Drivers Blamed For Out of Control Toyotas - Again 482
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?
Heard this before a few times (Score:4, Insightful)
Same result starting with Audi 25 years ago and many more since then.
Re:PEBSWAC (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Because other drivers don't get off scott free (Score:4, Insightful)
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:Everything old is new again (Score:2, Insightful)
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:How does the actual system work? (Score:4, Insightful)
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:Mostly true, but slightly spun summary. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
NHTSA != Toyota (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Just to clarify.. (Score:2, Insightful)
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.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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:PEBSWAC (Score:4, Insightful)
"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.