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..

[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.

[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.

So now it's official.

[cvtan]

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

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.

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.