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5.3M Cars Recalled Because 'Drivers May Not Be Able to Turn Off Cruise Control' (freep.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Associated Press:
Fiat Chrysler is recalling more than 5.3 million vehicles in the U.S., Canada and elsewhere because in rare but terrifying circumstances, drivers may not be able to turn off the cruise control. The company is warning owners not to use cruise control until the cars, SUVs and trucks can be fixed with a software update. Fiat Chrysler says the condition can occur if the cruise control accelerates at the same time an electrical short-circuit happens. But the brakes are designed to overpower the engine and the vehicles could still be stopped...
In the complaint filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, an owner from Olathe, Kansas, said a 2017 Dodge Journey SUV rental vehicle was being driven about 70 miles per hour with the cruise control on when the windshield wipers came on by themselves and the throttle locked up. The owner, who was not identified in the agency's complaint database, wrote that the cruise control would not disengage by tapping the brakes or turning off the button. The driver was able to slam on the brakes and get the SUV to the side of the road. "It was still running at an engine speed to support 70 mph and fighting the brakes," the driver wrote. The engine stop button also wouldn't work, but the driver was able to halt the SUV and shift into park while the brakes "smoked significantly."
The recall "includes 15 Jeep, Dodge, Chrysler and Ram models from six model years" which have automatic transmissions and gas engines, according to the Associated Press -- 4.8 million in America, plus another 490,000 in Canada and "an undetermined number" in other countries.
You can check if your vehicle is affected by this (or any other) recall by entering its VIN number at NHTSA.gov. U.S. safety officials suggest checking whether your vehicle has been recalled "at least twice per year."
In the complaint filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, an owner from Olathe, Kansas, said a 2017 Dodge Journey SUV rental vehicle was being driven about 70 miles per hour with the cruise control on when the windshield wipers came on by themselves and the throttle locked up. The owner, who was not identified in the agency's complaint database, wrote that the cruise control would not disengage by tapping the brakes or turning off the button. The driver was able to slam on the brakes and get the SUV to the side of the road. "It was still running at an engine speed to support 70 mph and fighting the brakes," the driver wrote. The engine stop button also wouldn't work, but the driver was able to halt the SUV and shift into park while the brakes "smoked significantly."
The recall "includes 15 Jeep, Dodge, Chrysler and Ram models from six model years" which have automatic transmissions and gas engines, according to the Associated Press -- 4.8 million in America, plus another 490,000 in Canada and "an undetermined number" in other countries.
You can check if your vehicle is affected by this (or any other) recall by entering its VIN number at NHTSA.gov. U.S. safety officials suggest checking whether your vehicle has been recalled "at least twice per year."
A nice red plastic button that when hit, disengages all software/electronics that might take control away from you, and either kills the engine completely as well, or lets you take full-manual control of everything? If the vehicles in question do not have that, what happens when some kind of remote hack or virus attack happens on these vehicles? Imagine turning on the news and finding that hundreds of vehicles have all crashed at the same time, with injuries and loss of lives, because some asshole hacker in another part of the world took all manual control away from the drivers? You can see red Stop/Panic buttons in pretty much any setting where dangerous equipment is operated that might need to be shut down quickly in an emergency. A car weighing over 1 ton and going at 70MPH or more IS dangerous equipment.
How much faith do I have in 'Fiat' now?! Scary stuff like this is why I bought a Toyota. /s
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Go into neutral and turn off the car?
Sounded like the ignition on/off button was not responsive. Plus, on many vehicles, if you turn it off you lose power steering and brakes. Or worse, the steering column locks.
fix it again tony
We need more computers and code in cars! And make all systems internet-connected so that they become as safe as other IoT devices. For sure programmers working for the transport industry are way more competent than in any other field, and source code unavailability ensures security.
They already had one person die from cruise control and gear shifting failing.
At this point, they need a physical object that can put the car into neutral (so you still have steering and power) and then another one that will kill the engine- easiest way might be a physical switch for the gasline. Some trucks have them now to swap between tanks. Just switch off the fuel.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Shift into neutral. If your transmission has only electronic controls, then you really do not ever have control of your car. I once had an object obstruct the carburetor throttle on my old Buick (an acorn left by a squirrel). When the car kept going 70 after hitting the brakes, I immediately shifted to neutral. I could actually keep driving by shifting between neutral and drive (bad for tranny but kept me going). Every time I use cruise control I am horrifically aware that I am putting my life in the hands of some under paid programmer. I don't want to get a new car because I like my key. My key can turn off the engine without locking the steering wheel or turning off the any electronics like my radio or Bluetooth (Acura). My step mother forgets to turn off her car because she takes her key fob when leaving but forgetting to push a button. People leaving these types of cars on in their garage have died from carbon monoxide poisoning. Many electronics in vehicles are solutions looking for a problem. If you need a damn key fob, why not just stick it in and turn it? Remember having to get your ass up to change the TV channel? Now get off my lawn!
It's a manually operated fail-safe device to disconnect the engine from the transmission (and the wheels).
I've got one - you should get one on your next car.
Who am I kidding, almost nobody (in the USA) knows how to drive stick shift these days.
But the brakes are designed to overpower the engine and the vehicles could still be stopped...
Very reassuring although this must hurt braking distance a bit...
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
The control is on the center console user interface. Just navigate to:
Systems | Controls | Extended Functions | Speed | Basic | Cruise Mode
and select 'OFF'. When Clippy pops up and asks "It appears that you are attempting to take manual control of your vehicle. This is not recommended. Do you want assistance?" Select 'NO' (Do not want assistance) and then 'YES' (take manual control).
Accept the liability terms on the popup page by clicking 'I Accept'. And now you can drive your car.
Have gnu, will travel.
That's hilarious.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
There is no vehicle you loose brakes on if you kill the engine. You just loose power steering, which is a given as that is engine driven.
Off button only vehicles should definitely be illegal. On top of that there should be a mandate for fuel cut off valves, ones that requires electricity to open, especially on any diesel vehicle.
And. You lose power steering and power brakes. When the vacuum goes so do your power brakes and it becomes Very very hard to stop many types of vehicles.
Just traded in one Jeep Cherokee that would die in traffic and refuse to start. No fucks were given by Chrysler to fix it. The other has had continuous recalls since I bought it.
You americans and your silly automatic transmissions
Start Trek Phasors and Proton Torpedoes could not kill Checkov, but a bunch of idiots at fiat can kill him with a transmission.
If they build it using agile methods, it can be cheaper, too. Win-win, right?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Not sure about hybrid or all electric cars, but on my hybrid Prius I think the power brakes use an electric pump, not the typical vacuum assist to the master brake cylinder/piston set up. I think power steering makes use of a linear electric motor as part of the rack in a rack and pinion mechanism. These cars may not depend on the motor/motors running to work, though if the car is turned off, I wonder if the steering column will lock.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
Having people impaled by the steering shaft on frontal collisions isn't pretty so most cars have drive by wire these days. ...
Uhhhh, really....
First, people haven't been being "impaled" by the steering column since probably before an Anonymous Coward was born. Steering columns have been required by law to be collapsible since 1968. So that isn't "a thing".
And "most have drive by wire" is just a stupid claim as the numbers aren't even close. There are a lot more "throttle by wire" cars but it still hasn't reached the level of "most" but it will probably happen. (And we will see most cars becoming 100% disposable after 10 to 12 years of age.)
In my day Chryslers would just shut off and lock the steering wheel when they shorted. Seriously though, Chryslers are shit.
I had a car once where the throttle would got stuck from time to time. Put it in neutral, hit the breaks, turn the car off (and fix the throttle sticking). If I had cruise control that got stuck, that's the first thing I would think of.
On a 1999 Jeep. Cruise got stuck, nothing would clear it. Once I got it stopped, I clipped the cruise control throttle cable under the hood.
Scary stuff.
I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am.
so what, not hard to steer or stop a car when the power system fails unless a person is a totally out of shape pansy.
jeez, I've had to do without power steering twice, and went a whole day before repair. Could drive parallel parked, etc. with no problem.
eat less and exercise!
Absolutely. You could have a clutch to the side which simply disengaged the engine from the transmission and wasn't intended for shifting gears.
You couldn't remove automatic transmission tho. Under 3% of people buy "standard" vehicles.
The automatic transmissions are usually physically connected. Making them "fly by wire" is about as bad as a "fly by wire" on/off button that is ignored.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
In German, I have heard:
"Fehler in allen Teilen" (Faults in all parts)
Or, in English, my personal favorite:
"Fucking Italian Automotive Trash"
Heaven in Europe is where:
- the police are British
- the lovers French
- the mechanics German
- the chefs Italian
and it is all organized by the Swiss.
Hell in Europe is where:
- the police are German
- the lovers Swiss
- the mechanics Italian
- the chefs British
and it is all organized by the French.
When Fiat bought Chrysler, I read in an article that Fiat was banking on Dodge's very loyal customer base, and that most American wouldn't even realize that Chrysler was now an Italian company.
The article postulated that this could all change if the quality of Chrysler products dropped. It claimed that Fiat saves money by cutting corners, while others, like Toyota, save money with innovation and optimization.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Chrysler was actually worse before Fiat bought it. It was always bad, even to American standards. Fiat isn't great, but their cars used to be good value for money, easy to repair and parts are cheap. First generation Pandas are absolutely everywhere in Italy. I wouldn't trust them with anything complicated, though, and they lacked funds to remain competitive with in the past twenty years or so, so the Fiat brand is slowly dying, especially outside of Italy.
Man that is outdated. Have you driven a modern German car? Of course not, no one drives a modern German car, they sit in the tow truck up front. I used to have incredible respect for German engineering. Emphasis on the past tense.
BMW - Bayerische Mist Wagen (Bavarian Shit Wagon)
A couple of years ago the news here went on full of the story of a man calling the police while on the highway in order to have the next toll barrage cleared for him, because his cruise control was locked on full speed.
There was a lot of roar in the news, but little reality in the end, as obviously on any vehicle the brake is far more powerful than the motor (specially when on high gear), so the guy could trivially stop pressing the brake pedal.
But, he was an old man, and definitely not prepared to the unusual circumstances he was in -which in itself may become an issue more significant than just the autocruise control : among the general population (not just us), which proportion indeed can deal with these brand-new autopilot thingies, that 90% of us never experienced yet?
Think of a 60-years old renting such a car and pressing the wrong command, how'd he react?
Herve S.
Have you driven a modern German car?
I currently own a Mercedes and previously owned another Mercedes and a VW. I've never had any problems with them.
I grew up with a '65 Mercury Monterrey . . . with a notch back and sliding rear window! That thing simply refused to die. My parents gave it to me, and I finally sold it for $100 in 1985. Still running, but a serious gas guzzler.
On the other hand . . . my parents bought a Chevy Impala in the 70's, which seemed to have rolled off the assembly line already broken.
After years of driving German cars, when I drive an American car, the steering and seats seem "mushy".
An exception would be the Ford F150. A business colleague in Texas had one, and it seemed to handle very well, and the seats were not really firm, but not mushy either.
BMW - Bayerische Mist Wagen (Bavarian Shit Wagon)
BMW - Bring mir Werkzeuge (Bring me tools)
The biggest problem that the German car makers have today is the diesel scandal. Customers who have bought diesels in the last years are totally screwed. The value of their cars has dropped to zero.
This cheating has probably damaged the brand of "German Engineering" more than anyone has realized yet.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
If that's not a Beatles lyric, it should be.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Had any of these incidents happened while driving a manual car, all one would have to do is depress the clutch and move the stick shift into a neutral position. The engine may still be racing and it may cook itself, but at least you won't continue to be propelled forward at a high rate of speed. But then, as wallE showed, we'd rather be coddled to death.
Automatic transmissions were invented for non-drivers. That's the problem - hardly anybody really knows how to drive, so we keep inventing ways to let them fake it.
After years of driving German cars, when I drive an American car, the steering and seats seem "mushy".
Oh I agree with you. I didn't say American cars were any better. In fact the German cars are still wonderfully engineered, handle well, and are a dream to drive. The modern ones just unfortunately don't deserve their reputation as reliable one little bit. It used to be a tossup between German an Japanese. Now it's not even a contest anymore.
I had a 2001 SLK.
The interior had this rubber coating that peeled off after a few years and made the car look like it had leprosy. The crank position sensor was specially designed to die in engine heat so it went out about every 50k miles. The EGR hoses turned to a brittle mess in engine heat as well. The AC blower fan controller died about that often as well. The power seat switch post was very fragile and in a spot where it'd be bumped getting the car. The switch is fine, this is just a 10 cent plastic cover that pushes the actual switch. Benz will only sell the whole lower seat assembly for $650. ($300 for the identical Crossfire one - but they change one connector so they won't swap - unless you can solder like me - bastards) Many interior parts are glued together, with a glue that falls apart in heat. My car was garage kept at home and work. The door panels and interior trim fell to bits and had to be jigsawed back together and re-glued. WTF?!?!? The convertible top hydraulic cylinders had bad seals and all failed early. There are 5. Benz wanted 1k/each for replacements with revised seals that last normally, plus that much again to install them.
So - the substandard parts are a profit centers... bleh. At least there were ways around some of it, like a place that'd rebuild the hydraulics for less than 1k (they are pressed together so you can't put new seals in with hand tools...) Still, the quality was worse than the Taurus SHO I had before it. WTF?
AFAIK, cruise control works because there's an extra throttle cable leading to the servo. So ya' just wire an este's model rocket igniter and an M-80 next it. Put a nice little switch on the dash. Anything goes wrong, blow that sucker. Just kidding of course.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I recently got a used 2013 T&C van, and had some CANBUS electrical problems with it. First, the instrument cluster died last fall, then last month I had problems with a wire and/or connector that went bad. Hopefully it's really truly fixed this time.
The wipers turning on is apparently one of the symptoms of a CANBUS failure in Chrysler. When information from the bus disappears, it seems that other parts of the system make assumptions about the input state. One of those assumptions is that the wiper switch is set to ON, and another is that the headlights are set to ON. The result of this was that in the first incident when the instrument cluster died, the wipers turned on (I had to pull the fuse) and other dashboard things dimmed as though the headlights were turned on. At least the vehicle could still be driven to the dealer, though without turn signals, because they go through the instrument cluster. Not helping the problem was that some brillant middle manager had decided that the dashboard should be a smooth one-piece unit, so it requires a lot of labor, including removing the steering wheel, to get access to the area behind it.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Only when the shift lever is physically connected to the transmission. In some cars today, it isn't.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The modern ones just unfortunately don't deserve their reputation as reliable one little bit.
And replacement parts cost a fucking fortune.
I take it you don't live in Europe? :-)