Car With A Mind Of Its Own -- Part 2 707
An anonymous reader writes "As a sequel to the previous Slashdot story where a car 'began accelerating to 120 mph on its own', Renault (the car manufacturer) has examined the supposed faulty car, and as many of us have suspected, no anomaly has been found (google translation). Renault will initiate a court action to discover the truth about the matter. Read more about it here (translation)."
I knew it! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I knew it! (Score:2)
I've experienced it, repeatedly but not repeatably (Score:4, Informative)
I'll have braked to slow down for other traffic, then passed that traffic, and hit Resume. The car accelerates to the previously set cruising speed as normal, but then suddenly decides it has to go floor it to reach another, higher speed.
Tapping the brake pedal once has always disengaged it, and the one time when I had enough clear straight road to allow it to run (the technician that worked on it wanted the data), it would go up to 95 MPH, slow to 90, then back to 95, repeating. Probably a limitation in the vehicle that prevents it from going faster.
Unfortunately I have been unable to reproduce the behavior on demand, and I always wonder if it is going to go crazy again the next time I hit the Resume button. I'm thinking it must be some combination of the cruise controls used to adjust the cruising speed pressed long before the triggering event that primes the event.
The only way I'd accept a black box in my car would be to diagnose this problem and get it fixed, and then I'd have the black box removed.
Mine is a Honda Civic with aftermarket cruise control (not a standard option).
Knight Rider (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Knight Rider (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Knight Rider (Score:3, Informative)
KITT = Knight Industries Two Thousand
KARR = Knight Automatic Roving Robot
So I watched a lot of TV as a kid. So sue me. (Not that I'm worth anything.)
Re:Knight Rider (Score:5, Funny)
I watched more.
Re:Knight Rider (Score:3, Insightful)
Which would have been the case had you not pointed it out at all.
What the hell ?!? (Score:3, Funny)
What the heck have you been smoking, dude ?
--LordPixie
Re:What the hell ?!? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Knight Rider (Score:2)
K.I.T.T.
Knight Industries Two Thousand
Yeah... (Score:4, Informative)
How many people actually know someone that is a competent driver that has had this happen?
Linky to the Audi story here (google's first result): http://www.auto123.com/en/info/news/news,view.spy
Re:Yeah... (Score:4, Insightful)
I've heard people in these situations before saying "but I couldn't cut the engine, otherwise the servo brakes/power steering wouldn't work!". Right, so driving for miles at full throttle is far better than taking a few extra yards to stop.
Re:Yeah... (Score:3, Funny)
Ancient .sig (Score:5, Funny)
Anxiety \Anx*i"e*ty\ - n ; finding yourself behind a pinto and in front of an Audi 5000
Re:Yeah... (Score:4, Insightful)
Deja-vu all over again. Why do people bother watching this show?
Re:Yeah... (Score:4, Insightful)
Can't say :)
I had thought it was 60 Minutes, but it was apparently DateLine [wordiq.com] that fabrictaed a story about exploding General Motors trucks in the 80's. They wanted to do a story on trucks exploding when in collisions - the only problem they had was that they didn't. So they undid the gas caps, poured fuel all over the place, inserted a detonator or two, you get the idea. They lost the court case pretty convincingly when GM sued
Corporations selling product lying to me is bad enough - but I recognize that there's a motive there for them to do so, and why. News organizations shoveling crap for ratings though is another ball of wax. These people should go to jail.
Re:Yeah... (Score:3, Insightful)
You can understand why "corporations" would lie to you to sell you a "product", but when news corporations lie to you to sell you a news product with the exact same motivation , they should go to jail?!
You, sir, value accurate information above all. You truly are a geek.
Re:Yeah... (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, but it did give rise to the funniest automotive acronym I've ever heard:
AUDI - Accelerates Under Demonic Influence.
Right up there with:
Fiat: Fix it again, Tony!
Re:Yeah... (Score:3, Funny)
FORD - First On Race Day.
that's not how you spell Ferrari!
Re:Yeah... (Score:5, Interesting)
And then, it happened again. Turns out she was just an attention whore, and nothing was wrong with her Hyundai.
Re:Yeah... (Score:3, Interesting)
It's happened to me before. One winter while I was still in Anchorage the throttle to my car would jam wide open for no apparent reason, usually while I was going 40mph+ Over the course of about two weeks I had this happen about half a dozen times, every time I had to kill the ignition and pull over. Power brakes and steering typically stay pressurized long enough after killing the engine to get the car safely stop
Sounds Familiar (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Sounds Familiar (Score:5, Funny)
You are correct, that is exactly what was happening. Audi went ahead and made the stupid move to put more distance between the gas pedal and the brake pedal for the idiots over here in the US that have fat asses and feet.
Re:Sounds Familiar (Score:2)
Re:Sounds Familiar (Score:3, Insightful)
In an automatic I can see there being no use for being able to hit both pedals with the same foot, b
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sounds Familiar (Score:4, Informative)
Airbus also seemed to be very quick to blame all incidents on pilot error, before all the facts were in.
Re:Sounds Familiar (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Sounds Familiar (Score:4, Informative)
Secondly, "gearing up" a plane will not total it - even landing a plane and forgetting to put the wheels down. It does surprisingly little damage (belly skins, bent props and flaps - but not much else). A brand new plane would be repaired. Even old planes that are accidentally landed with the wheels up are repaired.
Re:Sounds Familiar (Score:3, Insightful)
No. Research in "Human Problem Solving" (this classic was published the same year that the A300 flew first) and related fields (action slips, cognitive failures) was already on its way and some Psychology would be always good when it comes to HCIs of sort. Not to mention System Theory.
CC.
Re:Sounds Familiar (Score:3, Insightful)
An "oh shit" moment could quite easily put a pilot a bit closer to cumulogranite than he wanted to be. A design that then prevents him from getting out of that situation is broken.
This is a fancy way of saying... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This is a fancy way of saying... (Score:5, Insightful)
Blame what you don't understand (Score:4, Insightful)
Whenever people need to lie to protect themselves, they'll try to blame something they don't understand, expecting that the recipient of the story will not understand the stuff either, and thus believe them.
Ofcourse this is rather stupid, but it's just the way people are wired.
Re:Blame what you don't understand (Score:5, Informative)
- the driver was not drunk;
- he actually called the police while driving at 200 Km/h to ask for help;
- he had not been ticketed before the call or caught by any police radar that would have made him want to pull that stunt to cover his speeding excess;
- he eventually managed to disconnect controls to the car so that it finally and slowly cruised to a stop on the emergency lane.
Yes, the driver might still be lying about the all thing, but, if so, it was not to cover any known misdoing. On the contrary.Re:Blame what you don't understand (Score:5, Informative)
If you had read the other story [tf1.fr], you read that:
Selon LCI, le conducteur avait déjà été condamné pour état d'ivresse et excès de vitesse, son permis lui avait été retiré durant 4 ans.
Translation:According to LCI [a TV Channel], the driver has already been prosecuted for drunken driving and over-speeding, and his license cancelled for 4 years
This guy sounds like a dangerous idiot who is trying to protect his but with a fake story.
It also sounds like the media picked up HIS story first without fact-checking. Same thing happened with a woman in the Paris subway who claimed she and her baby were attacked by "anti-semites". Her story went first page in most of the newspapers, people started shouting against the insecurity in France, "anti-semitisme" and all sort of non-sense. It turned out she was mythomaniac and made up the whole story.
Re:theres a name for this: Attention Whore (Score:3, Interesting)
Many manual transmissions can't be put into reverse if your travelling more than 10 mph in the forward direction for example. My Audi won't let me shift out of neutral and into reverse without requiring me to first put my foot on the brake. It's also got a locking mechanism so that if you're in park, you can't shift without pressing the brake pedal. I have hear
Machines going wild (Score:5, Funny)
If he was making it up.... (Score:3, Insightful)
The quicker they can cover it up the better, or in this case maybe burry it in the court system? Talk about a recall to end recalls.
Just my 2cents.
Re:If he was making it up.... (Score:2)
Happened to my wife a few months ago (Score:5, Interesting)
The fault was a bit of grit or buildup preventing the throttle from closing properly.
Keep your air filter clean and don't buy junk gas.
Re:Happened to my wife a few months ago (Score:3, Informative)
Carbon buildup on the throttle body is pretty common, but you usually get a lot of warning; a slightly sticky (usually sticks closed) throttle for several months/years before it gets that bad.
Re:Happened to my wife a few months ago (Score:4, Informative)
By first instinct, she hit the brakes (she was doing city driving), which then burnt. She then figured out what was going on and shifted into park and killed the engine. She didn't go all that far after she discovered what was going on (brakes were due to be changed anyway).
I never saw the symptoms, and the air filter was due for a change, so the bet was something got through the air filter.
Re:Happened to my wife a few months ago (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Happened to my wife a few months ago (Score:5, Informative)
I drove stick cars for many years. My first was a beetle and my latest a Mustang. I had a throttle stick once (broken spring) and I didn't want to blow the engine. Plan ahead on what to do. Pratice it. I calmly turned the key one click only. Problem solved. Nothing broken.
Newer automatic cars are even simpler. Turn the key off. It won't go into lock until you put the shift in park. They do that on new cars so they won't roll away if you forget to put it in park as it keeps you from removing the keys. To get your keys out, you have to put it in park and then lock the steering. Only then can the keys be removed.
Try it. Shut off the car in your driveway but leave it in nutral or in drive. Try to lock the steering and remove your key.. There are only a few cars that let you remove your key without locking the transmission and steering.
Never underestimate... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Never underestimate... (Score:2)
Just because no problem was found... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, I still think it was user error...
Re:Just because no problem was found... (Score:4, Informative)
Obviously, I believe Renault (Score:3, Funny)
Happened to me in a (friends) BMW (Score:2, Insightful)
mmkay (Score:2, Insightful)
but should the manufacturor really inspect their own vehicle?
if they found something that could cost them billions in lawsuits, then well, naturally they would say "oh there's nothing wrong--case closed!".
Bit like Airbus (Score:5, Interesting)
If you remember that Airbus that crashed at an airshow a few years back when it's Die-By-Wire flight-controls refused to give the pilot TOGA power.
That accident was put down to pilot-error by Airbus and the French (Government) Investigators. The case has now been re-opened on the merit that the CVR and FDR data seems to have been played with.
Re:Bit like Airbus (Score:5, Interesting)
I recall seeing a documentary on this a few years ago. They looked at the FDR outputs and comapared the time-lag between the pilots inputs and the control response.
Once the pilot realised he was making an arse of it [he was low and slow, even for a demo - he has passengers for god's sake], he requested TOGA [To-Go-Around if I'm correct] power from the engines and put some back pressure on the side-controller. The engines started to spool up [you can hear it on the video of the crash], but the elevators refused to respond for a number of seconds - the flight computers were in landing mode and as far as they concerned they saw an unsafe input. So they said 'Non'. By the time the elevators started to respond to the pilot input, he was in the trees and sadly, people died.
Re:Bit like Airbus (Score:3)
Re:Bit like Airbus (Score:3, Informative)
I cannot speak for the incident you are speaking of, or even of flight controls at all, but I do know that mercedes was able to reduce its accident rate by 1/3 in Germany by introducing a "drive-by-wire" stability management system on some of its models. Maybe this system will in some cases make mistakes. But a 33% reduction is a pretty drastic red
Re:Bit like Airbus (Score:5, Insightful)
It's really hard, actually. At highway speed, you're covering about 30 meters (100 feet) per second. To stop, you're looking at probably three times that distance or more.
Do you want your car to activate its emergency braking system every time it approaches a hill? Will it understand that a guardrail a hundred feet in front of you is okay because you fully intend to follow a curve?
An alarm to notify drivers that they're going to lane change into the side of the car in their blind spot could be managed, but avoiding objects on the road ahead is a fiendishly difficult problem.
Incidentally, if you're following closely enough that hard braking by the car in front will cause a collision before you can respond, then you're following too closely. Back off and/or slow down.
Re:Bit like Airbus (Score:5, Informative)
The aircraft did give the pilot TOGA power (take off/go around power), but the aircraft was ALREADY so far behind the "power curve" (i.e. in the region of the flight envelope where slowing down actually induces MORE drag - if you want to find out more google for a drag/airspeed diagram - unlike ground vehicles, the curve has a "back side" for aircraft where induced drag increases as speed decreases) that it was simply against the laws of physics for the pilot to extricate himself from the pickle he'd put himself in.
It takes several seconds for a turbofan engine to "spool up". Unlike a small piston engine which can go from idle to maximum rated power almost instantly, a turbofan engine takes several seconds to go from a low power setting to takeoff power. There's an awful lot of inertia in the many turbine and compressor discs. (Modern jet engines are much better than the first generation ones, but they still take time to get up to speed).
The pilot did ask for takeoff thrust. However, by the time the engines did reach takeoff thrust (they actually performed slightly better than spec) the tail of the aircraft - which was already in a nose-high attitude because of the angle of attack needed to fly as slowly as he was flying - was already striking the trees at the end of the airfield. The additional drag of pulling the empennage through the trees overcame the thrust of the engines, and the plane slowed further causing it to impact more trees, adding more drag, slowing the plane further, until the final impact with terrain.
The pilot was ENTIRELY at fault. The same thing would have happened if he was flying a Boeing 727 ('Jurassic Jet') with the same kind of flight profile. He tried to violate the laws of physics and lost. The overall record of the Airbus A320 series shows that calling it "die by wire" is pure, unadulterated inaccurate hyperbole.
Re:Bit like Airbus (Score:3, Interesting)
This points [york.ac.uk] to an analysis of the findings of the crash investigation, the Captains version of events and subsequent independent investigations of the crash records and FDR information.
This analysis comments :
Re:Bit like Airbus (Score:3, Informative)
I'd certainly agree with that sentiment - whilst I do think the captain must accept some of the blame [his preparation appears to have been poor and legally he is in command and responsible for the aircraft and its passengers], the question of the aircrafts response to his control inputs hangs in the air. Having said that,
Re:Bit like Airbus (Score:3, Informative)
It comes back to the "Pull the stick back to make the houses get smaller, push it forwads to make the houses get bigger. If you want the houses to get smaller then bigger really really quickly, keep pulling back"
Heavy airliners flying close to stall angle of attack (stall is conditional entirely on AoA only - you can stall in any attitude, at any airspeed just as soon as the c
This is nothing (Score:4, Funny)
The official Renault press Release in English (Score:5, Informative)
After one of its vehicles is incriminated
RENAULT TAKES LEGAL ACTION
Under the control of an independent court-authorized expert appointed by Renault and with the
consent of the customer, Renault evaluated the Renault Vel Satis 3L Dci automatic, registration
number 218 TH 18, in static and dynamic conditions on Wednesday October 6.
According to the driver's comments as reported in the media, the car was jammed at high speed
on the A71 motorway on Sunday October 3, due to a faulty cruise control. The driver reportedly
said that it was impossible for him to stop the car after trying different possibilities for almost an
hour.
The evaluation covered all the vehicle's electronic, mechanical and hydraulic functions. The
data collected and the facts as established reveal no malfunction. The braking system, which
shows no sign of abnormal wear, the gearbox control, the powertrain and the cruise control all
worked perfectly. A full detailed report is expected very shortly.
Given the findings of the evaluation and its concern about the impact this incident might have on
its product image, Renault has decided to take legal action in the form of a summary
proceeding, without prejudice to other actions taken in compensation for any damage suffered
by the company.
Obligatory Father Ted Quote: (Score:5, Funny)
TED: Ah, no no no. The last time you stayed up to watch a scary film, you ended up having to sleep in my bed. I wouldn't mind, but it wasn't even a scary film.
DOUGAL: Come on, Ted. A Volkswagen with a mind of its own. Driving all over the place and going mad. If that isn't scary, I don't know what is.
A similar case... (Score:2)
IIRC (and this was a long time ago, so take all of this with a grain of salt), the car was on a US freeway. There was a woman driving, the accelerator got stuck to the floor. She tried to shut off the engine, and the key broke off in the ignition, so she tried to shift into neutral and the gear-shift failed in some catastrophic way. She called the police on her cell phone, and they tried to clear a path for her. Eventually she caught up to traff
Defending the flagship car (Score:2)
Suing your customer might not be the smartest thing to do, but Renault might need to make an example. The Vel Satis is its flagship, and while it does have its share of software bugs (like every recen
DaimlerChrysler did this to AutoWeek (Score:5, Interesting)
I opened my mail, and I saw this full page cover photo on this weekly auto magazine showing a Jeep Liberty tipping over during a slalom test. An inset picture showed the friggin' car flipped over on its side, if I remember correctly. I'm posting from work, so read for yourself:
http://www.autoweek.com/article.cms?articleId=333
Turns out, AutoWeek testers were doing their standard lane change avoidance/slalom test that they do with everything from Hyundais to GMC Yukons. I'm pretty sure it was a production Jeep Liberty -- nothing pre-production -- that flipped over twice (???) and landed on its side during this relatively commonplace automotive review test.
The driver, thankfully, only suffered a sore neck (nearly broke it, if it had rolled one more time), and AutoWeek devoted their entire issue to this vehicle which had been designed to put an affordable small SUV Jeep into the hands of consumers.
DaimlerChrysler balked and basically claimed that THE TEST WAS NOT A REAL WORLD TEST. AutoWeek called bullshit and basically said, "Uh, yeah it is -- if a driver has to make a quick lane change and or dodge something in the road, it's as real world as it gets."
http://www.autoweek.com/article.cms?articleId=416
I seem to remember that DaimlerChrysler continued to balk at the test, but in fact they ended up making center of gravity changes to the vehicle (suspension and ride height, perhaps?) over the course of the next model year.
Sounds like the same crap that Renault is doing here.
It's funny -- the automotive press gets touted all the time when they LOVE a car and try and hype up the manufacturers' products, but heaven forbid that they also try and save the manufacturer a little legal trouble by finding out these sorts of dangerous rollover issues and what not in pre-production cars. Only the GOOD NEWS, right? Bullshit.
IronChefMorimoto
Moose Test (Score:3, Informative)
Chip H.
Prior Art? (Score:2)
Maybe it's an Easter Egg (Score:5, Funny)
I hate to say "I told ya so..." (Score:2)
I call BS on Renault (Score:5, Insightful)
"This car is exactly like all the other ones - no anomolies, nothing broken - it's fine."
Chances are the computer would have auto reset like most do and any chance of software evidence being left is gone.
This is why cars should have black boxes.
Re:I call BS on you (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm getting the feeling with this one that we'll never really know what happened.
Something similar happened to me... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:There's a simple fix for that (Score:4, Funny)
> To avoid that, never use Outlook, Outlook Express, or Internet Explorer.
Actually, several programs went crazy all at once: BitTorrent, Kazaa, eDonkey, GNUtella, even FTP! It was very scary that all of those applications could take over my computer for hours and hours the way they did. Even scarier was the way I was forced to sit and watch them the entire time.
Old Chevy Caprice Classic w/ runaway Cruise (Score:3, Funny)
Growing up, my parents had a huge Chevy Caprice Classic two-door. Family trips were a blast with the runaway cruise control! Get on the interstate and set the cruise to 60-whatever MPH, then sit back and relax. Before long, you'd be doing 70, then 75, 80, and so on.
My dad was great. He'd look at me in the rear view mirror, wink, and quietly point to the speedometer. After a while, mom would say something like: "It seems like we're going kind-of fast. How fast are... [glances to dash] OH MY GOD! SLOW DOWN!!!" I love family vacations.
In the words of the manufacturer.... (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe they need a different spokesperson...
There's definitely truth to the phrase "lost in translation"...
Jacques Clouseau (Score:3, Funny)
I love listening to people who speak French, but when I read it phonetically I can't help but think of Inspector Clouseau.
"Is that your minkey?"
I Had That Happen (Score:3, Interesting)
I had the exact opposite problem happem in a 300ZX. My mechanic had done some work but forgot to tighten the bolts holding the throttle cable down. It came loose on the interstate, causing the car to drop back to an idle. I hopped out, took a look, and put the throttle cable back where it was supposed to go and hand-tightened the bolts.
These days I know that pretty much any vehicle with a mechanical throttling system is not 100% trustworthy, but I also know how to deal with situations where the linkages get stuck so it doesn't tend to be particularly inconvenient when it happens.
Renault test doesn't prove much (Score:4, Interesting)
We all know that.
B) It can take a long time to smoke out weird car problems. I had a problem with my steering lock engaging that wasn't correctly diagnosed for like two years because it was a very specific set of actions that caused it to happen. It eventually caused an accident; fortunately it just put me into a guard rail when I was making a turn. They didn't believe me until one of the mechanics was buzzing around the shop and it almost put him into the wall.
THEN they believed me.
Also... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I still don't get it (Score:2)
Re:I still don't get it (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't let you do that
Sequential control (Score:3, Interesting)
BTW, the hand brake is also electrically actuated. I know it because on a Renault Scenic I got stuck in the rush hour because the main fuse blew. Of course the manual override is in the boot, and the boot has no mechanical way to open it, only elecrical, so it was impossible to open.
BTW2 the speed control has at least a bug: while the nominal
Re:I still don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
Throttle by wire - a couple of companies
Brake by wire - none
Steering by wire - none
Why? If the first one fails, the engine dies. If the second 2 fail, you die. Some carmakers are experimenting with it, but none have brought to production.
Re:I still don't get it (Score:4, Informative)
Just to give an example, it may be more than just "a couple of companies".
I drive a compact VW [wikipedia.org] with a 1-liter, 16-valve engine, and it is "throttle by wire". That's an economy car, mind you.
I had if fail on me a few times when new, the dealer would never figure out the problem, they would see some strange conditions logged on the CPU, hard-reset the whole thing and it would not happen for a few days.
After the third visit to the shop they finally replaced the whole control unit and I never had another problem with that car since (had it for 2.5 years not)
Re:I still don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
ABS is essentially brake-by-wire. If the black box decides it doesn't want pressure at the slave cylinders, the driver is just along for the ride.
I do not know about other ABS systems, but in my vehicles if the ABS fails the power brakes still work. I had my ABS malfunction in one vehicle and the brakes worked like normal. In my experience, ABS modules are very fail-safe and I have never heard of one taking the driver along for the ride. Maybe you have, I am not saying you are wrong, just that I have not heard of that before.
Re:I still don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
If you'd accelerated a little bit, you'd have noticed it got easier to turn, as the tires have less constant contact with the ground.
Basically, the point I'm making is that if power steering fails, it's a little harder to turn. If steering-by-wire fails, the car DOES NOT turn at all, and you die. Granted, I'm sure that there would be some sort of failover in place before it was ever actually implemented, but that's the difference.
Having to put some muscle into it is a whole lot better than the wheel spinning freely with no effect.
-9mm-
Re:I still don't get it (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I still don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
Steer-by-wire would mean you could eliminate all the complicated power-assisted ste
Re:I still don't get it (Score:4, Informative)
In the old school carb, if the throttle (a simple metal plate) opens wide rapidly, it will result in greatly increased airflow without much of an increase in fuel flow - and the engine will tend to 'lean cut' - not enough fuel and far too much air for combustion.
The solution to that was to add accelerator pumps to the carb. When the driver boots the throttle, the mechanical linkage also activates one or more accelerator pumps which squirt a bunch of additional fuel into the mix. Naturally, this isn't metered particularly accurately, but it'll ensure that the mixture is more or less right (probably well on the rich side) so the engine doesn't lean cut.
Modern electronic fuel injection is a completely different kettle of fish. Cars without pure throttle by wire will still meet requirements because the EFI system won't just dump a bunch of raw fuel into the incoming air like the accelerator pump, it'll be metered. In many cars, the linkage to the throttle butterfly is still just a cable - but pure throttle by wire (where the only connection between your right foot and the throttle body) is better still as when the engine control computer (known as a FADEC - Full Authority Digital Engine Control - in aviation) has control over the entire process instead of reacting to the throttle butterfly suddenly going wide open.
Re:I still don't get it (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Mod yourself down... (Score:3, Informative)
The ONLY difference here is that the boost is provided electrically rather than hydraulically. Your example is "steering boost by wire", NOT "steer by wire".
Re:For the benefit of people who forgot how to dri (Score:3, Interesting)
Not related at all to what's going on. My wife was with me, and thinks it's a funn
Re:Horse puckey! (Score:3, Interesting)
Very Very wrong.
breaking prolonged and at high speed will cause severe reduction in breaking power and even a LOSS of breaking power.
The mechanics of this decline and failure in the coefficient of friction are varied. At a certain temperature, certain elements of the pad can melt or smear causing a lubrication effect, this is the classic glazed brake pad. Usually the organic binder resin starts to go first, then even the metallic ele
Who would handle it that way? (Score:3, Interesting)
breaking prolonged and at high speed will cause severe reduction in breaking power and even a LOSS of breaking power.
Well, there's the rub, though, isn't it? If a car goes full throttle and out of control, who's going to let that continue for a prolonged period? A sensible person would shove the brake pedal to the floor and immediately bring the car to a stop rather than continue tooling down the highway applying partial braking force until the brakes overheated.
So, the poster was very, very right.
Re:Who would handle it that way? (Score:3, Interesting)
Remember the "exploding gas tank" story? (Score:3, Insightful)
The complaint was that the gas tanks were outside the frame (or something like that) and that they'd explode on side impact crashes.
They even showed a nice convincing demonstration by crash testing a few trucks for the nice TV cameras.
And then, after the fact, the truth came out -- while explosions COULD happen given the right circumstances, it wasn't that easy to do. In fact, t
Re:Computer? (Score:3, Interesting)
Car's are increasingly drive by wire nowadays. My 2004 Mazda3 has 100% electronic throttle control, there is no mechanical link between the gas pedal and the throttle body. Also my power steering fails if the engine isn't running, even if the engine is still turning (i.e. coasing down a long hill in gear with the ignition off).
Some new luxury cars will start and drive with the ignition key only in the proximity of the ignition, this Renault may have