Your car computer may kill you.

[Aasland]

Just being consiratorial .. how many have died from this sudden acceleration issue? 19? And how many cars affected? Millions? And then the Prius brake recall at the same time?

So the conspiracy theorist in me starts to chatter, and like all good conspiracies we need to start with the desired outcome and select facts to support our position.

Desired outcome: The US gov't wanted to boost sales for the carmakers it owns (GM and Chrysler).

How: By initiating unwarranted recalls against Toyota, more customers will buy GM/Chrysler.

See? Makes perfect sense!

On a different note .. when accelerators stick and people go flying down the freeway and then call 911 or something .. why don't they turn off the ignition or stand on the brakes or shift into neutral and let the engine blow up? It's all gotta be better than running into people and things at high speed.

 

[Checkswrecks]

Just being consiratorial .. how many have died from this sudden acceleration issue? 19? And how many cars affected? Millions? And then the Prius brake recall at the same time?
So the conspiracy theorist in me starts to chatter, and like all good conspiracies we need to start with the desired outcome and select facts to support our position.

Desired outcome: The US gov't wanted to boost sales for the carmakers it owns (GM and Chrysler).

How: By initiating unwarranted recalls against Toyota, more customers will buy GM/Chrysler.

See? Makes perfect sense!

On a different note .. when accelerators stick and people go flying down the freeway and then call 911 or something .. why don't they turn off the ignition or stand on the brakes or shift into neutral and let the engine blow up? It's all gotta be better than running into people and things at high speed.

Conspiracies? Groan. I've worked with some of the Gummint guys working these car issues and THAT sure ain't happening. Your comment is a demonstration of how there are a lot of smart people, like you, who have NO idea about the extent of self-policing there is. The Gummint gives guidelines, called regulations, to industry and then companies are supposed to police themselves, because that's the amount of regulation that we the voting public have clearly told our government to pay for while our taxes go to other things. Not a political comment, the fact is that your taxes are going to feeding & taking care of people, wars, etc. The research & regulatory parts of the government are a surprisingly small part of the expenditure.

So if you'll remember, the self-regulated company told the Feds and world that the problem was with floor mats. The fix was a nifty little set of plastic hooks and voila: "We're past the problem."

Errmm, but the problems continued.

OK, now we find that the throttle mechanism gets some wear and still sticks. Voila, the company says that: "With a simple shim, the problem is fixed."

Errmm, now we have people looking even closer at Toyotas for ANYTHING and maybe possibly the shims didn't address all of the symptoms.

So the problem is either there is a lot of troubleshooting symptoms (usually works) because the company is under a LOT of pressure, or the root problem(s) aren't yet really known, or that people are now getting more focused on ANYTHING from the company and we're now talking about a new and separate issue.

Take your pick, cuz I sure don't know which & have a 2007 & 2010 Corolla in the family.

Since you took a shot at the Feds & I'm one in an uninvolved agency, I can tell you that we end up going after the biggest problems. As an example on the car side: Yes, there've been about the 19 fatalities you mentioned, but fatalities are almost always just the tip of an iceberg. There've been more in the injured category and even more than that in the damaged vehicle group, but even those don't catch up to the numbers in some other auto problems. You'd be amazed how easy it is for importers to bring in a couple of big sea containers full of tires that were made in Borat's hometown. Only after a LOT of tires start failing do the Feds have enough data to see that there's a commonality and then they have to spend a LOT of time to trace the events back to the source, who is now importing "real" gold Rolexes or Viagra or something. Think about that the next time your kid needs tires and finds some REAL cheap. That's why most people will never hear about the majority of the issues the Fed guys deal with.

If you want to go further, start comparing the FMVSS vehicular regs with what the software and us aircraft guys take for granted as quality requirements. Let us know how cozy and comfortable you feel.

Checkswrecks

 

[Checkswrecks]

Just being consiratorial .. how many have died from this sudden acceleration issue? 19? And how many cars affected? Millions? And then the Prius brake recall at the same time?
So the conspiracy theorist in me starts to chatter, and like all good conspiracies we need to start with the desired outcome and select facts to support our position.

Desired outcome: The US gov't wanted to boost sales for the carmakers it owns (GM and Chrysler).

How: By initiating unwarranted recalls against Toyota, more customers will buy GM/Chrysler.

See? Makes perfect sense!

On a different note .. when accelerators stick and people go flying down the freeway and then call 911 or something .. why don't they turn off the ignition or stand on the brakes or shift into neutral and let the engine blow up? It's all gotta be better than running into people and things at high speed.

Aasland -

As for your question about turning the car off, it makes a lot of sense till you get into the details. By the way, this could apply to cars from most of the automakers, not just the T-company in today's news.

Let's say you're a non-mechanical kinda person who owns a cake shop or graduated with an English degree. You're living the good life and bought a 2010 Belchfire 2000 supercar, so now you're just tooling along the road.

Ooops, the car's getting faster, so what would Joe & Betty Average do? Ride the brakes of course. After a mile or so of this, the brake pads either glaze over or just go away. "OMyGawd, my car is trying to KILL us! Honey call somebody and get us some help!"

Hmm, getting scared now and the car's getting faster, so maybe turn it off. Let me think about it, because won't I lose the power steering and I've never done this before. The Belchfire has push-button start rather than a key, so I'll press the button and kill the motor because we're starting to really go fast now, right? Wrong.

Virtually NOBODY reads their Belchfire Owner's Manual enough to remember under stress that they have to press AND HOLD the On/Off button for more than some minimum number of seconds to kill the engine. Remember that software? IF the car is in gear the programming won't allow a simple bump of the button to kill the engine, so what you do in the garage every night no longer applies. A slight human factors problem but the car meets the nifty FMVSS requirements and IF you thoroughly read the book, you'd KNOW how to turn it off.

So the brakes are gone and you can't turn it off and you're getting REALLY scared so what's next? Oh, just shift into neutral maybe? Now that the car is flying and you need to focus more outside the window (tunnel vision), you need to remember to move the shifter through a serpentine path to get to neutral.

Sorry, but Joe & Betty probably won't make it that far before an obstacle gets in their way. [Intentional sarcastic comment not to take personally, but to make a point:] Since you felt this was an unwarranted recall, I'm sure that your wife/kids could have done better.

OK, sarcasm turned off, hopefully you can see what we come across in looking into accidents and why figuring them out after the fact can take so long. If one car hadn't had a person on the cellphone, some of this would've been near impossible to figure out and even then, the car makers would dispute it.

Checks

 

[bmwhd]

Gear selector in N. Stear safely to side of road. Key off. Works in every imaginable scenario with every vehicle on the road in the US. Period.

 

[Checkswrecks]

Gear selector in N. Stear safely to side of road. Key off. Works in every imaginable scenario with every vehicle on the road in the US. Period.

Not quite. A lot of newer cars are like the C14 Connie and don't have a key that you stick in a hole.

You have a keyfob in your pocket and press a button to start the car.

As for neutral, it can work but re-read my last post.

 

[radman]

Stuff

+1, on the money. The ABS argument squared.

 

[Geezer]

Gear selector in N. Stear safely to side of road. Key off. Works in every imaginable scenario with every vehicle on the road in the US. Period.

Not quite. A lot of newer cars are like the C14 Connie and don't have a key that you stick in a hole.

You have a keyfob in your pocket and press a button to start the car.

As for neutral, it can work but re-read my last post.

However, there is a rev limiter which wll prevent you from blowing up your engine while you figure out how to make the engine stop while in neutral.

Part of the problem is that people are complacent about driving. They don't bother to learn how a vehicle works, they just want to turn it on and go.

 

[Bustanut joker]

Gear selector in N. Stear safely to side of road. Key off. Works in every imaginable scenario with every vehicle on the road in the US. Period.

Amen..

I figure if ya ain't got the smarts to do something like this you shouldn't be driving let alone carving meat with a sharp knife.

God only knows what could happen if allowed a sharp pencil. :dribble:

:jester:

 

[beemerdons]

The more I learn of computers, the less I trust.The more I learn of humans, the less I trust.

What to do?

Relax dcarver and have a piece of pie with Bust! Would you like hair pie or tamale pie? Bustanut joker sent you a video on Sunday morning showing you the choices!

 

[Pepperell]

I saw "electric brake by wire" somewhere back there. We had this on our travel trailer back in the late 50's early 60's...

 

[Checkswrecks]

Part of the problem is that people are complacent about driving. They don't bother to learn how a vehicle works, they just want to turn it on and go.

Bingo!

We have a WINNER!!!

 

[Aasland]

CheckWrecks,

I'm sorry you didn't see the humor I was attempted to provide.

 

[Checkswrecks]

CheckWrecks,
I'm sorry you didn't see the humor I was attempted to provide.

My bad.

I've been on not one, not two, but THREE jobs where people said I was part of some dumb-*** conspiracy, so you hit a nerve.

Sorry to go on a rant. Guess I need to check into one of 'Bust's sessions on "How to be sensitive."

 

[BikerGeek99]

My bad. I've been on not one, not two, but THREE jobs where people said I was part of some dumb-*** conspiracy, so you hit a nerve.

GROUP HUG!!

:friends:

:drinks:

Sorry to go on a rant. Guess I need to check into one of 'Bust's sessions on "How to be sensitive a raving lunatic sheep-lover."

Fixed it for ya.

 

[MotorToad]

Part of the problem is that people are complacent about driving. They don't bother to learn how a vehicle works, they just want to turn it on and go.

Nail head, meet Mr. Hammer. I got into an internet argument over how someone would not know to put the car in neutral and was met with "it wasn't his car, it was a on loan." Which sounds to me like "well, he would have landed that plane safely but he'd just borrowed it." I think 90+% of drivers are grossly underqualified to operate a car.

As for traction control, the motor-driven throttle is ridiculously simple and effective compared to having a system to apply the brakes, although applying the brakes makes for a much better TC system with an open differential. Retarding timing wastes fuel, and cutting fuel results in a lean condition and unpleasant engine behavior.

Undisnonirregardless of whether the Toyota system is actually at fault, Toyota did make several rookie-level errors in the design on their system. When a Nissan's brakes are applied, the throttle is over-ridden (wow, how simple is that?), and when the "start" button (btw, wtgdf ever thought a start button was a good idea?) is pressed in a panicky manner the engine shuts off. If an EE handed me a system that didn't include these simple criteria, I'd send him back down to designing floor mats. -- Or maybe that was the same guy?

 

[zenwhipper]

Yep most cars these days have over 100 million lines of computer code!

 

[bmwhd]

Gear selector in N. Steer safely to side of road. Wait for car to run out of gas. Works in every imaginable scenario with every vehicle on the road in the US. Period.

Not quite. A lot of newer cars are like the C14 Connie and don't have a key that you stick in a hole.

You have a keyfob in your pocket and press a button to start the car.

As for neutral, it can work but re-read my last post.

Ok. Fixed.

 

[kleake]

In the article the guy mentioned in the future we will have steering by wire. Well, we are closer to that then we think. Mother in law has an 06 Malibu,,,, and come to find out it has electric power steering. While ya might think that's pretty cool and all,,, they have had recalls on the 02-04's for a calibration issue and thought they had it fixed, but her 06 experienced the same problems,, and I'll tell ya,,, I would much rather have my throttle stick then to have my steering messed with. Luckily hers quit as she started the car one morning and not while going down the road,,,,, here is what happens. Tooling along singing to your favorite song on the radio, one hand on the wheel,,,, maybe only a couple of fingers on the wheel and all of a sudden the car makes a full on turn to the left!!!! :dribble: Well,,,, GM tried to tell us it's an issue with alignment and all sorts of things. Well then explain why when you start the car setting in the driveway the wheel turns by itself all the way to the left,,, and when you pull hard enough you can get it to the right, but let go and it turns all the way left again? :blink: Now, GM denied there was any issues with the car,,,,, but it only has 56K on it and the steering definitely has a life altering issue going on. We had it to the dealer who says sure,,, we can re-calibrate it for ya for $100!! Well,,,, seeing how the average joe doesn't have their $1,000,000,000,000,000 dollar computer, we don't have much choice. Get up 2 days later,,,, car turns to the right all by itself..... In the end, GM denied all claims there were any issues with the car even though in 2004 they recalled every one for the EXACT same symptoms, and they refused to do anything to assist. Well,,,, $800 and some odd dollars later we replaced the steering column and steering shaft and the problem is fixed. Now,,, are we ready for steering by wire, and would you rather be in a Toyota with a throttle issue, or get the surprise of a left hand turn at 70mph!

Bottom line,,, every mfg has problems,,, it is normal,,, some worse than others,,, but does that mean they are on my banned list? nope,,,, just let them work out the issues, learn how to operate the car, and move on... My dad has a 2004 Prius with 130K on it and it's never been in the shop except for new tires,,,,,, it's still on the original set of brakes!!! I also have a 2000 suburban with 150K on it and no issues.... I prefer american, but much of everthing out there is foreign anyway.... I would however prefer to drive my 65 Ford pickup if it was still running.... Simple, fun, and classic....

 

[08FJR4ME]

Just buy a Ford, Problem solved!!!

 

[tmc]

09 Prius hasn't killed me yet. Still waiting to go out in that blaze of fiery glory! :focus: