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..

[angelwolf71885]

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

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..

[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..

[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.

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.

[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.

Heard this before a few times

[rasper99]

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

So now it's official.

[cvtan]

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

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.

Well then ...

[PPH]

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

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: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.

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: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: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.

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: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.

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.

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: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.