Woz Cites "Scary" Prius Acceleration Software Problem 749
theodp writes "Speaking at Discovery Forum 2010, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak went off topic and spoke about a 'very scary' problem with his 2010 Toyota Prius. 'I don't get upset and teed off at things in life, except computers that don't work right,' said Woz, who went on to explain he'd been trying to get through to Toyota and the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration for three months, but could not get anyone to explore an alleged software-related acceleration problem. 'I have a new model that didn't get recalled,' Steve said. 'This new model has an accelerator that goes wild but only under certain conditions of cruise control. And I can repeat it over and over and over again — safely.' Toyota said it investigates all complaints. 'We're in the business of investigating complaints, assessing problems and finding remedies,' said Toyota's John Hanson. 'After man-years of exhaustive testing we have not found any evidence of an electronic [software] problem that would have led to unwanted acceleration.'"
We recently discussed other problems Toyota has had with electronic acceleration systems.
Typical Customer Service Department attitude (Score:5, Insightful)
Businesses lose the opportunity to obtain knowledgeable input, because their call centers are staffed by low labor-cost morons. The need to identify technically savvy callers and hand-off those calls to comparably competent staff members.
Disconnect..... (Score:4, Insightful)
They exist between developers/engineers and end users.
You have call center workers that log this stuff in and then someone else that reads thru it and decides what gets passed on.
The only time it actually makes it up the chain is when it hits CNN because someone died, or in the case of someone famous that says something to the media.
Only now will they hear of it and investigate it.
The guy says he can reproduce it, and it's Woz.... if he say it's there I believe him.
It's too bad that most bugs go unfixed because of the barriers put in place.
Re:Typical Customer Service Department attitude (Score:3, Insightful)
Post video (Score:3, Insightful)
But its the guy who can reproduce results! (Score:3, Insightful)
If Woz can reproduce the problem, then I'll believe him.
Re:Woz, you're an idiot (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Typical Customer Service Department attitude (Score:5, Insightful)
This happened internally at my company.
We had a problem and, unexpectedly, I figured out what it was instead of the appropriate department. They not only ignored the solution but tried every other possible solution before implementing the solution. And they are still (2 years later) pissy about it. The tools I used to solve the problem were disabled.
I'm sure there is an entire department of Toyota people who would be very embarrassed that a person outside their department AND outside their company AND outside their business figured out the problem when they couldn't.
But the same thing was true in both cases. Simple logic and noticing details. Woz debugged the problem. I debugged the problem. Most people just don't like to think logically and finely.
I hope Toyota gets their head out of their posterior exit and listens to him. People have died over this issue (including a cop trained in emergency driving along with his wife and 2 kids).
Re:Jalopnik has been covering this... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, their coverage so far has suggested there's more to this problem than just the stated accelerator problems. Remember that this is a Japanese company, so there may be an attempt to push the problem off onto outside suppliers to avoid loss of face. There are several reports of problems that had nothing to do with a mechanically sticking pedal, and beside that the ECU software should disable the throttle-by-wire after the brake has been held down for several seconds. Other car manufacturers do that; if you hold down the brake for two seconds the throttle control is cut. Why not Toyota?
Re:But it's the Apple dude who says so! (Score:5, Insightful)
To play devil's advocate...
Woz's problem might be specific to his own car.
I had an issue with my Cadillac's throttle assembly 3 months after buying the car (new). It was a bad sensor.
At the time I didn't know what it was (throttle, fuel line, transmission, etc). I searched through the big forum where EVERYONE reports their CTS problems and I only found 1 guy with a similar (yet different) issue. There was no tech bulletin about it, no forum posts, etc. There were other common issues out there which I managed to avoid, but this one was my particular piece that was the issue.
In short: until the car's engine temp reached equilibrium, pressing the accelerator more than 1/2 way caused the engine to buck wildly. It was like I was alternating between flooring the gas pedal and taking my foot off every second. This made merging and and stop signs quite unsafe, and I was able to replicate it 100% of the time so long as the car was cooled down first.
I had to take it to the shop 3 flippin' times before they addressed it. The first few times they said "no problem, drive it until it's worse." I had to sit in the car with a tester and finally told him "xxxx it, just floor it." He flipped out and what the car did and called a tech from corporate to look at it.
So, it's possible he has an issue that's related to the Recall but not part of the same batch of issues. It's a long shot, but still possible.
Re:This always made me wonder (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:But it's the Apple dude who says so! (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone who has written a program I was sure was bug-free after repeated testing, only to have somebody who doesn't know jack about programming find a bug, I have to disagree; Woz is probably right.
Especially remembering about the Pinto gas tank; ten bucks to fix a deadly problem they kept secret. How do you know the manufacturer found nothing? I trust a corporation about as far as I can throw their headquarters building. I would not be surprised if it came out that there is a problem, the manufacturer knows about it, but it will cost ten bucks per car for a recall. They'll weigh cost of the possible lawsuits against the surety of the cost of the recall, and if the suits are cheaper, they're not going to care about people dying.
Corporations do NOT care about your safety unless it is monetarily profitable to them or a government forces them to.
TERRIBLE ADVICE (Score:5, Insightful)
You do NOT turn off the car - this could lock your wheel, preventing you from steering altogether. Whats more, you'll lose power brakes - you know - the things that will stop your car quickly. Instead:
Put the car in NEUTRAL. The engine will disengage.
Hit the brake HARD. Do not pump.
Steer the car off the road, and once its stopped, you can PARK it and turn off the engine.
Re:Like Microsoft (Score:3, Insightful)
The thing is, since it's most likely a software problem.. they need to change their model to accommodate for hot-fixes. You shouldn't need to recall the car just to upgrade the firmware.
Maybe this sort of publicity will push towards a more modern servicing model.
Correct Advice (Score:3, Insightful)
You do NOT turn off the car - this could lock your wheel, preventing you from steering altogether. Whats more, you'll lose power brakes - you know - the things that will stop your car quickly. Instead:
Put the car in NEUTRAL. The engine will disengage. Hit the brake HARD. Do not pump. Steer the car off the road, and once its stopped, you can PARK it and turn off the engine.
This is absolutely the correct reaction. A slightly more aggressive tact might be to drop the vehicle in low, which might blow the engine but would also severely limit your speed.
Re:Woz, you're an idiot (Score:3, Insightful)
Its, not it's. Curses!
Re:Honestly, officer, it wasn't me! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Typical Customer Service Department attitude (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:TERRIBLE ADVICE (Score:2, Insightful)
BREAKS? You're one to talk to down to people.
Dealership? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why doesn't he just take the car to the dealership? He could be making a bigger deal out of this than is necessary.
It seems to be a bad habit people in high places have of trying to only deal with others in high places. His cruise control may have a problem. That doesn't mean he needs to call the CEO of Toyota directly to get the problem resolved. His dealer should be able to take care of it.
Re:A Public Service Announcement to AllToyota Driv (Score:2, Insightful)
What if there is not key or readily accessible ignition switch? The article I read in the NYT cited a CA state trooper with a Toyota rental that only had a push button starter. Thus, your suggestion is not a fully valid solution to a problem with an unpredictable onset with perhaps too limited a time to attempt solutions. By the way all in the car were killed when they had a collision at a intersection.
Re:Typical Customer Service Department attitude (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Typical Customer Service Department attitude (Score:4, Insightful)
And while Woz is known in computer geek circles, why should some random 9-to-5er paid-hourly desk jockey in a car company know who the hell he is?
Re:Typical Customer Service Department attitude (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Typical Customer Service Department attitude (Score:5, Insightful)
Most people just don't like to think logically and finely.
Most often the troubleshooter is simply too close to the problem. You are describing logical troubleshooting of how the system actually works, they are working from the perspective of how it is supposed to work. The great engineers know how to think like idiots. Great engineers also recognize competence no matter the source. :)
Re:Typical Customer Service Department attitude (Score:5, Insightful)
People complain why Apples are more expensive, and this is just one reason. If I have a problem with an Apple product, I can take it to an Apple store. Sure I have to make a reservation and wait, but I get a live person. I could have called the support center and got a script, but the extra I paid for my Apple product entitles me to in-store support.
For example, my iPhone just died one day. It never turned on. At first I thought it was not charged, but after 20 mins of charging, it still didn't respond. So I thought it could be the battery. The tech asks me what's wrong with the phone. I respond: "It's dead, Jim." He laughs and hooks it up to his diagnostic machine. It takes him a while to get it to power up but not after he removed parts.
Amazingly the iPhone records a lot about its activities. I could see on his diagnostic screen all the times I synced in the last two weeks, how often I charged it and for how long, etc. His diagnosis is the phone wasn't coming out of sleep mode but it had plenty of power. There was a bug that they believed they fixed in the last major patch that should have fixed it, but maybe they didn't fix all the causes. Since I had 3 months left on my warranty, he gave me a new phone. I'm sure it was refurbished and not entirely new but it was pretty good service.
Re:Typical Customer Service Department attitude (Score:5, Insightful)
Knowing how to reliably reproduce a problem generally goes a *very* long way towards finding the cause of the problem and eventually the solution.
Re:Typical Customer Service Department attitude (Score:4, Insightful)
You jest, but I'd say that among the general populace, Woz is now more famous for having dated Kathy Griffin and being a contestant on "Dancing..." than for inventing the personal computer. Part of it is his easygoing demeanor, he doesn't grab attention like Jobs does, and never got quite as rich as Gates did. The other part is of course that the general populace are mouth breathing troglodytes who don't even understand how their computers work, much less that there are highly intelligent people who invented them.
Ranting aside, this should have been addressed by Toyota whether it was Woz, or Jim-Bob from West Virginia reporting it.
I have been wondering this from the beginning.... (Score:3, Insightful)
For those that don't know, the Therac-25 is one of the all-time worst human-machine interfaces ever built. I can't help but wonder, based on Woz's comments, if we have a similar situation with Toyota.
Issues like these can be difficult to track down so it would not surprise me at all if that is what we are dealing with here. Multi-years of pseudo-random symptoms and no obvious "solutions" have worked thus far. Not to trivialize it but -- it's a gas pedal. In other words, it should be a simple mechanism for putting fuel into the engine. Of course, we all know modern cars are not so simple. That is precisely why I ask if we have a human-machine interface issue here. ie: you are pushing a lever for the gas but that lever is a "software" lever so who knows what is actually going on in the car's computer.
Re:But it's the Apple dude who says so! (Score:3, Insightful)
I was talking more about Toyota
I was using the Ford Pinto as an example of why you should not trust the Toyota Corporation to come clean about defects, and you started talking about cost analysis and why it was ok. The Pinto incident is NOT ok. Toyota didn't murder anyone (yet), but the Ford corporation certainly did. As I said, had a person done this they would be in prison for involuntary manslaughter.
I trust most car companies will make a best effort to keep their cars safe and disclose serious safety issues
After the Pinto (and two later incidents, the exploding Crown Vic and the SUV rollovers) I think that's a little naive of you.
This is not negligence. If you make a best effort to ensure the car is safe
IF is the biggest word in the English language. You have no way of knowing how much effort they put into safety. Trust must be earned, and I've learned from incident after incident NOT to trust my safety to ANY corporation any more than I have to; deadly greed happens over and over. The chicken plant fire with the fire doors chained shut; the Jack in the Box hamburgers that killed children, the Pinto, the cigarette manufacturers, the poison peanut products last year, the list goes on. Trusting your safety to ANY corporation is the height of foolishness. This is why we have OSHA and other regulators.
Why? Because they did make a best effort to protect their child and, unfortunately, people, like cars, are not bug free
Ford not only didn't make the effort, they hid the bug.
You seem to think that a corporation owes you a perfectly safe car.
No, there is no such thing. But if they know about a deadly defect they owe me a fix for it, or at least to let me know that it is, in fact, buggy.
If a company always recalled everything that went wrong, the cost of cars would jump dramatically
Yet they try to give the untrue impression that thay do in fact recall defective cars. This type of deceit is immoral and should be considered unethical, and should not be tolerated.
Re:Typical Customer Service Department attitude (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a bit of a straw man. It's generally Macs that are considered to be overpriced; The iPhone is about evenly priced with competitive models.
As far as hardware issues, any idiot can replace a product, which is the "solution" for 99% of technical problems. Note that it's not actually a solution; it's just more economical than diagnosing the real problem.
For software, Apple, being the author of their own OS, are a bit more knowledgeable about OS-X than a Dell representative might be about Windows. But that said, trivial OS issues are not within the domain of problems I want or need help with, therefore the "support" I'm paying for is little more than a subsidy for ignorant customers.
I'm not anti-Apple per se. I've got two iPhones -- one of which I've managed to brick and resurrect -- and I wouldn't trade them for any other phones on the market right now. At the same time, I'd never buy a Mac, especially a desktop model, and price is but one of the many reasons.
Take it back to the dealer (Score:2, Insightful)
People complain why Apples are more expensive, and this is just one reason. If I have a problem with an Apple product, I can take it to an Apple store....
Which is, thankfully, also possible with cars.
Bringing us back on topic, since this is a brand-new, under-warranty car, why has Woz not taken it back to the dealer, grabbed a technician, and demonstrated this behavior with the tech in the car? Most dealers actually will do this, especially if the car is new. Most independent shops will, too.
Calling the 1-800 customer relations line will get you nowhere. Even if you're a millionaire and you're used to going "straight to the top." Demonstrating the problem is the way to go.
Re:Typical Customer Service Department attitude (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to mention that virtually every "scripted" support dept. will file your ticket in the "pile of perpetual ignorance" if the problem isn't easy to reproduce. Its an easy out for a lazy service dept. "Well, we couldn't reproduce the problem, so you must be a liar. Thanks for calling!"
Re:Modern car techno weenies (Score:3, Insightful)
Easy fix: Don't make right turns
Re:Jalopnik has been covering this... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you think they have a tendency to side with the GOP you clearly haven't been ont he site long enough. And I can't recall them over getting into political discourse beyond criticizing Cash-for-Clunkers. In general, however, Gawker Media, which is the company Jalopnik is owned by has a libertarian bent trending towards liberal. About the only reason I could see for you to hold the opinion you do is that they love cars. Perhaps you'd prefer that they were constantly bashing car for all the evils they've supposedly brought upon this world.
I haven't heard anything about brake pads being totally burned through. And brake pads don't just burn through. They overheat and when they overheat they stop braking properly, but when they get down to temperature they start braking again. In the latest issue of Car & Driver they do braking tests on three cars running at wide-open throttle. That includes a V6 Camry, an Infiniti G37 and a Roush Mustang. They were able to bring all three cars to a stop from 70mph and 100mph. Brakes will overpower virtually any engine.
However, you have to brake with conviction. The reason why brakes might overheat is that drivers don't immediately realize the severity of their predicament. So they stab at the brakes but then release them expecting the car will stop accelerating. It doesn't but by the time they start trying to actually stop the car the brakes are already getting hot. So at that point they start overheating and lose their ability to stop the car.
But of course, there are other options for stopping a car. The first is putting it in neutral. The second is shutting the car off. Although the second option can be problematic if you lose assisted steering and braking. If those assists are electronic then you can keep the electronics running and still easily guide the car.
The problem here is that this has been a known issue for several years now and Toyota has dismissed it, probably attributing it to user error. Toyota has already been facing problems of rusting frames on a huge number of their pickups. A lot of companies do this sort of thing, but Japanese companies have a particular tendency to not acknowledge issues. They'll address them in future updates but continue denying there's an issue with existing products.
I have to say, this is one area where the US excels: consumer protection. Problems with vehicles almost always go public and recalls are issues sooner in the US than in the rest of the world. Only in the past couple of weeks has it been acknowledge that this problem extends to Toyotas overseas when this problem has been brewing in the US for much longer. I've noticed the same pattern with recalls from other automakers, including VW/Audi's problematic dual clutch transmissions. The US is the first market to have gotten the extended 10-year warranty. In the UK, however, it almost seems like they're still denying a problem even exists.
Tinfoil hat time (Score:2, Insightful)
* - Anyone else pick up that everytime Toyota discusses the suspect accelerators, they just happen to mention the supplier is an American company? More BS nationalistic face-saving to distract from who designed said part.
PS: Tom Merritt from CNET has also mentioned the squirrely acceleration habits of his older Prius as well.
Re:Typical Customer Service Department attitude (Score:2, Insightful)
Running fine because it has no serious software bugs, or because she hasn't (yet) triggered one?
Also, Woz details this in a post a couple of months ago [slashdot.org].
Re:Jalopnik has been covering this... (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, the acceleration issue could still be the cause if the drivers used the brakes to keep the speed in check for a while instead of bringing the vehicle to a stop. I won't claim that the accelerator faults aren't part of the problem, but proper driver education and response to the sudden acceleration would have prevented many accidents.
Not exactly a voluntary recall (Score:5, Insightful)
The New York Times reported that Toyota stopped selling their defective cars only after the NTSB "asked" them to do it.
That's not exactly "voluntary". The way DOT and CPSC recalls work is that first they ask the manufacturer to do a "voluntary" recall. If the manufacturer says no, they issue a mandatory recall notice.
About once a decade, some manufacturer is dumb enough to let things go that far. It means national TV coverage ("The National Transportation Safety Board today ordered the recall of all NNN model XXX cars.") It means that, instead of a obliquely worded letter from the manufacturer, every owner gets an official letter from the Government with words like "dangerous and defective product" in big black type. The manufacturer involved usually experiences a large, permanent drop in sales.
Re:Typical Customer Service Department attitude (Score:3, Insightful)
If one guy can do more than the team, why would he want his reviews linked to theirs? Hell, might as well unionize and at least get the benefits of parasitism if we need to suffer the disadvantages as well...
Despite the scarily growing trend to keep our heads down and just do the minimum needed to get a check, I usually take "not a team player" as a compliment. If the project requires more total work than I can possible do alone, then great, I can cooperate with the "team" to generate a spec which we can then all go our separate ways to work toward. But seriously, unless you work for a big software-oriented company, the vast majority of projects do not require a "team"; and trying to squeeze it into a team model usually takes longer, costs more, and means a lower quality final product.
(That said, only an idiot does 100% of the testing on his own code - Let someone who doesn't subconsciously know where to baby it, abuse the hell out of it and show you the real flaws).
Re:Typical Customer Service Department attitude (Score:3, Insightful)
No doubt if 50,000 people were calling and saying that they could reproduce the problem, including the CEO's teenage kid/nephew/neighbor, there would be a faster response than that given to 1. Even if that is the great and powerful Woz.
Why no safeguards? (Score:2, Insightful)
No matter how well tested and bug-free these types of systems are SUPPOSED to be, a basic design principle of any system should always be to have built in safety checks for things like conflicting input values that make no sense. Even though it SHOULD never happen, the computer should watch for invalid information (like not opening the throttle past a certain point if the brakes are applied) just in case something fails. If the input values make no sense, always default to the safest case. While a throttle cable breaking could potentially cause an accident if the car returns to idle or doesn't move from a stop, drivers shouldn't be ending up in a situation where that is a problem. If is designed so that if the cable breaks the throttle spring defaults to wide open throttle, this would be an obvious design error. Why they have not managed to build this system correctly eludes me. It can't possibly be designed correctly for this application if these types of faults can even be possible.
Re:On Opinions... (Score:1, Insightful)
Opinion are like assholes,
everyone has one,
and they all stink except yours.
Re:Typical Customer Service Department attitude (Score:1, Insightful)
Yes, but as someone who worked in customer service, the problem is that the ratio of users who know what their talking about vs those who THINK they know what their talking about is approx. 1,000,000 to 1.
If anyone purports to work in the IT industry in any capacity who doesn't recognise the name Steve Wozniak, I suggest they move to an industry more appropriate to their level of understanding.
I could have sworn he was calling Toyota and the NHTSA (automotive concerns), not Dell.