.

Fact is however, the rest of us do see that with other manufacturers.
It has been reported before as well.

Perhaps coincidentally, that fact is even stated in the article linked in the summary!

So to answer your question to why WE didn't see it, well, the rest of us did. Why you personally did not I can't say, nor can I say why you think the rest of us in "we" did not when "we" did.

Re:wait what?

[drsmithy]

Automatics are terrible at getting you where you are going safely. I constantly see people using the brake in bad weather when down-shifting would be far safer. The same with going down steep inclines.

I am not aware of any automatic transmissions with only one gear.

If you cannot put down the cell phone and big mac to shift you are not responsible enough to be operating a motor vehicle.

I am quite capable of shifting and own a car specifically for the times I want to spend doing it. However, there's no way in hell I'd drive a manual car in stop-start traffic by choice. Now that I'm all growed up and don't treat city streets like my personal racetrack, I have little interest in rowing through the gearbox every minute for half an hour each day.

Re:wait what?

[fluffy99]

If it was American drivers faults, why then did we not see a rash of similar accidents with other manufacturers vehicles?

If you bothered to read the article, you might have noticed this:

""Unintended acceleration is not exclusive to Toyotas," Medford said, pointing out that two-thirds of the unintended acceleration reports the agency has received in recent years involved vehicles by other automakers."

Re:wait what?

[demonlapin]

And someone who knew how to drive a car with an automatic would have shifted it into neutral.

Re:wait what?

[jo_ham]

I live in a city, and you can pry my manual transmission from my cold, dead hands.

Then again, I live in the UK.

Auto boxes are for old people and people who can't drive - you can take your test in an auto, but you get a special, sub-driving licence that says "auto only", prohibiting you from driving manual transmission vehicles. You really don't want to let people know you have a licence that says that.

There's also no real reports of sudden acceleration in a manual because in the unlikely event of it happening, the driver just puts the clutch in, or pops it out of gear. Problem solved. Then takes it calmly to a dealer and says "hey, my throttle is odd, please check it out", rather than going to the media with a scare story. :)

Re:wait what?

[sjames]

If one third of cars on the road are Toyotas then no problem. Otherwise they either have a malfunction or poor human factors engineering.

Re:wait what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually we do see a rash of similar accidents with other manufacturers vehicles. If by rash you mean around 100 incidents a year, then yes it's a vertiable armagedeon occurring as we speak.

The only rash thing that was occurring was the media running around screaming "the sky is falling (Toyota)" and pro-US automaker jumping on the bandwaggon to tear Toyota down.

It's a replay of the Ford Exploder (Explore) incident with dumb yuppies rolling their SUV due to a combination of no preventative maintenance on the part of the operator and a paniced reaction to what should only be a mildly exciting event.

Personally I've just ordered Toyota number 4. I've had a Ford, a Chevy, a Dodge, and a BMW. If BMWs hadn't become the iPod of cars I might actually consider another. As far as the American made vehicles every single one of them was a turd. Combine my personal ownership experience and the fact that I have to drive daily Ford and GM products for work which shows me exactly how far Ford and GM have not come in recent years in terms of quality.

Re:wait what?

[pjbgravely]

I forgot to mention in the U.S.A. I almost never drive in cities so I can't say if it is true.

Re:wait what?

[adolf]

You folks in the UK have a manual gearbox for your version of the Prius?

Do tell. :)

Re:wait what?

[jo_ham]

We don not - the Prius is the Prius, but they are considerably less common here in the UK than in the states, since if you want to drive a fuel efficient car, you just buy a diesel (over 50% of cars on the UK roads are diesels) and thus you can choose what sort of car you want. Pretty much every diesel gets better fuel economy than the Prius.

I drive a 2003 diesel Xsara Picasso, for example, that gets 55mpg, and is a minivan. It was a no brainer compared to the Pruis :D

Re:wait what?

[AK Marc]

Given that at least a few people reported the incidents specifically because they happened in Toyotas, double still seems like a small number. There is a correlation between the media coverage and the reported incidents which does not correlated with the fixes implemented. That doesn't seem like a technical problem.

Re:wait what?

[lachlan76]

Hardly; it's practically never done, so few will think to do so in an emergency. Uncontrolled acceleration is rare enough that people don't have much in the way of instinct for it beyond the usual stopping reflex.

Re:wait what?

[Carewolf]

The problem is driving in a city where the other drivers has automatic. It changes how people stop and accelerate. I love manual, but I think I would go crazy if I had to drive manual in a US rush hour.

Re:wait what?

[tibit]

I don't think that downshifting is somehow safer in bad weather. I think you're mistaken and are repeating a myth that has no backing in physics of traction. Just think about it: when you downshift, on 2WD cars you are applying braking torque to two of the wheels. There is no benefit to braking with just two wheels that I could think of, compared to all four wheels like you get when you use hydraulic brakes. On RWD cars, engine braking is even worse: it uses the two wheels with least braking capacity -- braking shifts the car weight onto the front wheels, and rear wheels will lose traction first under given braking torque, compared to front wheels! Moreover, engine braking is not subject to ABS: when you lose traction when engine braking, you have to manually recover by applying the clutch. On cars with ABS, traction loss due to applying brakes is recovered from automatically.

The only proper use of engine braking is on prolonged downhill stretches, where you'd otherwise experience brake fade. Every automatic I've seen so far has a downshift mode just for such occasions. There's no other legitimate use for it, especially not in bad weather. You're just spewing nonsense.

Re:wait what?

[sznupi]

Or the media frenzy increased the probability that the actual perpetrator of some accident will think it's a good excuse / will even start to believe in it.

(...or the typical demographic involved in "slammed the gas pedal instead of brakes" is more likely to drive Toyotas)

Re:wait what?

[adolf]

Oh, right. You guys get more efficient engine tech, and we get cleaner air.

I always try to forget that, since it seems like we've got the short end of the stick.

Re:wait what?

[jo_ham]

Our diesel engines are considerably cleaner than the typical expectation, and the diesel fuel we buy is all extremely low in sulphur - far more than the US.

We get that "cleaner air" by burning less fuel per unit distance (mpg) compared to the equivalent Prius - that's what higher fuel economy means. Our diesel engines are no different to our petrol engines in that respect: with particulate filters, cats, and engine management systems.

In fact, european diesels put out less CO2 than the equivalent petrol engines (like the one in the Prius) - a fact noted in the way our cars are taxed. I pay less road tax for my large diesel minivan than my brother's smaller hatchback because despite his smaller engine (1.6l petrol vs 2.0l turbodiesel) his car gets lower mpg and higher g/CO2 per km.

So, we have our cake and eat it too. The market that that Prius carved out for itself in the US simply doesn't exist to the same extent here in Europe, since a long, long time before it came along we were buying diesels by the barrel because the innovation and drive to lower fuel costs went that way, rather than into hybrids.

There is still a small market - they see a lot of use as taxi cabs, for example, where the car spends a lot of time idle or moving slowly and with a high proportion of urban driving, but in the car market as a whole, if you want fuel economy and low road tax you just pick the car you were going to buy anyway, and then get the diesel version.

Also, laughable that you claim to get cleaner air - even with all those Prius' on the road, the majority of the US car driving population is rolling around in large slushmatic cars with oversized engines - even your basic sedans have unnecessarily large and inefficient engines. The average petrol engine in europe is 1.6 litres displacement. The average diesel is 2.0 litres displacement. The US figures are.... worse. Add to that fact that manual transmission cars are more efficient than automatics and consider that the vast majority of cars on UK roads are manual (at least 75%, probably more) and the figure is diametrically opposed for the US market, I'm not seeing how you can sit on your high horse and claim that you get "cleaner air" because you guys went for the Prius 15 years after Europe realised that fuel economy and low emissions were a good idea and made diesel engines that blew everything else away.

Re:wait what?

[h4rr4r]

I do not mean using engine breaking to slow the car in poor weather, merely to avoid gaining unwanted speed. ABS is another topic I do not want to get into and would frankly prefer to be able to disable in my own vehicles.

Re:wait what?

[Nocuous]

I do not mean using engine breaking to slow the car in poor weather, merely to avoid gaining unwanted speed. ABS is another topic I do not want to get into and would frankly prefer to be able to disable in my own vehicles.

You're still spewing nonsense. When driving on icy roads, I avoid gaining unwanted speed by using the advanced technique of not hitting the gas too much. And if I need to slow down, I lightly press the brakes. Hardly ever do I engage the ABS.

But speaking of ABS, which in your manful resistance, you avoided doing while implying they suck at the same time, yes ABS is a good safety device. Not a substitute for good driving habits, but a nice supplemental tool. Unless you fight them, because you're too uber-manly to accept that a computer-assisted brake can help you.

Good lord, Bob Heinlein would love you, too bad you can't go get a drink with him and commiserate on the failings of the common man.

Do I have to repeat it? The reason for driving on public roads is to safely arrive at your destination in a reasonable period. It's not a test of your worth as a man.

Re:wait what?

[tibit]

To avoid gaining unwanted speed in poor weather you simply trade a bit of fuel efficiency for safety. You upshift. Sane automatic transmissions offer wet/winter modes. You push a button and you're done. This also prevents you from engine braking too hard as to lose traction.

So now it's official.

[cvtan]

The cars are not perfect, but they are smarter than the drivers that own them.

Re:So now it's official.

[blair1q]

My Prius doesn't even know when it's still got a fifth of a tank of gas left.

Fuck Toyota. They're going to kill someone, here.

Re:So now it's official.

[h4rr4r]

What you mean is the light comes one when gas is still in the tank?

Because that is intentional, they trigger those early now so folks like you would stop burning up fuel pumps. You see, the fuel pump hangs in the tank and is cooled by the fuel, if the fuel gets too low it can heat up and that kills it over time.

This is clearly driver error, even if the car accelerates suddenly. if you cannot handle your car getting the throttle stuck wide open you should not be driving. At the very least any of those folks could have put the car in neutral.

Re:So now it's official.

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Don't worry you'll glide safely to the ground when the fuel runs out... oh wait, you are in a car.

Snide remark aside, my former boss had a Jeep Grand Cherokee which had a fuel gauge that would stick at half a tank. He ran out of gas on the big bridge in Tampa. I believe there was a recall, but I don't think the problem resulted in any deaths.

Re:So now it's official.

[blair1q]

It also doesn't know when it's got only half a gallon left.

The gauge goes to 1 bar, presumably at 1/8th tank, then it beeps and blinks starting when you have about 25 miles of fuel left (according to the manual).

The only time I trusted the "25 miles" number, the car went into electric-only and then creeping (limping along at a few mph) mode after about 11 miles.

More often, the thing will beep and blink, and I'll pull in within a couple of miles, and the 11-gallon tank will only take 8-9 gallons, meaning it had at least 80 miles of fuel left.

I don't trust them any more.

Re:So now it's official.

[amiga3D]

This is exactly true. When things go wrong with the vehicle most people freak out and do stupid things. I think that I don't because I always had piece of shit cars that were constantly breaking when I was younger and had to know how to get them off the road. My dad mentioned the brakes going out on an old jalopy he had back in the 50's and how he rode down a hedge of boxwoods on the side of the road to get it to stop. Sometimes you have to realize that slight damage to the car is preferable to death.

Re:So now it's official.

[PortHaven]

No, what he means is that the light will blink empty when it's got 1/5th left. But then it might not flash empty until you've got like 2 miles left. I am presuming he has a first generation Prius with the bladder (which is what I have). And the temperature can turn a 1/4 into empty. Or empty to a quarter tank.

Basically, if you have under a quarter tank you might have 5 miles or 150 miles. That's a pretty broad range.

Re:So now it's official.

[bware]

Well, heck, my truck does this, though it doesn't have a fancy-schmancy 25 mile warning. Also the truck before it. And the Honda Civic before that. And the truck before that. And... you get the picture.

All gas gauges suck. They're completely unreliable. I don't trust any of them. I've always reset the trip odometer with every refuel and refill when it gets up to (tank size - safety margin) x miminum mpg.

Re:So now it's official.

[noidentity]

Why don't DMVs have driving simulators where you train to handle adverse situations well? Hell, even common ones like a busy traffic light intersection would be good to train on, where things happen that are tricky to handle well. Do it many times and you learn to have the right response automatically. I'd have loved something like that.

Re:So now it's official.

[DavidTC]

All the times my car has run out of fuel I've made it safely to the ground, so I'm not sure what you're trying to imply there. In fact, I've never operated my car off the ground.

Possibly you're confusing them with helicopters. Although those can indeed glide to the ground, just not very well.

Re:So now it's official.

[Legion303]

"Why don't DMVs have driving simulators where you train to handle adverse situations well?"

Because most governments can't even afford books for schools (the taxpayers having voted to give that money to private sports franchises). I don't see them springing for driving sims.

Re:So now it's official.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think anyone on /. actually believes there is anything 'smart' or intelligent in a a car ECU. Their just control systems with a custom map for the ignition mixures at different RPM... Also people are not infallable, so nor is software... But computers are thick as shit and sometimes can't even do what their told - so everything needs testing!

It's the reliablity of the mass produced electronics that is in question... is it one in 100 million or 1 in 200 million? We don't know what is actually tested and they are probably assembled by machines too. So the robots building may be doing something wrong?

Re:So now it's official.

[drinkypoo]

I don't know about anywhere else but in California it's because they spent all their money (er, our money) on a computer system that didn't work.

Re:So now it's official.

[blair1q]

No, they aren't. I had a Lexus gas gauge I could trust to the mile. They're easy to get right. And even if they're not well calibrated, they are at the least repeatable. Unless they're total shit, which the one on the Prius is. It's famous for it. Prius owners call it the "guess gauge".

Re:So now it's official.

[bware]

I guess Toyota doesn't see fit to put the same gas gauge in their trucks as they do in their Lexus's. Although they do have the same engine. The Toyota truck gas gauge is well-known, to both my local mechanic, and to truck forums, to be unreliable and unrepeatable.

You say "easy to get right", but my personal experience with several Toyotas, two Hondas, and a slew of Chevy and Ford trucks and cars suggests otherwise. The Porsche's I've driven seem to be good, and you say Lexus works, but if you have to go up to relatively high-dollar cars to get good gas gauges, perhaps the problem is endemic?

I am just speaking to my personal experience here. Perhaps I've just had a string of bad luck with only 1 of 15-20 cars having a fuel gauge that'd I'd trust to not leave me stranded below the quarter-tank marker.

Re:So now it's official.

[Cederic]

In this country people have pay to learn to drive. Forcing them to successfully pass a "oh shit it's gone wrong" test in a sim would very easily be self-funding. A million new drivers a year * £10 per driver means you've covered the software costs in the first couple of months, and the hardware in a couple of years.

Of course, it wouldn't be £10, it'd be an additional tenner on top of the £91+ people already spend on their driving tests.

Well then ...

[PPH]

...we should be expecting new drivers on patch Tuesday.

Re:Well then ...

[Anonymous Coward]

If only it were so easy...

You first need to remove the bad drivers, then hard reboot the machine, before you can install the new drivers.

Re:Well then ...

[FragHARD]

But... as always when toyotasoft T$ issues the SP3 for the affected machines it will offer new functionality... like being to remap pedals on the fly!!!! to counteract the dyslexic drivers.

Re:Well then ...

[cl191]

But sadly, there's no patch for stupidity.

Re:Well then ...

[PPH]

there's no patch for stupidity.

That's a feature, not a bug.

PEBWAC

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem Exists Between Wheel And Chair.

Hey Woz... didn't you have one of those Toyotas?

Re:PEBWAC

[Man On Pink Corner]

Woz was talking about a different problem, something that affected the cruise control's control loop behavior at wide-open throttle. IMHO he was experiencing a corner case that had nothing to do with the sensationalized incidents.

The fact that so many of the drivers who experienced this particular "malfunction" were over age 60 tells you all you need to know.

Re:PEBWAC

[fractoid]

Didn't Woz's example basically boil down to "hit the 'set' button on the cruise control at 85mph, cancel it, slow down to 35mph, then hit 'resume' and observe 'woah scary acceleration!!!'"? That trick works on every cruise control unit I've used, although likewise, even the 22-year-old cruise control on my Toyota will deactivate if you touch the brake or clutch.

Re:PEBWAC

[Narcocide]

Really? I wish the cruise control on my Acura was that bad ass. I can't even get it to engage above like 60mph or something like that. It is practically useless where I live.

Re:PEBWAC

[macs4all]

Didn't Woz's example basically boil down to "hit the 'set' button on the cruise control at 85mph, cancel it, slow down to 35mph, then hit 'resume' and observe 'woah scary acceleration!!!'"? That trick works on every cruise control unit I've used, although likewise, even the 22-year-old cruise control on my Toyota will deactivate if you touch the brake or clutch.

No, that's not what Woz said at all (see below). Do you REALLY think that someone with Woz's hardware and software design chops would not recognize the difference between the (normal) behavior you describe, and some anomalous behavior?

Although I can't seem to get the new /. to give me a link JUST to Woz's post, it's the second one in this slashdot thread (see if you can figure out which username is his...)

Re:PEBWAC

[DavidTC]

That's nothing. Fun fact on my 92 Sunbird: If I move the gearshift to neutral while under cruise control, the engine will explode, or at least revved insanely until I panicked and turn it off, as the CC attempts to accelerate a car that cannot, in fact, be accelerated. (I have a floor gearshift, I discovered that by accident one day when I knocked myself out of gear.)

It really seems like auto engineers don't test edge cases, especially with electronic systems.

It's not helped by damn stupid cruise control systems that attempt to use four buttons for something that should take more.

At this point, cruise controls should have a on/off switch, with temporary resume position. One switch, three positions, with 'start' being temporary and sliding back to 'on' when released. Like a car ignition itself has on/off, and a 'start'.

And they should additionally have a use-current-speed/faster/slower control to set the speed, which should preferably actually be displayed somewhere. Either three buttons, or a knob for faster and slower, and push to set to current.

Any idiot could understand those two groups of controls.

Instead, they try to insane crowd that into four buttons. Is this 'resume', or 'faster'? Is this 'slower', or 'set'? Who knows, it depends on when you use it! Why would we need clear controls to manage the damn speed of the car?

Climate controls have the same problem. The only control that makes sense there is 'fan', all the rest is nonsense. Why are there three AC options with different names, why are there 'heat' options that can cool the car? Why is there a slider with eight positions on it?

Most importantly, why the fuck is it labeled 'max AC' so people use it when they get in the hot car, when in actuality it's to recirculate and they should use it all the time except when the inside of the car is hotter than the outside?

Look, there's a fucking input, output, and what you do to the air. Give me a button to select inside input (as opposed to the outside default), give me a damn slider that is shades from heat (which is really engine air) to nothing (Which is just recirculate) to cold (which flips on the compressor), and give me three output buttons for top, front, and floor, which I can push in any combination....and don't let me select the floor as the input and the output at the same time, so if I pick one pop up the other button. It's not damn rocket science, people's head's won't explode if you present the actual thing that is actually happening.

Oh, and obviously retain the 'fan speed' setting. I guess I should be lucky we actually still have that, and they haven't decided to somehow merge that into the different settings.

I swear to God, auto engineers...I would say they think we're idiots, but what they really think is that they, under no circumstances, should expose us to what is actually happening, so engineer giant systems we have to figure out to hide actually pretty simply systems that are identical among all cars and we'd easily understand if presented to us.

We should thank whatever deity we believe in that the damn steering wheel is mandated by law, because otherwise we'd have some cars with two levels on each side that we held one in each hand and had to push up and down like oars to steer...which would be connected to the exact same steering column that worked exactly the same way.

Re:PEBWAC

[Audguy]

Look, there's a fucking input, output, and what you do to the air. Give me a button to select inside input (as opposed to the outside default), give me a damn slider that is shades from heat (which is really engine air) to nothing (Which is just recirculate) to cold (which flips on the compressor),

Leave the A/C alone. I *WANT* to control when the compressor comes on. A/C allows you to defog a windshield with the heat on or off.

Re:PEBWAC

[Runaway1956]

Edge cases be damned. You kicked the car out of gear, intentionally or otherwise, it's up to you to get it back INTO gear, or shut the engine down, or sit there looking foolish after the engine comes apart spectacularly. As for the recent spectacular Toyota problems? I'd have to experience an instance to believe all the hype. I remember the MORON cop who claimed that his car was accelerating uncontrollably. What did he do? He called the police department, and asked that the intersection be cleared. They played his phone call several times. What did the cop NOT do? He didn't shift into neutral. He didn't turn the key off. He didn't downshift, which would have made the top speed of the vehicle much lower. He didn't intentionally drive into something with give to it. He did not try driving into something less lethal than oncoming traffic, such as a pond, a field, a ditch, or even some undergrowth among some trees. Back when the earth was much younger, and we had to watch for dinosaurs crossing the road, we had to learn DEFENSIVE DRIVING. Apparently, no one teaches real defensive driving anymore. Today, the term has a connotation of "bad driver, busted for DWI". In my high school, every student eligible to apply for a driver's license was REQUIRED to take defensive driving - even if he never intended to get a license! Defensive driving means, the very last thing you ever want to hit, is an oncoming vehicle. Hitting a rock wall is slightly more survivable, than hitting an oncoming vehicle. Hitting a large tree is even more survivable. Running through an orchard of smaller trees is vastly more survivable. It will take a lot to convince me that the vast majority of these accidents were caused by anything other than driver stupidity. Take control of your life. If you can't control that vehicle - meaning, if you don't know HOW to control it under any and all circumstances - then DON'T DRIVE IT!!! Oh yeah. I have had a throttle stick on me. Several times, in fact, in a Mack Cruiseliner. The solution was, to stick my toe UNDER the accelerator, pull up, stop the truck, get out, and replace the broken throttle return spring. Something any moron can figure out. Also, I had a sticky butterfly on an old carbureted chevy to stick a couple times. Lifting on the accelerator didn't solve the problem - but turning the key to "off" did the trick. Think fast, or die. I'm alive to talk about my experiences, so I guess I'm a fast thinker.

Re:PEBWAC

[DavidTC]

What did the cop NOT do? He didn't shift into neutral. He didn't turn the key off. He didn't downshift, which would have made the top speed of the vehicle much lower.

Jesus Fucking Christ.

He didn't turn the key because the car doesn't have a key.

He didn't shift into neutral or another gear because, apparently, the 'shift into neutral' button is a damn electronic button that didn't work.

You goddamn morons aren't listening to a word of this, are you? Goddamn slashdot doesn't even see fit to fucking explain the actual damn problem with these cars, in that is is no manual off.

(There actually is a manual off...hold the 'start' button down and it cuts off, but he didn't know how to do it in his rented car, and neither did the highway patrol.)

The lack of mechanical off is why people are getting killed. Any car can go out of control, it's not worth trying to stop that, because people 'can always just turn the car off'...except, now, they can't.

He did not try driving into something less lethal than oncoming traffic, such as a pond, a field, a ditch, or even some undergrowth among some trees.

Yeah, all those ponds laying around freeways.

And, incidentally, he did run into something less lethal than oncoming traffic...he drove down the exit-ramp wall, and made it off the highway...at which point he crashed into a car sitting at the stop light at the end of the exit ramp, still going about 70.

Re:PEBWAC

[DavidTC]

Huh? That's what I just said.

The way my car controls are designed, it's not actually obvious you can do this. 'Defrost' is under the 'heat' part of the slider...but, of course, what the slider actually controls is 'where the air comes from and goes', and the compressor is mostly controlled by another slider, and other options under 'heat' force the compressor off.

I guess, in theory, it's technically four controls: How much air from inside, how much air from outside, how much air from the engine, and how much air from the compressor. Those could all be sliders, but I didn't mean to imply they couldn't simply it a little.

But I have some absurd slider with random positions that functionally is input and out and some compressor controls...and yet doesn't actually let me do things like direct air out the upper vents and the floor, because they didn't see fit to give that a position. Or direct air in from the floor vents and out the front and upper. OTOH, I have two ways to direct outside air through the front and floor vents...one that forces the compressor off, and one that turns it on. (Despite where I set the actual temp slider.)

This is not an idea that is especially complicated to present to people. You would not even need words, just a left-to-right diagram: select a single air in location - temp slider - select all air out locations - speed slider.

Re:PEBWAC

[Coren22]

I can confirm that the Toyota cruise control in my Camry will activate at least as high as 90.

However, as I drive a clutch, I don't ever see "Crazy acceleration!!!111one!!!"

Re:PEBWAC

[pnewhook]

All of your issues are because you have a PONTIAC. There's a reason why GM usually holds something like 7 spots on the annual ten worst cars made.

Re:PEBWAC

[pnewhook]

What you simply dont understand is most of these instances are *driver error*, and the rest are badly placed floormats which I'd argue is again *driver error*. If you don't know how to drive your electronic car then buy a '72 Ford Pinto and shut the hell up.

Re:PEBWAC

[DavidTC]

I understand they've fucking driver error.

We have ignition keys to recover from error, of whatever kind.

A goddamn grease fire on a stove is operator error, but that doesn't mean we don't need fucking circuit breakers so we can't cut power when it happens.

Feel free to get pissed at people who don't know how to recover from error, but cables do stick, mats do get wedged, cruise control does come on without anyone doing it, so we have a fucking system to recover from those problems by turning off the engine.

Re:PEBWAC

[DavidTC]

No it's not. Other cars have equally stupid designs. The 'max ac' thing to mean 'recirculate' is nearly universal, and I'll bet that 50% of people use it exactly backwards, using it when they first get in their car and it's hot, and then turning it 'down' to normal once it cools down.

About all that's 'better' in other designs is that there actually is a Compressor button, which is not something that really makes sense. That should just be on if you select air colder than outside. (There's also a 'defrost' button, which also turns it on, and _does_ make sense, because under some circumstances you want just normal hot air, and sometimes you want conditioned hot air to clear off the window.)

My father has a recent car with an output knob, but it's a spectacularly goofy one. It lets you mix some outputs, which is a pretty useless feature, and still doesn't just let you select them outright, so you can't, for example, send to the front and top, as those things aren't next to each other. But that part is saner than what I have. The rest of it is weird, though.

Re:PEBWAC

[pnewhook]

I've 'seen' MAX A/C (my wife has that) but any car I've bought - Toyota, Mazda, Ford, have never had it.

My current car has climate control. I set it to the temperature I want and the car does whatever it needs to do to get there, ac or not. I can also override parts of it to force AC on or off, or to limit fan speed (Ford).

But generally I agree with you - companies really need to do a better job of usability engineering.

Re:PEBWAC

[pnewhook]

I've never heard of anyone running to the circuit breaker for a grease fire. That's what fire extinguishers are for. regardless with a grease fire you don't end up blaming the stove for imaginary software errors. The operator screwed up - accept it. Don't shift blame to something else.

Re:PEBWAC

[DavidTC]

Yeah, an actual 'set the temperature to what you want' is probably ideal. So that's not a great example anymore.

But cruise control is still fucked, where they insist on reusing buttons. Why? No one knows.

The joke is that for CC they actually could have had less controls than what they had, with one function per control, and it would have made more sense. An on/off button with a light on it, and a faster/slower knob (Which grabs the current speed on a push and uses that.)

Instead, there's a 'suspend' and 'resume' concept, that somehow isn't the same as it being 'off' and 'on'. No. I set the speed, it drives at that speed. I brake, it turns off, I push the button to turn it back on. A damn light is on when it's on, and flashes once and cuts off when I break. That's it.

That was my idea when I first realized how CC was supposed to operate. Now in modern cars with an LED display, there should be a second speedometer with the CC speed, and a 'CC on' signal. (Perhaps the CC speedometer could change color. Grey is off, green is on.)

Much, much saner.

As someone who's had a class in user interface design in college, it really is abysmal in cars, and the really really stupid part is that they could have just exposed the inner workings and had a more understandable interface.

But... the Woz

[Anonymous Coward]

Who ya gonna believe, them or Woz?
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503983_162-6169804-503983.html

Re:But... the Woz

[Altus]

yea, I guess there is a possibility that Woz is simply lying, but he has never really been an attention whore. Assuming he is describing the steps to reproduce the problem correctly it would seem to contradict these finding. There really isn't a lot of room for error if we believe we can take Woz at his word.

Has anyone else reproduced the problem using the steps that Woz describes? Seems like someone on here must own a Prius and have sufficient brains to give it a shot.

Re:But... the Woz

[sexconker]

yea, I guess there is a possibility that Woz is simply lying, but he has never really been an attention whore.

Laughable.

Re:But... the Woz

[Stormwatch]

When a computer demigod says it is a software glitch that he can reproduce repeatedly and consistently, YOU BETTER LISTEN!

Re:But... the Woz

[somersault]

Read the article the guy (kind of) linked to. Woz is talking about a cruise control issue, not a "sticky gas pedal" as others complain about. And hitting the brakes cancels the acceleration. Anyone who is using cruise control should be ready to hit the brakes, and even observing their speed from time to time, or at least be aware that the cars revs are rising and the world is moving by at a faster rate. It's not auto-pilot.

Re:But... the Woz

[h4rr4r]

Different problem. Read the Woz's description. His complaint is only about the cruise control.

Re:But... the Woz

[PortHaven]

Interesting....I hadn't heard of Wozniak's claim.

But I had one issue of acceleration with my 2002 Prius. And it occurred as I released the break (was lifting foot up), and the vehicle accelerated. So since the foot was coming up. It was in no way a mistake of stepping on the gas. A couple quick punchs to the break stopped the acceleration.

The acceleration reminded me of when I would be towing with my truck on cruise control and hit a steep hill. You hear the revs skyrocket all of a sudden. It was very similar, it was like my Prius punched it. This occurred while I was going up a hill.

I've long believed this is a cruise control issue. So it's interesting to hear Wozniak suspects the cruise control as well.

Re:But... the Woz

[DriedClexler]

Yeah, also, you still need to steer while on cruise control, and the rule about "don't be a dick who camps the passing lane" still applies.

Just a friendly reminder...

Re:But... the Woz

[ukyoCE]

I'm gonna believe them, sorry. Woz is neither infallible nor an expert on automobiles or their electrical systems. Woz is talking about a repeatable cruise control issue, not a brake failure. My car does the same thing all the time, especially if you turn cruise on while going uphill. You're decelerating rapidly so your car immediately drops below the cruise speed and the car slams on the gas to try to catch up, and then stops just as suddenly once it hits that speed.

I drive a Honda btw, and cruise control does the same thing on every other model car I've driven.

No surprise really...

[Martin Spamer]

The incompetent are unaware of their level of incompetence and therefore must blame external elements. It called the Dunning Kruger effect.

Re:No surprise really...

[Beardo the Bearded]

It's got a real name now? Wow, I remember when that was just called the "wearing the juice" study.

Re:No surprise really...

[PortHaven]

And the arrogant refuse to hear that there is a problem. It's called the "BAD GENERAL SYNDROME". And gets lots of people killed.

Re:No surprise really...

[hb253]

That's because the arrogant as you call them have been around for a while and actually have awareness of the world around them. As others have noted, a similar brouhaha happened in the 1980's with Audi. I guarantee it will happen again as long as there are clueless, misguided people out there.

Re:No surprise really...

[davros-too]

Nice link!

Everything old is new again

[ThreeGigs]

The Audi 5000 had similar issues:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audi_5000#Reported_sudden_unintended_acceleration

Re:Everything old is new again

[Anonymous Coward]

What's that? A propendancy of incompetent douchebags who like, use, wear, drive the same item?

The car has "sudden" acceleration when you press the fucking gas pedal. You panic because you're a fucking idiot and thought you pressed the brake pedal. Instead of pulling your foot off the gas and pressing the brake pedal you press harder on the gas because you still think it's the brake pedal. Instead of slamming the car into park or reverse you keep on going down the freeway, parking lot, etc in a panic because you're a fucking moron.

These people all need their licenses revoked and to be issues permanent public transit passes, preferably tattooed on their forehead so they don't lose them.

Re:Everything old is new again

[h4rr4r]

Neutral would be just as good and would save your transmission.

A far simpler thing to do is just ban slushboxes.

Re:Everything old is new again

[PortHaven]

How about having it happen when you release the brake? Hmm...that doesn't fit your theory.

In my case, I believe it was a failure with the cruise control.

Re:Everything old is new again

[Walter White]

Many long years ago I was an Audi mechanic. That was long before we had technicians working on cars. ;)

One fine day I nearly ran over my tool box pulling an Audi 5000 on to my repair rack. As I went for the brake pedal, my foot also caught the accelerator. The accelerator kicked in and the car lurched forward. I pressed further and lucky for me, the brakes on the Audi 5000 were more powerful than the engine and the car came to a stop before any damage was done. That was before sudden acceleration became a BIg Deal(tm) and as soon as I heard about it, I knew what the cause was. (close proximity of the accelerator and brake along with an accelerator that acts before the brake.)

I am neither a fucking idiot, fucking moron and pretty sure I'm not a douchebag. You have no idea how easily this can happen and (in some cases) how little time the driver has to react.

Re:Everything old is new again

[confused one]

A far simpler thing to do is just ban slushboxes.

Not gonna happen. They can be just as efficient. They can be safer to operate for the average driver.

I like my slushbox. I let it drive itself on during the commute when I'm feeling lazy and I shift it myself when I'm in a hands on mood (I've made a few modifications to the TCU)

Re:Everything old is new again

[yurtinus]

My (universally unpopular) opinion is that the ease of operating a motor vehicle and subsequent driver laziness/inability leads directly to accidents and deaths. I simply don't think that the "average driver" is good enough for the task at hand.

Of course this has nothing to do with slushboxes - plenty of excellent drivers use them regularly... I spose I'm off topic here.

Re:Everything old is new again

[jo_ham]

What, so someone drilled a hole into the car, fitted a can of compressed air and fluid and pumped it into the transmission off-camera to make the car suddenly accelerate?

Bonus points if the person who rigged this demo, that the TV report fails to mention, is an expert witness for those suing because their cars "accelerated for no reason". ;)

Re:Everything old is new again

[FrameRotBlues]

I think you're hitting the nail on the head, actually, though your comment might be better placed elsewhere. On a similar note, some of the best drivers I've ever met are the ones that drive the widest range of vehicles - from farm tractors, to cars, to tractor-trailers. In order to maintain control of all these different vehicles, you've gotta be on your game. Inattentiveness/laziness on any of those vehicles will lead to an accident or a death.

Re:Everything old is new again

[Jake Griffin]

the car came to a stop before any damage was done

He's not calling you an idiot, moron, or a douchebag. You were able to control your vehicle, unlike many others.

That's what you get for

[Arancaytar]

Installing that proprietary crap from the vendor. ... wait, not that kind of driver? Oh.

Re:That's what you get for

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't give up your day job.

Re:That's what you get for

[Kalidor]

Actually, that's a surprisingly good description of the floor mat problem. Sometimes it's not a great idea to put a sedan floor mat into an suv. The driver's side foot well may just turn out to not be shaped the same.

Because other drivers don't get off scott free

[SuperKendall]

If it was American drivers faults, why then did we not read about a rash of similar accidents with other manufacturers vehicles?

Fixed that for you.

We didn't read about this happening with other vehicles because other drivers couldn't get out of trouble by claiming it was the "car that did it" the way Toyota drivers could at the time.

Re:Control System Design Flaw, Root locus anyone

[h4rr4r]

Simple answer even highway patrol fucks up. He could have just shifted to neutral.

seems to be the norm

[luther349]

dunno if the cars relly did speed out of controle or not. but what i am saying even if it happon the braking force would be grater then the stuck acclerator could provide. that means if they hit there brakes the car would stop. you can also cut the engion. so the drivers blame there lack of skill or driving errors on someone else. seems to be the thing to do these days kill someone blame video games and so on. some chick tried this when she nailed my truck making the same clames. after the pulled the computer from her car they found out the brake where not even pressed. meaning the chick was just a bad driver.

Re:seems to be the norm

[h4rr4r]

A far simpler thing to do that will leave the power steering working is to shift into neutral.

Re:seems to be the norm

[metamatic]

dunno if the cars relly did speed out of controle or not. but what i am saying even if it happon the braking force would be grater then the stuck acclerator could provide.

Yup. Regardless of whether the accelerator pedal was sticky or under a floor mat or whatever, the driver was still at fault for not using the brake pedal.

One auto magazine even carried out a test where they verified that the brakes on a modern car more powerful than any of the Toyotas at issue can easily stop the vehicle, even with the accelerator held down.

Re:seems to be the norm

[davros-too]

I've not followed this story in detail, but one thing which could explain why the brakes do not counteract the engine is if they were initially applied gently - over a period of time the brakes balance the engine acceleration until the brakes overheat and become ineffective. At that point, stomping on the brakes does not help and you crash. If you have a stuck throttle and can't get the engine off/in neutral/disengage clutch/etc then apply the brakes hard and you will stop promptly.

Re:seems to be the norm

[luther349]

maybe im just a good driver. of course i was thought how to deal with failers like loss of brakes and good driving habit's of not riding 2 feet on someones bumper. wile the rules not enforced by police they tel you not to ride close to people and thats why. if you have a issue with braking or even sudden accrelation you have time to react like pulling your ebrake. and yes toyotas have ebrakes.

Re:seems to be the norm

[luther349]

agreed. overheated brakes do become less effectiv but if you apply hard it still should lock your tires. also the front do most of the work and they are the first to overheat. the brake uses the rear to lock to rear tires to slide to a stop. one of the reasion they use rear ebrakes is due to overheat.

No, there HAS to be a problem!

[CCTalbert]

Otherwise you can't have lawsuits and everyone receive lottery-like settlements!

Engineering and science must take a back seat on this one, driver error isn't an interesting enough answer.

Conspiracy theory

[sb98052]

Need I say more.

Re:Conspiracy theory

[DeathFromSomewhere]

Yes actually, a whole lot more. In fact you didn't really say anything at all.

Practice shifting into neutral and it's all good

[Heretic2]

Seriously, you can mitigate this problem.

How does the actual system work?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to know how many independent sensors they have reading the accelerator pedal position. If they have only one, then its quite possible that a fault with the sensor could cause unintentional acceleration. In a previous report on this, they claimed that the computer data indicated that drivers were pressing the accelerator instead of the brake - however, if there is only one sensor and it glitched, this is EXACTLY what it would indicate.

However, if they had multiple independent systems reading it (the only safe way IMHO), its highly unlikely to have been due to a problem with the drive-by-wire system.

Does anyone have any real information as to how Toyotas drive-by-wire actually works?

Re:How does the actual system work?

[h4rr4r]

If your car suddenly accelerates and you cannot shift into neutral or press the brakes to stop it, you are not qualified to operate a motor vehicle.

Re:How does the actual system work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Given "gas instead of the brake", wouldn't that show that either two sensors have failed (gas and brake pedals), the driver is pressing the gas, or the driver is too stupid to do anything while the car runs away?

Re:How does the actual system work?

[confused one]

Two. They use Two.

Re:How does the actual system work?

[Electricity Likes Me]

The accelerator pedal uses two hall-effect sensors.

However the real issue is that in every single case, the throttle is wide-open, but no braking is recorded. Which means either you have a fault which disables logging of braking action and somehow wipes out a direct mechanical system at the same time it accelerates out of control, or, the driver stomps on the wrong pedal, panics, and keeps pressing it.

Re:How does the actual system work?

[ShakaUVM]

>>If your car suddenly accelerates and you cannot shift into neutral or press the brakes to stop it, you are not qualified to operate a motor vehicle.

When it happened to me, the brakes did not work. They felt very hard, and even stomping on them with both feet was not enough to push the pedal down very much, and it didn't do enough to slow the car down.

I did kill the engine after a few terrifying seconds of almost killing people, but not everyone knows you can do that when the car is moving, I guess.

Re:How does the actual system work?

[h4rr4r]

Why did you not shift to neutral?
This would have kept your power steering.

Those people are not qualified to be operating motor vehicles.

Re:How does the actual system work?

[ShakaUVM]

I did first, and the engine redlined, so I turned it off. Steering wasn't an issue in any event.

Mass hysteria

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought I'd read that there were literally zero reports of this issue outside of the United States.

Re:Mass hysteria

[Surt]

Wouldn't matter, as the cars are different outside the US. Could be a US specific part.

Possible solutions

[currently_awake]

Having the vehicle engine drop to idle if you touch the brake should suffice (preferably on a separate circuit). I would suggest making it a law: On all drive by wire control systems you have 3 independent sensor and control computers on gas/brake/steering/shifter with voting. And if one of the three gives a divergent reading the check engine light comes on. If all three give different results you shut down the car.

Re:Possible solutions

[Cosgrach]

Make it the law and penalize drivers who know what they are doing? I use the 'heal and toe' method to maintain slightly better stability whilst driving on twisty roads. But then again, I drive rally cars for fun. I've also made the leap and disconnected the neutral start switch on all my manual transmission cars. Sometimes, just sometimes you really do want the car in gear while cranking it over.

Here is an idea: why not use a cable between the pedal and the throttle body? Wow, now we are cooking with gas.

Re:Possible solutions

[h4rr4r]

Cables also get stuck. Used to happen all the time in my old 87 corolla. Was never a real problem I just popped the gas to unstick it, and if I had to I could have held in the clutch or shifted to neutral.

Re:Possible solutions

[Cosgrach]

Actually, I've had the cables break in my old Volkswagons. Had to drive home with the idle adjust screw cranked *way* in. It was hell at stop signs.

Re:Possible solutions

[NIK282000]

Cables also get stuck. Used to happen all the time in my old 87 corolla. Was never a real problem I just popped the gas to unstick it, and if I had to I could have held in the clutch or shifted to neutral.

You see! Toyota has had these problems for over 20 years, they just cant cover it up any more.

Re:Possible solutions

[DavidTC]

What I would make a law is putting a switch exactly the same size and shape as the ignition key on the steering wheel, that actually does cut power to the engine.

It's absurd they can sell a car without some mechanical and obvious way to cut off the engine.

There IS a problem with the cars

[Lucky75]

Just because they "found no problem" (publicly) with the cars, doesn't mean that there isn't one. I've experienced one of these things accelerating personally (multiple times, actually) and I can tell you that there IS something wrong with the cars. I didn't crash into anything, so I don't really have any reason to lie, Don't believe these "findings".

Re:There IS a problem with the cars

[navyjeff]

What was the nature of your experience with the car accelerating? Did it repeat it under similar or common set of circumstances? Did you find a cause for the unintended acceleration? Not trolling, just curious.

Re:There IS a problem with the cars

[h4rr4r]

Ok so we should believe you over the actual experts?

How is this for a little thought experiment;
Odds that their is some conspiracy to cover this up, vs the known fact that none of these drivers were capable enough to simply put the vehicle in neutral and might have been poor enough drivers to be actually standing on the gas and thought it the brake.

Re:There IS a problem with the cars

[Mashiki]

Did you know that if either the lower O2 sensor, or the EGR valve are bad/failing/etc, that you'll get acceleration without doing anything? It's because the engine revs higher, in order to compensate for a bad fuel mixture.

Re:There IS a problem with the cars

[PortHaven]

Ditto, I had a similar occurrence with my Prius. It's actually an older model. I suspect a glitch in the cruise control.

In my situation I hit the break, and slowed the car. But then it accelerated when I released the brake. The engine rev'd up. It did so the same way cruise control does if you've got a heavy load and hit a hill.

Re:There IS a problem with the cars

[raftpeople]

Ok so we should believe you over the actual experts?

This is what the "experts" said about the KNOWN causes:

improperly installed floor mats, sticky pedals, and driver error

What they have not been able to determine is what happened in the documented case of the person that brought his car to the dealership while the engine was pegged (he put it in neutral and back out to limp back to the dealer).
Toyota admits that the person did come in and they were unable to determine why the accelerator was stuck.

You are a little naive if you think a complex situation like this can be put to rest by some "experts" with limited resources. If you look at the rate of acceleration issues with Toyota over the last 10 years compared to other mfg's with similar domestic volume you will find that their rate of logged complaints considerably exceeds all other mfg's.

Re:There IS a problem with the cars

[vajrabum]

So in effect because some outside black box not-IT QA organizations (i.e. DoT and NTHSA) can't reproduce the fault you're going to believe them over the people reporting the bug? Instead you're jumping to the conclusion that it's all a conspiracy theory instead of incompetent QA? Silly wabbit. You've obviously never worked in software development, QA or tech support. If you had you'd know that sufficently complicated software systems almost always have real world failure modes that can't be reproduced in the lab--sometimes for years.

Re:There IS a problem with the cars

[geekoid]

yes, but not any real radical speed increase.

Re:There IS a problem with the cars

[Lucky75]

It was actually pretty hard to reproduce at will. It only happened about 4 times, 3 of those times were on the highway. I can tell you though that it had NOTHING to do with any mats, since the gas petal felt exactly the same after it accelerated. I had to shove it into neutral so I didn't hit something, and it went away after a couple of seconds for the most part. It really was just completely random acceleration. There wasn't anything gradual about it, and it felt like the petal was floored when it wasn't. Every time I read one of these articles about it being "floor mats" or "didn't find anything" I laugh, because it's really just more bullshit.

Re:There IS a problem with the cars

[Lucky75]

Considering that I have nothing to gain from this and that many people have experienced similar issues, yes, I would think so. I'm just sharing my experiences. I've been driving for years and I can tell the difference between "driver error" and a racing engine. I did put it in neutral. since that's really the fastest way to prevent hitting something. I can confidently say that I was NOT standing on the gas, nor was my floor mat. And really, I have an easier time believing that it's a conspiracy and that people were bought off over floor mats over the gas petal. The amount of acceleration isn't something that a floormat could equal unless said mat was made of lead.

Re:There IS a problem with the cars

[Lucky75]

Or...you know....they just didn't find the problem. Considering that it only happened to be about 4 times within a 3 year time span, a few months of testing won't necessarily reproduce the problem.

Re:There IS a problem with the cars

[Lucky75]

I didn't have cruise in my model, so it couldn't be that for me. I've seen that happen sometimes when using cruise (I was driving a mazda 3 that did something similar once), but this was different. It would feel sort of the same way though.

Re:There IS a problem with the cars

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe you. I've had similar 'sudden acceleration' issues with the wife's KIA sportage. In our case, the engine would rev to 2500+ RPMs when you pressed the brakes (intermittently of course). I almost slammed into a storefront when it happened.

At first I didn't believe the wife, so I drove it for a day, and it happened twice to me. In our case, it took computer updates and a new MAF sensor to 'fix' the problem. I never trusted the thing since then and promptly sold the car.

Incidentally, most automotive manufacturers have had 'sudden acceleration' issues in various makes/models. The toyota one just got massive publicity.

Crappy programming, and faulty parts can _easily_ lead to 'sudden acceleration' problems, probably in any make/model.

My record: driving 18 years, never a wreck or fender-bender.

Re:There IS a problem with the cars

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell that to the police officer and his family that were killed while he was driving a rental Toyota near San Diego.

Re:There IS a problem with the cars

[woolpert]

Or...you know....they just didn't find the problem. Considering that it only happened to be about 4 times within a 3 year time span, a few months of testing won't necessarily reproduce the problem.

A few months times dozens of drivers and hundreds of vehicles, including every single one with a unexplained reported sudden acceleration problem they were able to get their hands on.

If you had reported your sudden acceleration issue to your dealer the NHTSA would have contacted you.

Since you didn't mention the fact of their contact, much less the method which all of us in the loop should know, I call BOGUS.

Re:There IS a problem with the cars

[Anonymous Coward]

Me too. I was at a complete stop with my foot square on the brake at a stoplight when ours did it. When I put it in park, then engine kept revving higher. After a reboot, it was fine.

Re:There IS a problem with the cars

[Mashiki]

I hope you're joking. Seeing a speed increase of 40km/h in under 25m isn't a radical increase? Damn. Good thing people don't get hit by cars at that speed(50-90km/h) and die or anything.

Re:There IS a problem with the cars

[dave562]

As much as I hate to undo nearly 15 points of moderation, I have to point out that you're wrong here. Toyota vehicles have uncontrolled acceleration problems. How else do you explain the issue with the Lexus, driven by the CHP officer whose family was on the phone with 911? A CHP officer, who spends the majority of his life behind the wheel, often times at higher than average speeds, died when he was unable to slow down his Lexus.

Your "...none of these drivers were capable enough..." is an idiotic statement that flies in the face of the reality of the situation. Just because the Prius managed to pass an inspection does not mean that Toyota's are safe, or that everyone who had a problem with them is an idiot.

Re:There IS a problem with the cars

[jo_ham]

He was an idiot.

Press the footbrake. Hard.

Car stops.

Problem solved.

The brakes are *considerably* stronger than the transmission in their application of force to the wheels (ie, torque from the engine vs torque in the opposite direction from the brake disc). The only way he could have been in a situation where he could not stop is if his brakes were faulty, or if he gingerly pressed them and wore them out or hugely overheated them by keeping them partially depressed while speeding along. A sustained, hard press of the pedal *will* stop that car, even going at speed with the throttle jammed open and the transmission engaged.

As a professional driver, I am amazed that he *didn't* manage to stop the car despite the obvious method to do so - pressing the brake!

Whether the car has an issue or not, it was his own error that he died since he should have been able to stop the car despite a stuck throttle. If he could not do so, he was unfit to be driving in the first place, CHP officer or not.

Re:There IS a problem with the cars

[navyjeff]

Did it involve cruise control at any point? There was an article a while back about Woz saying he had found a specific software bug with the accelerator. According to him the NHTSA dragged their feet on investigating it. If I had one, I'd probably stick some DAQ hardware on the ECU buses to see if I could record the problem.

Re:There IS a problem with the cars

[Lucky75]

Nope, no cruise control in that vehicle at all.

Re:There IS a problem with the cars

[Lucky75]

Or...you know....they just didn't find the problem. Considering that it only happened to be about 4 times within a 3 year time span, a few months of testing won't necessarily reproduce the problem.

A few months times dozens of drivers and hundreds of vehicles, including every single one with a unexplained reported sudden acceleration problem they were able to get their hands on.

If you had reported your sudden acceleration issue to your dealer the NHTSA would have contacted you.

Since you didn't mention the fact of their contact, much less the method which all of us in the loop should know, I call BOGUS.

Nope, didn't exactly feel like having them pull my car in for inspection and going through the hassle for something that I couldn't reproduce. That and I don't live in the United States so they wouldn't have contacted me anyway.

I honestly could care less about your "BOGUS" call, nor do I really buy your "deductions" about how I must be lying (why I would I don't know) since I didn't contact an American agency about my vehicle which wasn't purchased or ever driven in the United States.I do, however, find it interesting how vehemently opposed you are to anyone suggesting that there might actually be a problem with Toyota vehicles and voicing their own experiences.

Re:There IS a problem with the cars

[Anonymous Coward]

How else do you explain the issue with the Lexus, driven by the CHP officer whose family was on the phone with 911? A CHP officer, who spends the majority of his life behind the wheel, often times at higher than average speeds, died when he was unable to slow down his Lexus.

The cause of that is well-documented. It was a rented Lexus with an assortment of floor mats piled on top of each other from the rental agency. They got stuck under the pedal. In other words: one of the known physical issues. Not the mysterious computer problems that there has been absolutely no evidence of and whose rumored existence probably started with and was subsequently amplified by media organizations looking for that perfect fear-mongering story.

Re:There IS a problem with the cars

[Anonymous Coward]

1. 
   Put car into neutral
2. 
   Turn-off engine
3. 
   Gradually apply hand-brake

If a CHP officer couldn't do that... he must have been a desk officer.

Re:There IS a problem with the cars

[Anonymous Coward]

A CHP officer, who spends the majority of his life behind the wheel, often times at higher than average speeds, died when he was unable to slow down his Lexus.A CHP officer, who spends the majority of his life behind the wheel, often times at higher than average speeds, died when he was unable to slow down his Lexus.

The most plausible scenario is, he got into a new car, used his other car habits, lost control, his passengers lost their minds, and after the crash his colleagues covered all up so that the family doesn't lose his insurance benefits.

Re:There IS a problem with the cars

[winwar]

"He was an idiot."

To be fair, they was some blame to go around. I'm not quite sure why nobody thought to press and hold the start button at any time during that entire period.

Re:There IS a problem with the cars

[Anonymous Coward]

You "honestly could care less", I'm sure. This is such an unimportant issue you've spent seven posts so far trying to draw attention to it.

I, too, call "bogus". This is the Audi mess all over again. There is absolutely no proof of any electronic issue, and no evidence outside the anecdotes of unreliables.

Re:There IS a problem with the cars

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course you have reason to lie (or, more fairly, to be mistaken). Even if you didn't crash into anything, you are still compelled to blame the car rather than yourself for what you experienced, because like everyone else you are deeply unwilling to believe you could be operating it incorrectly.

Re:There IS a problem with the cars

[Anonymous Coward]

Fear not, while you may not accelerate uncontrollably, stopping is still a whole other matter. I'm getting rid of my Prius today after the second accident in two winters with the accursed thing. Both were low speed and cosmetic, but illustrated that the damn thing is just not predictable. That IMHO is the problem with the car. It behaves just like any other car until it doesn't. I suspect that under the right conditions it has trouble figuring out whether to use the friction or regenerative braking systems and instead uses neither. That's just supposition on my part. Maybe it's just smallish wheels on a heavy vehicle, though I would expect it to consistently behave poorly. At any rate it's by far the WORST car I've ever driven in the snow and I won't be sorry to see it go.

Re:There IS a problem with the cars

[Chriscypher]

Don't forget the 2010 Prius was recalled for software bugs in the anti-lock braking system which led to crashes.

Re:There IS a problem with the cars

[Anonymous Coward]

I've experienced unintended acceleration in a Buick before. Those things happen. Probably more often than we like to believe. However, the vast majority of people do NOT panic and are able to get the car under control by whatever means necessary. It's just the few that lose themselves to panic that make the news.

Re:There IS a problem with the cars

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually had a similar problem to this with my own car (Camry). Turns out it was the cruise control, just not in the way you would expect.

Dirt and grim had built up on the cruise controller throttle, causing the throttle to stick and stay open after releasing the peddle. All I had to do was clean off all the grim and it worked perfectly normal afterwords.

People just don't want to take responsibility for their mistakes, whether it's hitting the gas instead of the break or not maintaining their car.

Re:There IS a problem with the cars

[h4rr4r]

He failed to put it in neutral, surely it is sad that his driving ability was so poor it got his family killed.

Re:There IS a problem with the cars

[Autonomous Crowhard]

I've experienced problems with my Toyota but it was because the cruise control sucks. When the car starts losing speed (caused by hill or headwind), the cruise control doesn't slowly apply gas until it gets back to the set point. Oh no. It downshifts and races the engine hard until the car is at least 5 MPH past the set point. So much for fuel economy. And I can see how this would cause an unprepared driver to freak out and make things worse.

I haven't seen signs of bad engineering, just sloppy engineering or cheaping out. I also have a problem with any car company who's saying, "We're perfect, it's our drivers who are stupider than average."

That's the trouble with Toyota

[Jafafa Hots]

Their hardware is good, but their drivers suck.

the Mythbusters need to test Toyota's!

[Joe The Dragon]

the Mythbusters need to test Toyota's!

Re:the Mythbusters need to test Toyota's!

[Anonymous Coward]

test Toyota's what? GOOD GOD MAN, don't leave us hanging.

Re:the Mythbusters need to test Toyota's!

[Joe The Dragon]

in all ways with driving and acceleration.

Re:the Mythbusters need to test Toyota's!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're just witnessing the spelling ability of the average Mythbusters fan. The only good news about a Mythbusters Toyota test is that they would blow the car to smithereens at the end.

Re:the Mythbusters need to test Toyota's!

[geekoid]

Yes, poorly done biased tests is exactly what they need. And of course there is no data from the initial set of incidents.

I'll some up.

"We couldn't duplicated it, but electronic systems are complex and can have bugs: Plausible."

and no so people will forget how sloppy we were, we are going to blow it up.

Re:the Mythbusters need to test Toyota's!

[geekoid]

After reading how sloppy the spelling in that post is, I wish I could blow it up.

Re:the Mythbusters need to test Toyota's!

[QuantumBeep]

Actually I think they leave it on the back to be engulfed in water, then drop it off the top of a building, then put it on a pedestal as a mascot of good engineering.

Re:the Mythbusters need to test Toyota's!

[Anonymous Coward]

whoooooooosh!

Re:the Mythbusters need to test Toyota's!

[Anonymous Coward]

in all ways with driving and acceleration.

No; this was about your Apostrophe Fail, not a serious question about what you want the MythBusters to test. We presumed you were talking about the acceleration problem, which was the subject under discussion, if you recall. But, I waste my time as you are clearly as far from Cluefulness as one can get

Seriously, if you don't understand apostrophe use, don't use the fucking things. Still, you obviously have no idea how fucking horrible it is to read something written by someone who just Doesn't Get It so this post of mine is merely farting against the thunder of the great unwashed.

(not that any of this means anything to you)

Well now...

[jshuford]

The sudden acceleration is very much like how the cruise control acts when it is engaged. Toyota and the U.S. Government overlooked the problem because they didn't see it the right way. Pfft! rocket scientists; what-ever!

Disappointed

[maugle]

I am very disappointed with these findings...

Back when they thought the car could just flip out and accelerate wildly, a Prius was a man's car! Oh, "I need some groceries, I guess I'll drive to the store in my ticking time bomb death machine!" You just can't get much manlier than that!

Now it's back to being a wussy hippiemobile.
Sigh.

Apparently there's an easy fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't buy Toyota cars. It's amazing how fast they'll find and fix the problem then.

Nuttin honey

[Anonymous Coward]

Well they didn't say nothing was wrong. They said the "found" nothing wrong.

On the other hand, with all the junk in cars today the qualifications for driving have changed. Years ago you used to have to learn how to drive a vehicle. Today you have to learn how to point it in the direction you'd like to go.

Not buying it....

[PortHaven]

As I had this happen myself. I do not buy the whole "human error".

And there might be a very very easy way to prove or disprove that statement. If it is human error, than the same incident should occur throughout all brands with approx. the same level of occurrence.

If it is happening significantly higher with Toyotas. Then there is clearly a non-human error issue. Simple logic here. But the fact that I had this occur to me once with my Toyota leaves me to suspect Toyota. Thankfully, I did not get into an accident. And within 2-3 seconds I got it to stop. (I do wonder if it might be tied to the cruise control system.)

Re:Not buying it....

[Nerdfest]

Your theory does not take a publicized problem and lucrative lawsuit settlements into account.

Re:Not buying it....

[Surt]

You're ignoring the possibility that clumsy drivers might prefer to buy Toyota.

Re:Not buying it....

[Insightfill]

And there might be a very very easy way to prove or disprove that statement. If it is human error, than the same incident should occur throughout all brands with approx. the same level of occurrence.

In the case of the Audi 5000s, it turned out that all of the 'sudden acceleration' drivers had the same demographic - a white female in her late 40s - early 50s. As a sibling post points out, the fact that it seems concentrated among Toyotas could also indicate a commonality among Toyota buyers.

Re:Not buying it....

[Anonymous Coward]

The output of your statistics depends on how you count the accidents.
Since the Toyota issue was wildly publicized, I assume a greater portion of Toyota drivers blamed the car than e.g. Ford drivers...
So alone a peak in Toyota sudden acceleration accidents would NOT mean it is a car fault.

An other poster mentioned, that the number of reported accidents correlated with the media hype, and not with changing car designs/components. That alone is no evidence either, but interesting to know...

Re:Not buying it....

[sincewhen]

IIRC someone did some analysis and found that older drivers were much more susceptible to "unintended acceleration".
Given that some brands/models are targeted at the more mature motorist (cadillac, perhaps toyota) I wouldn't expect there to be an even spread.

Here's an article I just found (not the one I remember, but same ideas) http://www.businessinsider.com/a-deep-dive-into-toyota-sudden-acceleration-accident-stats-2010-3

Re:Not buying it....

[Anonymous Coward]

If it were a purely mechanical problem, then why would this problem correlate positively with driver age? People reporting unintended acceleration were much more likely than average to be over the age of 60. There may be a slight mechanical basis, but probably the vast majority of the reports were due to driver error, compounded by mass hysteria leading to increased reporting (and false reporting by people trying to weasel out of a ticket). Also, the majority of these reported accidents happened while parking, a time where you are switching pedals rapidly.

Re:Not buying it....

[LordVader717]

That's assuming that driver's reports and media exposure is unbiased, which is a flawed assumption.
Elementary Psychology explains the cognitive bias which could lead to blaming the cars. Case closed.

Re:Not buying it....

[Anonymous Coward]

If it is happening significantly higher with Toyotas. Then there is clearly a non-human error issue. Simple logic here.

Unless media attention causes people to report "unintended acceleration" in higher numbers than they normally would. Not so simple logic. You say you had it occur to you once. Was that before or after it was a big news story, and, if after, can you honestly claim you would have given the occurrence a second thought if it hadn't been in the news?

Re:Not buying it....

[chefmonkey]

If it is being reported significantly higher with Toyotas.

There. Fixed that for you. Now finish your explanation.

Re:Not buying it....

[Anonymous Coward]

No, one person invents this shit to get of the hook, next time some moron forgets how to drive in a Toyota he remembers the story and thinks: hey cool, that's a better way than to be responsible. And blam, urban legend is born.
Using your logic, this should have happend in every country where Toyotas are sold. It didn't. On the other hand, this happens all the Time, only with toyota these stories get more coverage.

Re:Not buying it....

[hacksoncode]

Actually, the *reports* of it happening to Toyotas occurred more often. However, the frequency of those reports is highly correlated to the news reports of the problem with a time offset that implies the causality is news->reports rather than the other way around.

This problem *does* occur with considerable regularity to all brands. Some get attention at some times more than others, that's about all you can say.

Not a solution

[DragonWriter]

Having the vehicle engine drop to idle if you touch the brake should suffice

Since the problem in many cases is people stomping on the gas and not the brake, that won't actually stop the problem.

Reengineering the human brain so people never make erroneous reactions in stressful situations would address the problem, but probably will not be practical for quite some time.

Let's not forget

[geekoid]

The the initial instance found no cause; HOWEVER the 'blackbox'* had been disconnected from power before inspection. Meaning they had no information no the worst cases,AND they did push out a firmware update.

*I know, they are more of a debugging tool then an actual blackbox, like those found in aircraft.

NHTSA != Toyota

[DragonWriter]

Since one of the people behind the wheel was Steve Wozniak (previous slashdot story hyperlinked here [slashdot.org]), and he said he'd actually been able to replicate unchecked acceleration by the cruise-control system, I'm not trusting Toyota.

The results announced by the Department of Transportation were of the study conducted by the NHTSA (which, remember, fined Toyota for not responding promptly enough to the floor mat and pedal design issues) with the assistance of NASA, not by Toyota. So, whether you trust Toyota would seem to be irrelevant.

Nor would I trust the government. They're not likely to be bringing A+ talent to the party.

Trusting the government is, OTOH, at least relevant to the issue, since this was a government study. However, your stated basis for dismissing the government study (which amounts to "Steve Wozniak said something different, and the people working for the government are stupid") is pretty vacuous.

Context

[DragonWriter]

What they also confirmed was that mechanical issues were a factor.

The mechanical issues (pedal design and floor mats) that were confirmed were not in dispute -- Toyota already issued recalls over them. The controversial issue was whether some other design issue -- the most commonly suggested was a problem in the electronic throttle control -- that had not been the subject of recall and correction was also at fault, posing continuing risk, or whether the incidents not related to the acknowledged mechanical issues were due to driver error.

correlation != causation

[Surt]

Just because a lot of Toyotas are out of control doesn't mean there's a problem with Toyotas. Clearly, out of control drivers prefer to buy Toyota.

Re:correlation != causation

[thegarbz]

This would be far funnier if it was GM being investigated over lowered V6 / V8 stupidmobiles typically preferred by the 18-25 year old crowd rather than the 4 cylinder hybrid wimpmobiles that Toyota typically produce :-)

design induced driver errors

[k6mfw]

I listened to some of today's briefing, recorded it to watch later. They mentioned about unintended accelerations caused by floor mats. Of course drivers should pay attention to such details, many do not. Proper design for floor mat is one that does not have such a failure mode. I can see more driver induced accidents in near future. For example, some new cars have terrible visibility such as new Acuras. I drove one a couple months ago, man was it scary when doing lane changes, so many blind spots with narrow side windows and a rear view mirror feels like tunnel vision. Unlike a 1996 Acura 3.2TL has great visibility, where did the engineers go wrong? I can see more accidents happening and all caused by the driver. But if vehicle designed for good visibility, driver wouldn't have crashed in the first place!

Re:design induced driver errors

[Anonymous Coward]

Proper design for floor mat is one that does not have such a failure mode.

That's true, but how do you design for the fact that people may stupidly stack multiple floor mats on top of each other (as was the case in some of the reported incidents)? How much clearance are the required to build in to compensate for such stupidity? Some idiot will just go and install 3 or 4 floor mats and say "oh, it was too uncomfortable with the pedals being that high off the floor, so I put in the extra mats to raise the floor and make it more comfortable".

Re:Practice shifting into neutral and it's all goo

[Surt]

I am going to drill myself on that, thanks.
Remember: shift into neutral.
Remember: shift into neutral.
Remember: shift into neutral.

Remember to shift into neutral when I unexpectedly accelerate over a cliff. Thanks!

Really?

[neowolf]

So then a disproportionately high number of people who can't tell the difference between the brake and accelerator just happen to drive Toyotas or Toyota-built cars? Sorry, not buying it. There is a pretty serious design flaw at work here, and this report doesn't really exonerate Toyota.

Re:Really?

[igb]

American cars that I've driven have immense brake and accelerator pedals. European and Japanese cars in many cases have much smaller, especially as since most of them are sold predominantly as manuals with autos very much a secondary market. One can imagine that Audis come as something of a shock if you've bought one because they're high status and you've mostly driven Chevy cars before. I've driven a Prius, both the old and the new model, and like a lot of Japanese cars they have delicate and small controls (and the other cars I drive are European automatics, a Saab and a VW, so I'm well used to small pedals). It doesn't seem unreasonable to suspect that older Toyota drivers are more likely to have previously driven American cars than little European things best driven in slippers. The giveaway with the Audi "unintended acceleration" shtick was that no such "epidemic" happened in Europe, and likewise there hasn't been the slightest trace of a problem with Toyotas. There's been a recall because of this business about a mechanical part in the accelerator pedal assembly, but there's no reported accidents caused by it. Conclusion? Old people used to cars with big pedals should be careful about buying little cars with small pedals.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, and this "design flaw" is somehow affected by radio waves from your local TV station and FM radio? Because guess what - if you put "Toyota unexplained acceleration" on the news suddenly the number of "unexplained" incidents in Toyotas shoots up to a significant level. But the same thing has happened to other brands in the past. If a local news story blocks coverage for one region of the "unexplained acceleration" in a specific brand of car then only the usual level of complaints (across all makes) occurs in that region.

This isn't new, it's like those "mysterious" mass animal deaths. There are a bunch of uninteresting initial causes, but a coincidence in a slow news week is enough to trigger media interest and then the hysteria causes people to get on TV news with stories about how two chickens died in the same week. Just noise, amplified until people believe it must be important enough to contain a hidden signal.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, as the article, and even the summary states, the amount of reports were basically directly proportionate to the amount of media attention the supposed fault was getting at the time. I'm sure other car manufacurers get their fair share of the same type of reports, Toyota just happened to be the go-to scapegoat at the time.

Re:Control System Design Flaw, Root locus anyone

[Surt]

It's an easy recommendation to make when you're not experiencing a panic inducing uncontrolled and unexpected acceleration.

Not necessarily inconsistent.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Different problem. Read the Woz's description. His complaint is only about the cruise control.

It's not necessarily a different problem. Scenario:

  - Driver bumps the cruise control or the wiring/control is worn or otherwise has a momentary contact.
  - Car goes into uncontrolled acceleration.
  - Hitting brake clears the problem.
  - Driver has no clue the cruise control was involved.

Another poster reported uncontrolled acceleration when taking foot off brake. The brake switch is also an input to the cruise control algorithm. One way for software to cause THAT to trigger the issue is if a bug in the contact debounce routines not only generates a hold-down-resume/accel output for a tap on the regular control but also for a bounce-on-release in the brake signal.

Things to look for: Race conditions, bugs in input signal conditioning routines, an interrupt not properly saving&restoring a register, wild store smashing a state, insufficient stack allocation to a task to prevent interrupt state stacking to clobber another task's stack, etc.

Re:Not necessarily inconsistent.

[tbannist]

I'm not sure what Wozniak experienced was a real problem, or merely an issue of differing expectations. He was hitting the "increase speed" button on the cruise control 10 times or more in a row when the speed limit went up on the highway. Eventually, the Prius goes full throttle until it reaches the new target speed. I suppose it's scary, but I think the issue might be with putting the cruise control target speed so much higher than your current speed.

I think the thing to look for is what you expect should happen in that situation. Wozniak wants each press of the increase speed button to increase the acceleration rate instead of jumping to from moderate acceleration to full acceleration at some cut off. It'd probably be a good idea, but I'm not sure that the way it works now is actually defective.

Re:Not necessarily inconsistent.

[DavidTC]

Erm, the brake is not really an 'input' to the cruise control system. The brake turn cruise control off.

It's entirely possibly that there is some 'repeated input' glitch going on, but all repeated brake input would do is turn it off repeatedly. (Which, obviously, is the same as turning it off once.)

The only way what you're describing could work is if the 'resume' was somehow stuck on, and repeatedly attempting to result, which a) one bug sorta like what Woz described, except in a different control, and not really working the same way, plus b) an entirely different bug, probably mechanically, that wedged the button on.

So I don't think we should assume that Woz's 'bug' has anything to do with any hypothetical bugs anyone else experienced, or that it is even, technically speaking, a 'bug' at all...he did push the button a bunch of times, and it did accelerate.

I don't think any cruise control promises that it will accelerate consistently, that it will take six times as long to accelerate six increases as one increase. It could be argued it _should_ do that, but that doesn't make failure to do so some sort of bug, just a misdesign. In fact, that could actually be seen as a feature....if you push repeatedly, you're in some sort of hurry.

I hope that is not how Brake override works!

[robbak]

The article describes the brake override system as "immediately cutting engine power if the brakes are applied". I certainly hope they are wrong.

There are several situations where brake and throttle need to be applied at the same time. The one I have to do irregularly is to dry out the brake system after traveling through water - Drive slowly while applying brake force until the disks dry out. My Astra has fly-by-wire throttle, and it cuts accelerator input after a few seconds of brake application. This does not cause any problems.

The other one I can think of ,namely, left-foot braking, really shouldn't be necessary on the road.

Lastly, i vastly prefer fly-by-wire to an old style throttle cable. They regularly stick when seals crack, dust gets in and lubricants dry. Fly-by-wire is much more reliable, and far more flexable.

Odd Bias

[Anonymous Coward]

This has come up before, and last time there was an odd bias. Apparently the run-away acceleration was 10x more likely to happen with 1) elderly drivers, and 2) young male drivers. If it's a technical issue, it seems unlikely that it would have a bias.

Re:Odd Bias

[DavidTC]

Or they're just the ones who don't know how to stop it.

1987 Ford Torus had a similiar problem twice

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem first occurred shortly after the warranty expired. Both times it happened while my mom was driving over the Verrazano Bridge. When it happened she pumped the breaks hard and then turned off the ignition, then back on to let the car coast the rest of the way over the bridge. Afterwards she restarted it and the RPM immediately shot up. I disconnected the electrical connection to the cruise control actuator and it seemed okay. Some months later the problem occurred again, this time I told her to put it in neutral which she did. After getting over the bridge, my brother found the cruise control vacuum actuator, (with the disconnected electrical harness,) was pulling the throttle open. He disconnected the linkage, and the problem never happened again.

Toyota you have a problem & anonymous posts

[globalsnake]

So i would say am some what of an expert and have a few engineering degrees to back it up. Her is the recap there is a problem but rather than try to find it due to its complexity and lack of ability we get this. Also I have posted 3 anonymous and they all got deleted. The just of the problem is this toyota went f-16 style and choose to fly by wire with the throttle of the car the component that controls speed. No there is no physical link between accelerator and throttle body. Before cruise control used to be completely disengaged if the brake was hit since the servo would not be physically controlling the wire. No all control is computer controlled of the throttle body so the redundant system that was in place was removed 1st mistake. Second before sometime cruise controls may act up due to control system design which needs to properly take into account all inputs and even reaction of the control system again if the car would act up by applying the brake problem would be solve their wore a few recalls before for cruise controls on various cars but no major impact cause brakes can be applied. There are control system bugs that you can take 100 comp sci developers and they will never find it since it is a design bug in the control system aka the governing equations for the system and well if you do not use any but rather treat it as a state machine guess what that is your control look and a horrible one at best.

Re:Toyota you have a problem & anonymous posts

[QuantumBeep]

I'd've deleted that abortion of logic, sound thinking, and English composition too.

Neurtal? We don't need no steenkin' neutral!

[Ungrounded Lightning]

A far simpler thing to do that will leave the power steering working is to shift into neutral.

Shift? Neutral? I thought we were talking about a Prius.

The Prius has no shift, no clutch, no neutral. It has a planetary gear system with:
  - The engine and one electric motor-generator (MG1) on one shaft,
  - another motor-generator (MG2, or "MGS" for "speed") on another, and
  - the drive shaft to the wheels on the third.
Transmission "shifting" is done by electronically controlling the relative speeds and torque directions of MG1 and MG2, transferring power from one to the other and/or between them and the batteries.

If the computer commands it to drive the car forward you have no way to intervene.

Drivers to blame?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess no Toyota for me next time.

Not necessarily stupid.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

... or the driver is too stupid to do anything while the car runs away?

If the car suddenly accelerates by itself it takes a short time to react and hit the brake. Then it takes time for the brakes to take effect (especially if the drive train didn't stop and is fighting the brakes). One can get into a LOT of trouble in that interval.

The unexpectedness of the car's behavior would also surprise the driver and might result in a delay of the reaction.

Finally, if the car is in traffic and hasn't ALREADY had an accident, trying to control the speed with brakes alone can cause it to slow or stop suddenly and get into trouble at the rear end.

So I wouldn't assume a driver who had an impact due to such an event to have been "too stupid" to control the car that had turned on him.

I'd LOVE to see a design for that linkage.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Here is an idea: why not use a cable between the pedal and the throttle body?

Given that the Prius "transmission" is a planetary gear set with the drive shaft torque controlled by a computer-mediated balancing act among the throttle, two electric motors, and a battery pack, that pedal would have to control four parameters and accept additional input from things including your current speed and forward/reverse/neutral setting.

I'd LOVE to see the mechanical linkage that correctly performed the computation. B-)

Who's going to repair Toyota's reputation?

[RogueWarrior65]

This sort of thing has me raising eyebrows. Toyota was crucified in the court of public opinion and hauled up before a congressional inquisition (NO ONE EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!!!) with few real facts to back it up. IMHO, those congressmen who went on a witch hunt owe Toyota an apology. Sure, companies need to admit and rectify problems but government and the media regularly get away with firebombing companies and regular people and they get away with it.

Re:Who's going to repair Toyota's reputation?

[nedlohs]

That's what you get when you gobble up lots f the cash for clunkers money that was supposed to go to GM and Ford.

Re:Who's going to repair Toyota's reputation?

[haxney]

Why would we want to punish anyone for keeping money from falling into the smoldering crater that is the American auto industry?

You may have the bingo!

[Ungrounded Lightning]

After getting over the bridge, my brother found the cruise control vacuum actuator, (with the disconnected electrical harness,) was pulling the throttle open. He disconnected the linkage, and the problem never happened again.

You may have the bingo!

That sounds like a mechanical problem in an electronically controlled vacuum valve in the cruise control actuator.

(I had something similar with the computer/valve/vacuum-diaphragm actuator on the waste valve of an Eagle Talon's turbo.)

The problem is at least partially real

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if you have poked around inside the software found on a modern car ECU lately, but there is quite a bit of code in there. Also we now have engine computers (ECU), brake computers (ABS), transmission computers, etc., plus the actual black box.

The short version is that there are computers with the power to overrule your foot and decide your brakes don't need to be engaged at this particular millisecond. Modern ABS systems do have the ability to render your brakes completely ineffective when that computer decides it's the correct choice. It usually only allows (a) specific brake caliper(s) (one per wheel) to be inactive for a few milliseconds at a time. Of course in a failure mode, the brakes revert to manual control and your foot again makes the rules. But usually if the engine is running, the computer is in charge.

The same is true for many modern cars and the engine throttle. It used to be just the cruise control that was electronically driven; now most new cars are "drive by wire". A signal is picked up from the throttle pedal and then fed to the engine computer, which then decides just how much air and fuel should be given to the engine to determine the requested power & acceleration. Most of these computers have a whole bunch of code between the signal received from the throttle pedal, and the message sent out to the controls managing fuel injectors, engine spark and air supply. The computer is actually deciding what happens, the driver is just asking the ECU to do something for them.

It's all in the factory service manuals & electrical circuit diagrams; but definitely not spelled out out this neatly. You would also need to connect a few more dots using diagrams for the hydraulic brake system and possibly other sub-system diagrams.

Unfortunately not all of the code used in these computers is defect free. It's pretty good, but it's not perfect. And even perfect code can become imperfect if there is a flaw in an interpreter, pre-compiler or compiler, or the copy process, or a defect in the physical media. An electrical glitch in the RAM or CPU at run time also has the potential to produce unpredictable results. As would interference or an error with any of the messaging systems passing instructions between the various computers and the control modules. Good thing all of those systems are 100% fail-proof, right? Right...

I do believe most of the problems are human error. But I also believe that some core percentage of the problems are not human error.

The relationship between media attention and increased reports of the problem is likely a result of people hoping to bring more attention to a problem they have experienced in the past. Although I'm sure some opportunists just use it as an excuse. It would be interesting to see if most of the additional cases reported occurred before the relavent media incident. It might also be interesting to see how many non-injury, non-accident (or damage) reports there are as well. Essentially people who have no potential gain from reporting the problem.

Oh, and I have poked around inside my current car's ECU. I've even made some changes.

Re:The problem is at least partially real

[Anonymous Coward]

The new GM Volt is purported to have over 10 million lines of code running the thing....and they use that as a selling point.

Re:Neurtal? We don't need no steenkin' neutral!

[luther349]

well i was speaking in cars in genrel the stuck gas peddle story has been going on far longer then toyota. brakes still work cutting the engion still works.

Re:Neurtal? We don't need no steenkin' neutral!

[luther349]

If the computer commands it to drive the car forward you have no way to intervene. sorry no you still do its called the brakes and or the off buttion.

Re:Neurtal? We don't need no steenkin' neutral!

[luther349]

oh and i almost forgot those cars have a ebrake on them as well.

Re:Neurtal? We don't need no steenkin' neutral!

[QuantumBeep]

No neutral?

I usually hate saying this, but why isn't that illegal?

it's still Toyota's problem

[PJ6]

Anyone with engineering and manufacturing experience, particularly in an industry where your mistakes can kill people, would say that calling the cause "driver error" is a red herring, totally irrelevant. If they found, after controlling for age and demographic and whatnot, that Toyotas were causing deaths significantly more often than other cars (this is the case, right?), it doesn't matter what the cause is - it's a design fault. Period.

Re:it's still Toyota's problem

[Anonymous Coward]

(this is the case, right?)

Citation needed.

Re:it's still Toyota's problem

[Anonymous Coward]

And if such a study showed that the Toyota fatality rate was the same as or less than other brands, would you stop making unsupported statements that you try to wrap as fact?

Re:it's still Toyota's problem

[Anonymous Coward]

it's not the case:
"Unintended acceleration is not exclusive to Toyotas," [NHTSA deputy administrator Ron] Medford said, pointing out that two-thirds of the unintended acceleration reports the agency has received in recent years involved vehicles by other automakers."

And I'm not on my period.

Re:it's still Toyota's problem

[PJ6]

Indeed. I didn't find any such statistic, otherwise I wouldn't have put it as a question.

Re:it's still Toyota's problem

[Jake Griffin]

Automobiles cause significantly more deaths than children's tricycles... is THAT a design fault?

Re:it's still Toyota's problem

[Jake Griffin]

Automobiles cause deaths significantly more often than tricycles (this is the case, right?), it doesn't matter what the cause is - it's a design fault. Period.

Re:Neurtal? We don't need no steenkin' neutral!

[luther349]

hybrid or electric motors do not use the same style of transmission as a gas only car. in face a full eltric uses no transmission they are acully bad for fule economy. but if i recall correctly applying the brake on these cars relese the clutch from the motor same thing as nutrule.

Pure bullshit

[Ripiket]

I read this story earlier on PCWorld. The thing about the investigation that jolts me the most is the implicit trust given to the NASA engineers as if they are the 'experts' on source code. I have respect for them, but who decided that they are the ultimate authority? Also, the claim that they reviewed 280,000 lines of source code is a little bit ridiculous as well. Ask anyone who has done any enterprise coding on big and complex projects and they will scoff at this. There is no way to 'review' that much code and account for every possible circumstance.

I have a feeling that this is just PR material sponsored jointly by Toyota and the US government to spur consumer spending and sweep shit under the rug.

Should they open source the ECU? Just saying...

Re:Pure bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

I think NASA has demonstrated itself to be capable of diagnosing odd bugs like this. Remember the problems they had with voyager 2, where it started transmitting garbled data, and they were able to determine the cause was a single flipped bit in memory? That's the sort of debugging skills that gives me confidence these guys can likely track down any causes that might exist in the code.

What about neutral?

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing that really grinds my gears is all of the people that had the time to call 9-1-1 saying they're accelerating out of control, and didn't have the sense to put the car in neutral! I own a Prius, I tested it myself. Even if you're holding the accelerator to the floor, you can still put the car in neutral, the engine will idle, and you can coast (or brake) to a controlled stop. How did these people get a license? I think the real issue here is incompetent drivers.

2010 Corolla S

[Anonymous Coward]

Just bought one last month - Love it. I think there were maybe some isolated incidents. But knowing how garbage most of my fellow human kind were - I think out of a job and still facing 40 more payments on their Camry - why not hit the gas and run into something. Just looking for another easy way out.

Toyota throttel stuck,not on the computer ! yes!

[Anonymous Coward]

iT happens-my low kilometer hyundai xel,build in 2000 ,with only 20000 km on the clock,would stop at least
15 times a month, in the center of the road,on crossings,not starting in the garage ! IT WAS SEVERAL TIMES
AT HYUNDAI dealers to be repaired !The could not find the problem !The build in computer had no REPORT
SAVED on the memory bank !No matter,how many times that was tested.I I found by accidend,testing with the volt
meter,no 12 volt on the ignition coil pack.But it vanished while testing.NO LUCK..As a last resort,
wriggelt(moved all the cables)around the the motor ,AND that worked and the motor started !
In the last 24 month,it only did it twice.My solution in this case,move the cables slightly.
NO HELP from the dealer,no help from the importe.If you check the problem list for this car on the internet,
you find more reports like it
And the problem with break and the non stopping motor was filmed here in sydney while it happend
It was shown on television..
horst in australia nsw 2529

Re:Practice shifting into neutral and it's all goo

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, you also need to remember step 2: brake.

Re:Neurtal? We don't need no steenkin' neutral!

[oji-sama]

The Prius has no shift, no clutch, no neutral. It has a planetary gear system with:

And nevertheless simple Google image search shows that there indeed is a control that has R, N, D and B written on it.

If you are claiming that they don't work because they too are controlled electronically that's completely different thing. And I bet this was heavily under scrutiny in the investigations.

If the computer commands it to drive the car forward you have no way to intervene.

That's a bold assertion. And that's a rather big if when the brake command overrides the commands from the gas pedal. I wouldn't be surprised if at least some of the crashes were caused by the floor mat causing the gas pedal to get stuck and the driver getting scared (especially after reading about cars getting out of control). That's still a design issue, but one that can happen in any car. Happened to me once in a 'normal' car (no accident though).

This has happened to me

[tuns1999]

I drove my dad's recent model toyota corolla and after driving it for less than 20 minutes this happened to me. I was merging on to a freeway and after the merge the car remained accelerating after I released my foot from the from the pedal. I tried pumping the accelerator which didn't do anything other than briefly accelerate the car even more. I tried braking and this worked for a bit but when the brake was released the car would briskly accelerate again. I tried braking and releasing and braking and releasing a few more times and the same thing happened every time. Finally I braked hard (looking in my rear view mirror which was thankfully clear) and heard a distinct click and the problem went way. I can not say whether on not the accelerator was stuck due to a mechanical problem or a electronic one but I can say it was most definitely not human error or the floor mat and that it was pressing hard on the break not the accelerator that seemed to 'unstick' it. Thankfully the accelerator 'unstuck' it self without further incident but it easy to see how this sort of thing would cause a serious accident. I can safely say toyota is full of BS on this one.

Brought to you by....

[Anonymous Coward]

...the same folks that brought you Sony.

Gee, I'm so glad our corporate overlords were here to clear all this up for us!

Tazered journalist in the back

[cyclomedia]

You win slashdot today, well done.

Go read the report then

[Anonymous Coward]

Go read the report then. I would suspect that the report has the figures and so if you want them, go read the report.

No, it's that Toyota drivers have an excuse

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's that Toyota drivers have an excuse promoted by the media hype. Otherwise, you'd have to figure that the cars were watching the media reports of Toyota problems and then decided to go haywire because of them.

Remember, the count of reports went up sharply soon after media reports of a toyota problem reappeared in a news story. Either the people with toyotas who were klutzes were influenced by the reports or the car was.

wtf

[Anonymous Coward]

This is absolutely ridiculous. I know for a fact that a security researcher posted several glaring issues with the software in all of these affected Toyota models. If I recall correctly the software programming will not allow an override by the brake when the gas pedal is pressed down. So if the gas pedal is stuck (which lets be honest at this point you have had to many people report the same issue for it not to be true) your fucked.

GO TOYOTA!

This has all been quite the learning experience...

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember once I had an "unintended acceleration event" in a Nissan Maxima once. I pressed the clutch in, moved the floor mat and kept driving.

Clearly, this was the wrong course of action. I should have panicked, crashed and sued Nissan.

I am a terrible American.

Clown Feet

[lsatenstein]

Some drivers have size 14 shoes and widths of EEEE. When one's foot hits the brake pedal, the right side of the shoe hits the accelerator. There can be no doubt that large feet are the cause of the misfortunes.

Yes and

[ThatsNotPudding]

the original case of the experienced police officer that could not kill the engine nor shift the transmission into neutral. Pointing this out always annoys the self-appointed gear-heads who think every other driver is an idiot. BTW: push buttons for the transmission and starter = truly stupid design choices.

Re:Neurtal? We don't need no steenkin' neutral!

[Ungrounded Lightning]

sorry no you still do its called the brakes and or the off buttion.

I addressed the brakes above.

The off button is just another input to the computer, not an actual cutoff of anything.

No bugs, right....

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone should know just because you can't find a software bug does not mean there are no bugs. There are techniques for writing provably correct code but they are very expensive so are used only for nuclear reactors and medical devices, and not all those manufacturers use those techniques, for details search the IEEE Spectrum magazine from a couple years.

One of my co-workers has an Toyota Avalon, he said yes it has these little sudden accelerations issues but nothing serious (to him that is).

The data recorders are only going to record what the electronics/computer send it, if the source if the problems is in the complex code that determines fuel mixture and other things vs altitude, temperature, etc, are you really certain you can trust the data recorders.

It's as bad as electronic voting systems, to do a recount to ask the one device you suspect for a second opinion. Do you ask your doctor for a second opinion after his first opinion?

Re:Neurtal? We don't need no steenkin' neutral!

[luther349]

guess you never drove one. yes it has the cpu controlled key but it still has a manual shutoff like any other car. you can use either to start or shutoff the car.

Re:Neurtal? We don't need no steenkin' neutral!

[luther349]

it still has manul modes for shutoff and start for when the cpu keys batterys need replacing.

Drivers?

[neminem]

Dang, I had to look midway down the second page of comments to find someone who thought this article, from the title, was about software drivers being blamed. I hadn't heard of any previous instance where a software driver caused a car to spin out of control; that would have been somewhat scary.

who are the safest cars made for again?

[Anonymous Coward]

oh yeah, the worst drivers.

BMW had the right idea in the 80s: the most valuable safety feature is acceleration. in other words, not drive like a reject.

driving a family? well, the pressures on, son, the pressures on.

Ergonomically strange

[moose223]

I've experienced momentary confusion while backing from driveway to road, particularly when my wife's 04 Sienna is at about 45 degrees of the turn and I'm being very alert for any previously unseen traffic approaching from either of two directions on the roadway, the tendency of my right foot to be poised momentarily over both brake and accelerator pedals is maximum -and it has happened a few times, fortunately without problems. But it is very disconcerting to suddenly sense the vehicle doing something it is not expected to be doing at that moment and the usual reaction to that may be to press down harder, perhaps inducing more acceleration than braking, or the opposite of that, depending on the direction of the turn. I have also experienced what seemed to be acceleration a very few times while driving forward on the straight, intending to gently slow the vehicle by gentle braking but, instead sensing slight acceleration The same mental alarm occurs but the occasions have apparently so brief I've been able to correct the problem almost without even having time to think about it, or to analyze it afterwards. I suspect that my personal physiology, 6 foot 3, 210 pounds, and maybe slightly different placement angles and distances between seat and pedals of the Sienna, versus those of my Dodge 2500 van, contribute to what I've experienced in the Sienna and increase the possibility of "operator error." I've never had similar experiences in any other vehicle.

best toyota's in israel

[Anonymous Coward]

www.03-5189189.co.il