Audi, meet Toyota. Toyota, meet Audi:
The U.S. Department of Transportation has analyzed dozens of data recorders from Toyota Motor Corp. vehicles involved in accidents blamed on sudden acceleration and found that at the time of the crashes, throttles were wide open and the brakes were not engaged, people familiar with the findings said.
The results suggest that some drivers who said their Toyota and Lexus vehicles surged out of control were mistakenly flooring the accelerator when they intended to jam on the brakes. But the findings don’t exonerate Toyota from two known issues blamed for sudden acceleration in its vehicles: sticky accelerator pedals and floor mats that can trap accelerator pedals to the floor.
The findings by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration involve a sample of reports in which a driver of a Toyota vehicle said the brakes were depressed but failed to stop the car from accelerating and ultimately crashing.
The data recorders analyzed by NHTSA were selected by the agency, not Toyota, based on complaints the drivers had filed with the government.
The findings are consistent with a 1989 government-sponsored study that blamed similar driver mistakes for a rash of sudden-acceleration reports involving Audi 5000 sedans.
The Audi story, if I remember correctly, was discussed pretty amusingly by Pj O’Rourke a couple decades ago. I think he suggested that foreign automakers put the accelerator somewhere safe in American cars, like the back seat.
NobodySpecial
Yeah, this is common with older people, too. They think they’re putting their foot on the brake and put it on the gas and they end up all in someone’s grill.
Keith G
But what about all those grieving family members shown on TV? They demand closure.
Tom Hilton
How come it never happens to the people it should happen to, like that guy ahead of me doing 55 in the left lane?
wmsheppa
@NobodySpecial: My favorites are all of the senior citizens who drive into a building and say they were really trying to hit the brakes, not the accelerator.
For example:
http://www.sanduskyregister.com/sandusky/2010/jun/25/toyota-crashes-sandusky-drug-store
http://www.louisianarecord.com/news/227548-car-owner-says-toyota-to-blame-for-crash-into-store
http://jalopnik.com/5525794/camry-unintendedly-accelerates-into-auto-part-store-wall
El Cid
The Audi case is why car manufacturers, led by importers, began putting in those locks where you can’t take an automatic out of Park without the brake depressed. And also making front floorboards wider.
From the start I suspected this Toyota story would mostly end this way, and reminded people of the whole fake Audi 5000 panic.
El Cid
Maybe a lot of people reached for the accelerator when they meant to be reaching for their taser.
Comrade Luke
I have a similar problem with my floor mats: they tend to creep up and cause the clutch to stick at the bottom. The first time it happened I took it into the dealership, and once they explained it to me I now just pull down the mat when I feel it sticking.
You’d think they’d have designed for this by now…
Mnemosyne
I don’t find senior citizens’ mistakes quite as funny after George Weller killed 10 people in Santa Monica, but I’m a notorious killjoy.
El Cid
On the other hand, occasionally the driver gets lucky.
General Stuck
Obviously, this requires a Fickle Finger of Fate award.
Ahasuerus
That whole sorry feeding frenzy frame-up job was indeed pathetic, but it did have two beneficial side effects. First, it demonstrated quite clearly and publicly that the “news” industry was more interested in ratings than reality. And second, it got me a $5K discount on my first Audi, a 1988 5000 CS Turbo Quattro; that was a nice car!
Apropos of the Massachusetts DOMA decision a few days ago, I just saw this on WaPo: Tea party groups choose to stand mute on same-sex marriage ruling. The article claims that this is so because those groups like the way the ruling validates their own states’ rights opinions. If so, this means that there may be some Tea Party members whose motivations transcend simple reflexive hatred of “liberal”; in other words, they have principles and stick to them. Interesting…
Ruckus
For all the driver errors out there with stuck throttles, I witnessed one of my neighbors drive his Audi through the back of his garage with the front wheels spinning and the back wheels locked and the brake light on. I was standing about 30 feet away looking at him when he started the car, the engine was not over revving, but the moment he put it in gear to pull into his garage the engine sped up and his foot never left the brake. This may be the only one that ever happened that way, and I may be a lousy witness, but I don’t think so.
wmsheppa
@Mnemosyne: I wouldn’t say I find their mistakes funny, more that I find their (and all people’s) choice to eagerly leap towards blaming something else instead of accepting that they screwed up entertaining in a ‘sad commentary on human nature’ kind of way.
I also have a very black sense of humor. It might be related.
JBerardi
Yeah, well I could have told you that (and in fact I DID tell some people that at the time). If you slam on the brakes in just about any car, it’s going to stop, regardless of what the engine is doing. They’re just more powerful. This is basic automotive knowledge.
Face
I dont get this. Right foot far right car goes goey. Right foot middle car goes stoppy. Who the fuck forgets this?
With that, I’m Audi5000, G. (h/t Flava Flav)
MikeJ
@JBerardi: When I was 16 and a screw fell into the carb on my POS car, jamming the throttle plate open, the brakes managed to keep me going fairly slow for a while, but it was the log fence at the end of the street that stopped me.
And then I got to hear the story about how Judge Love stole a Jeep and had a similar adventure when he was a kid. All charges (reckless driving, destruction of public property) against me dropped.
Kilgore Trout
On the bright side, my wife was able to get a new Prius for about $3000 off of sticker price at the height of the hysteria.
Jager
Car and Driver Magazine, did a test a few months ago…
From 70MPH, with the gas pedal floored, a Camrey stopped in 180 ft, just ten feet more than the normal 70-0 braking test distance. Interesting read.
http://www.caranddriver.com/features/09q4/how_to_deal_with_unintended_acceleration-tech_dept
Jager
@MikeJ:
Did you think about turning the engine off?
MikeJ
@Jager: That was the first thing the judge asked. And no.
Pranky
The news always reports these stories as “…lost control of the car…”
Does anyone not know that just means it was a terrible driver?
Tonal Crow
I suspect that most people experiencing unexpected acceleration really are pressing the accelerator while thinking that they’re pressing the brake. (See study described here).
That said, it’s possible that the data recorder would show a wide-open throttle and no brake application if a malfunction elsewhere had caused the controller system(s) to open the throttle and disengage the brakes.
Most control systems (such as automotive “fly by wire” controllers) contain enough software that they cannot ever be proven to contain no bugs via code review, nor can they be tested under all possible operating conditions. And certain kinds of bugs (such as uninitialized variables, memory overwriters, or hardware bugs) can cause rare, hard-to-diagnose malfunctions.
To reduce the possibility that such bugs could cause unintended acceleration, maybe fly-by-wire cars should have a redundant “smart pedal” system that disables the accelerator if the brake is pressed.
BTW, my dad had his car’s accelerator stick a few months back, but avoided crashing by putting the car in neutral and coasting to the breakdown lane. The accelerator stuck due to a worn bushing on the throttle body.
Anton Sirius
Heh. Clown shoes. I get it!
Adam Hyland
@JBerardi: Whoa now, this depends very much on the car, the motor and the initial speed. There are plenty of older cars with crap drum brakes which will soften up pretty quickly under some conditions and pumping the brakes doesn’t work so well because you speed up as you release the pedal.
But most well designed cars the braking power should at least be equal to the engine power. No promises, though. That’s why the Toyota instructions told drivers to place the car in neutral.
JustMe
IIRC, the Audi 5000 pedal placement was designed to support heel-and-toe driving… it’s a style of performance driving where you slow down in a curve using the brakes while simultaneously also optimally downshifting your transmission by revving the engine to the optimal RPM by depressing the gas.
The problem was that the Audi 5000 was a full sized sedan marketed to the older set who were going to get it with an automatic transmission. That kind of pedal placement was unnecessary and turned out to be dangerous.
Ron Beasley
I used to travel to Japan on business on a regular basis. Now when going into many Japanese companies and offices you had to remove your shoes and put on sandals. Now I am a big American with big feet and I could never find a pair of sandals that even came close to fitting. I have had a similar problem with Japanese cars specifically Toyotas. When the break pedal starts getting a little low it is difficult for me to put on the breaks without also hitting the accelerator.
Adam Hyland
@Tonal Crow: Not picking on you, but your post talks about the (very real) dangers of bugs in fly by wire systems but ends with a recounting of a manual throttle problem!
I agree that complex fly-by-wire systems can have bugs and incredible care must be taken with those systems. A look at the Therac-25 accidents in the 90s can serve as a grim example. X-Ray machines and other radiation medicine equipment had long used mechanical interlocks and stops to prevent excess radiation or limit the travel of the beam. Mechanically driven shutters, physical blocks on rotation, etc. But the 90s offered a chance to replace these mechanical safety devices with logical interlocks–software. Unfortunately the company failed to understand that a bug in software meant that an apparently impregnable interlock could easily be bypassed. This was especially true because the software included very little integrity checking or error correction. A single incorrectly flipped bit (a soft memory error) could cause a failure. The Therac-25 machines killed a number of patients and hospitalized others before a study pinpointed the machines as the points of failure. See the wikipedia article for the original study and a good summary.
That is the prospect of underdesigned software control for machinery.
John Cole
@Anton Sirius: I was beginning to wonder if anyone would pick up on that.
Tonal Crow
@Adam Hyland: My dad could have had the same adventure if his car had used a fly-by-wire control system. I added it to show that there are potential alternatives to crashing, even if something goes wrong. Make sure your foot’s on the brake. If it doesn’t work, try the emergency brake. If that doesn’t work, put the car in neutral. And if that doesn’t work, and you really are in danger of hitting something, turn off the engine. (Turning off the engine is last because it’ll usually kill your power steering, making it much more difficult to steer).
Redshift
Hmm, I’m a bit more sympathetic to the concept that bad ergonomics can be a real problem, rather than just assuming that all the drivers are idiots. I recall that in one of the past incidents (maybe the Audi one, I don’t recall) there was a particularly obnoxious WaPo auto columnist who wrote a snotty column about how “of course people sometimes have to get used to the pedal placement on a new car” and how all the people who had the problem were just idiots.
My reaction was “whaaa?” I certainly don’t think about having to “get used to the pedal placement” — they’re pretty standard, and if you’ve designed your car so that people have to learn how to use it, you’re doing something wrong as a designer.
Some of these scares may be nothing but idiots and hysteria. Some of them are dangerously bad ergonomics. I’m not inclined to believe that “throttle open” measurements conclusively prove either one.
Jager
I did 17,000 miles in 2008 in SoCal. (yes, my ass is still numb) My observation, most people are really bad (horse shit) drivers. They are distracted, on the phone, they weave and they always follow too close. I’ve had people within 5-10 feet of the back of my car at 75 miles an hour on the 101. If anything out of the ordinary happens the result is is a 3 or 4 car pile up. Unintended acceleration has and would create total chaos for most of these drivers, no matter the cause.
John Cole
What do I have to do to get some love for the title of this post?
JustMe
@Adam Hyland: The Therac-25 case study was the first unit presented in my Computer Systems class, basically as a warning to a bunch of budding 20-year-old computer scientists of, if you are not responsible, you will end up killing people!
It’s like that joke about the difference between engineers and doctors: doctors who screw up only kill people one at a time.
Jager
@John Cole:
Featuring F’s, freakin’ fabulous…
Fanks, Fohn
Tonal Crow
@John Cole: Work Tunch into it.
Malron
Yeah, they blame most airliner crashes on the pilot, too.
Its interesting. Everyone wants to believe it was a hoax or driver error, but weren’t there internal memos at Toyota debating a problem with their cars?
HyperIon
@El Cid:
Me, too.
Plus I could never understand the idea that the whole pedal mechanism had to be redesigned so that it doesn’t catch the floor map. Not to mention the floated idea that an extra brake was the answer.
CalD
You could write headlines for the New York Post.
JBerardi
@Adam Hyland:
Yeah, none of those cars were involved in this story.
alhutch
I tend to think driver error is the most likely cause in a majority of these cases (too many ways to stop a car when given multiple minutes to do so). Where Toyota fell down was not having a fail safe that cuts throttle position sensor signal to the ECU when the brake pedal is pressed (that and 300hp Camrys for drivers who can’t be bothered to just drive while behind the wheel). With that type of horsepower, bad things can happen very quickly.
The Germans have had this type of cut out since drive-by-wire became popular roughly 10 years ago (the Audi ‘lesson’ was learned). Because of the whole “unintended acceleration” flap, Audi also pioneered ‘floor mat posts’ to keep the mats properly located (unable to slide up under the brake or trapping the throttle). That was 1988. I guess the Japanese might want to take a peek at a German car now and again…
Roger Moore
@Tonal Crow:
This. As long as the data recorder is depending on the same information as the drive-by-wire computer, you’re just showing that the computer responded appropriately to its inputs. You aren’t showing that the inputs correctly represented to positions of the car’s controls. It’s like “proving” that an election was fair by looking at the ballots recorded by electronic only voting machines. Yes, you can prove that the votes were tabulated correctly, but you can’t prove that they were recorded correctly. GIGO.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Our fiscal policy 2001-2006 explained, finally. This is what happens when you let a bunch of ignorant old fatheads take a high-performance vehicle out for a spin.
R-Jud
@John Cole: It’s Fucking Fabulous.
Adam Hyland
@JBerardi: le sigh.
Neither is a Mercedes C320. But the blanket statement “you slam on the brakes in just about any car, it’s going to stop, regardless of what the engine is doing. They’re just more powerful. This is basic automotive knowledge.” certainly includes it. I’m disputing your broad claim that brakes will always force a car to stop. It certainly isn’t just “basic automotive knowledge”.
Tonal Crow
@Roger Moore: Ya. Electronic vote-casting devices, like many other electronically-assisted systems, are almost completely unconstrained by external checks (e.g., DREs) or very significantly unconstrained (e.g., ballot printers). They can, thus, do for the body politic what the Therac-25 cited by Adam Hyland, above, did for cancer patients.
Adam Hyland
@Tonal Crow: But he wasn’t in a car with a fly-by-wire problem. Despite the dangers and peril of fly-by-wire system, they offer a substantial improvement over mechanical interlinks for a variety of reasons. The number of physical parts subject to wear are reduced (e.g. fewer throttle bushings), secondary damage from crashes or other mechanical failures are reduced (can’t snap a throttle cable if it doesn’t exist) and computer logic can force action which cannot be forced via a mechanical system. For example, it is much easier to design a brake system which sends a command to a throttle block to reduce power while brakes are applied even if the gas pedal is depressed than it is to use a mechanical interlock–especially if you only want the interlock to send a signal one way and only under certain circumstances.
Booger
@El Cid, @6: That’s gonna leave a mark!
Well played, Sir.
Tonal Crow
@Adam Hyland:
True, but the driver is the last line of defense. Whether the car is purely mechanical or uses the most-advanced fly-by-wire technology, the driver should be able to respond sensibly to malfunctions.
I generally agree, for cars and for most other systems much of the time. There are a few exceptions where other considerations make it inadvisable to replace mechanical systems with electronic ones. Vote-casting machines are a good example.
El Cid
At the time I remember Audi and others emphasizing not so much the heel & toe cause for narrower footwells, but that Europeans were used to not needing 24″ to spread their big feet out so as not to mix up the gas vs brake pedals.
cleek
@El Cid:
my Audi has a little light next to the “PRNDL” that lights up if you don’t have the brake down and you’re in park. and the LED panel next to the speedometer shows a message about “you have to press the brake before shifting out of park”. and when you do all that, it shows a big bright “OK!”.
they learned their lesson.
patrick II
I don’t remember where the link was where I originally found this:
From Pantagraph.com
“ Driven by his own curiosity, (Professor David) Gilbert in January found he could manipulate the electronics in a Toyota Avalon to recreate the acceleration without triggering any trouble codes in the vehicle’s computer. Such codes send the vehicle’s computer into a fail-safe mode that allows the brake to override the gas.”
As Tonal Crow pointed out above, in a fly by wire system the accellerator data may be the cause of the problem, not evidence the problem doesn’t exist.
Other than direct evidence, a statistical comparison of uncontrolled Toyota acceleratons to those of other car makers, with variables controlled, may give a better idea of whether there has been a real problem.
If it is a software problem, I wonder if the problem may “disappear” as Toyota owners get there cars hooked up and serviced with electronic diagnosis machines.
I am getting paranoid in my old age.
Jager
I started driving in the 50’s (yeah, I’m ancient) A sticking throttle was a common occurance on many old cars.
Then, if like me, you hot rodded alittle..
I had a ’48 Ford Tudor with a small block Chevy installed. The engine had dual quads, with a progressive linkage, more often than not when I floored the accelarator, it would stick full open. Made for some interesting driving. The good part of mine and the other old cars was if you reached down you could pull the pedal back. Unless of course the mechanical link was broken or too far open, etc.
Kind of like now, only it happened more often.
cleek
i had a dirt bike with a sticky throttle. that made for some exciting trips through the woods.
frosty
@cleek: Yeah, for the first time in years I’m remembering the time that my Triumph Tiger Cub throttle cable got squished and jammed so it wouldn’t release.
Primitive bike, no key and lock, just a kill button next to the throttle. It took me a couple of weeks to replace the cable, so I rode it in the meantime with two speed modes — Flat-out On, and Off. Killed it to slow down, rolling bump start to get the engine going again.
ornery curmudgeon
@Malron:
“Everyone wants to believe it was a hoax or driver error, but weren’t there internal memos at Toyota debating a problem with their cars?”
Don’t talk sense when the group-think is wanking on. See, a report came out that allows a chance to snort and sneer at victims. Woot!
Internal Toyota memo surfaces on savings, safety
Jager
@frosty:
Frosty, I had a BSA 441 single, weren’t those old English bikes grand? There is a white 441 mounted on the wall of an English Pub in Hyannis Ma, the only one I’ve seen since the 60’s! Actually loved that bike…at idle “pop,pop,pop,pop”
Mr B
P.J. O’Rourke talked about this in his book “Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government”. He suggested to move the accelarator toa safer location, like mount it on a pole besides the highway.
Found these pages on Google Books:
http://imgur.com/mhv14.png
http://imgur.com/3rwQP.png
http://imgur.com/DmEAZ.png
http://imgur.com/KAuNn.png
T
At the time I remember Audi and others emphasizing not so much the heel & toe cause for narrower footwells, but that Europeans were used to not needing 24” to spread their big feet out so as not to mix up the gas vs brake pedals.
In the intervening years the Dutch and the Swedes have become the world’s tallest people. (That’s what soshulized
medicine and giving a crap about childhood poverty will do fer ya.)
How big are their feet going to be in two decades? And is Volvo already on the case?
Martin
@Comrade Luke: “mats: they tend to creep up”
My 1994 Mazda Xedos 6 (I believe called Eunos 500 in the US) has a small metal hook near the seat and the floor mat has a metal eye, so the mat will not move. Thoughtful.
Albantar
@Mnemosyne: I own a Toyota Prius (Eurotrash version, with EV button), and the driver’s floor mat is secured by two hooks against sliding. Mind you that this is a 2008 model Prius…
Mike
@ornery curmudgeon:
I don’t see anything incriminating in that news story. OF COURSE you’re going to be happy only having to recall a bunch of floor mats when you’re staring into a moral-panic-induced full recall of the entire drive systems of the car.
You assume that they take the media reports as completely credible, rather than the likely bullshit they are. If they actually thought that their ECU’s were malfunctioning and tried to get away with replacing mats, yes it’s bad. If they did every test they could and found no evidence of it other than unreliable reports from people with a vested interest in having something other than their error be the cause of the crash… then it’s good business, and what most people would do in that situation.
Jason
As a driver of an older Toyota, I have actually accidently hit the accelerator, mind you, I was in neutral and not actually driving. The biggest issue with some of the imports is the location, the distance between the gas and brake pedals are relatively close, and relatively small. But again it’s not a problem with just Toyota, it’s just the biggest one to pick on.
My 2 cents.
some other guy
BJ is not Slashdotted yet? You’ve got stronger servers than I’d thought.
some guy
@Comrade Luke:
Honda has a solution to this problem that works quite well. The driver side floor mat is held in play by rear facing j hooks. the only way for it to move is to go backwards first.
Michael B
@Comrade Luke
You’d think they’d have designed for this by now…
They do, depending on the car. My Altima’s floorboard mats have holes at the base, which drop onto pegs under the seat. Prevents them from creeping up. But I’ve seen other Nissans without it.
Lan
Dear Sir,
The phrase “automaker” literally means “one who self-makes”, or one that is self-creating. Whilst I understand that many Americans have a close and loving relationship with the combustion engine in all its forms and encasements, I very much doubt that you are quite ready to elevate makers of ‘automobiles’ to the level of divinity. I therefore sincerely request that you perhaps stick to the infinitely more readable (and apt) phrase “car manufacturer” instead of such pseudoclassical nonsense.
Regards,
A. Pedant.
Jude
Yeah, I thought the headline was genius, Cole. Along the lines of “Sticks nix hick pix.”
Chris Johnson
Balloon Juice sometimes posts pictures of Tunch.
We laugh at your slashdottings ;)
(slashdot poster #580 here)
lurky
@John Cole:
If it makes you feel any better, I don’t even have a great deal of interest in the story and was going through the comments thinking “wtf… where’s the recognition for the headline?” I did the same thing on slashdot, where I found this page linked. The description there says it was submitted here with a better headline, and I thought “that’s a little rude to the slashdot submitter”, so I came here and was graced with one of the greatest headlines to have ever been put into headline form.
AlanRII
@Comrade Luke: My Mazda Protege, and now my 3 have a hook on the floor which extends from under the front seat to hold the floor mat in place. Works quite well.
Patrick EB
@Comrade Luke:
We have a Toyota Camry and the floor mates have small holes, nearest to the driver seat, which fit over hooks just under the front of the driver seat.
Works a treat :)
Ben Collins
And the tombstone reads:
“Here lies Wilson Drake,
Stepped on the gas instead of the break”
Ed
You have got to be kidding me…
Study the data recorders…
Since it’s the sensor on the gas pedal that’s causing the issue and telling the computer the user is pressing the pedal at 100% when they are in fact NOT pressing it, shouldn’t the NTHSA NOT trust the data in the data recorders? Durrrrr….
They must have some really smart people working there. :rolls eyes: Hasn’t anyone here ever had a TP sensor fail and tell the computer “hey the user wants 100% open throttle”, cause I have! But at least I have a TB controlled by a wire connected to the gas pedal and NOT an electric motor. Worse move car makers have done in a long time removing the throttle cable.
JR in WV
My wife drove most of the way from Charleston to Beckley on the WV Turnpike in a Ford Ranger with the throttle wide open – in like 1992 or ’94. It was our second Ranger, and had an ECM, which is auto-ese for computer in control.
She would use the brakes to slow down at toll booths, threw them money, and drove straight to the Ford dealer in Beckley. Towing on the WV TP is WAY expensive, and she’s stubborn, so there you go.
Even tho we were a year and 12,000 miles out of warranty, they replaced the ECM with no fighting on our part at all. Ford knew they were having trouble with acceleration caused by ECMs, and they replaced them every time, just grateful the wife was good enough a driver not to tear things up. She did use a lot of brake, but it was a 4-cyl going uphill most of the way, which probably helped.
So DON’T tell me that the computer can’t do anything it wants to a throttle, and I suspect it might not have written those events to a black box correctly. When computers screw up, very often they screw up the .log files too, which makes figuring out what went wrong even harder!
I’m sure some of these incidents are really fat-footed fools, but I’m just as sure there are controller problems in there somewhere. Probably outsourced coding to Elbownia, huh?
GHFIII
Don’t talk sense when the group-think is wanking on. See, a report came out that allows a chance to snort and sneer at victims. Woot!
Yeah ignore facts, believe lies
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128490874
rich me
Of course, if the data is getting to the recorder incorrectly, that would explain a lot. Accelerators in hybrids have no mechanical linkage and brakes signals can be interrupted by the ABS. There could be sensor failure upstream. that would explain the rarity of these events.
If it were human error, I would expect to happen once a week to everyone…
rich me
Of course, if the data is getting to the recorder incorrectly, that would explain a lot. Accelerators in hybrids have no mechanical linkage and brakes signals can be interrupted by the ABS. There could be sensor failure upstream. that would explain the rarity of these events.
If it were human error, I would expect to happen once a week to everyone…
Fernando
@Tom Hilton: I’m doing 55 in the left lane because that’s what the speed limit sign tells me to do. If you don’t like it, talk to your state legislator about changing the law.
Cube Farm Boy
@Face: I once had an issue where I stood on the brake pedal and not the accelerator — and my car had negligible change in speed for roughly 500 feet.
It may have had something to do with the long hill I was driving down, the 1/2″ of snow on the ground preventing traction, and the snow bank / curb that finally stopped my car.
Don
@Ruckus: If the front wheels were spinning and the rear wheels were locked, then either the car had woefully inadequate front brakes in addition to some unknown acceleration problem, or just the emergency brake was applied and the driver was on the accelerator.
All Season Radial
@ Redshift: “Hmm, I’m a bit more sympathetic to the concept that bad ergonomics can be a real problem, rather than just assuming that all the drivers are idiots.”
Not ALL of them, just the ones we notice.
ThresherK
@Martin:
My ’02 Sentra has it, which means it was put in their least expensive rig, almost 10 years ago.
Night Eagle
Since the Toyota autos in question use an electronic “fly by wire” system for the gas pedal (rather than a more traditional mechanical linkage), how can they be sure it was the gas pedal being pressed and not a buggy computer system sending a “full speed ahead” signal ? Does the data recorder record the input values (i.e. the gas & brake pedal positions), or the resulting control signals sent to the engine? It is impossible to make a determination that driver error is the cause without detailed understanding of exactly what is being recorded, but sadly the article doesn’t get into those details.
DK
@Ruckus: DK
@Ruckus/@Don
Ruckus, not trying to cast aspersions, but I do seem to recall an Audi dealership offering a large amount of money to anyone who could, with both brake and accelerator depressed, make an Audi 5000 move more than just a bit. They never had to pay out. Don, thanks for that entirely rational explanation. Audi was crucified in the media for this, and after years of studying the problem was completely exonerated by the investigators. One of the reasons why was that one simply couldn’t overcome the brakes when applied.
Paul in KY
@Ruckus: How do you know he didn’t have one foot on gas & one on brake?
Paul in KY
@Ron Beasley: My Lexus (a 1992 SC300) had (I thought) the brake pedal & gas pedal quite close together. A couple of times I was pushing the brake, but the right side of my foot was also pushing the accelerator pedal. I rearended a car doing that (luckily it was a low speed rear end).
scarshapedstar
Oh bullshit. I feel like only a few months ago they were chanting “Faggot, faggot, faggot” at Barney Frank. Why do I feel that way?
BECAUSE THEY WERE! That’s right!
How can you fall for this crap? Here’s my alternate explanation: they know they already have a well-earned reputation for being anti-gay, and so they’re just going to shut up. At least they’re learning.
Hal (GT)
So do you think Congress will call the Toyota head back and apologize for their tongue lashings?
TM in OH
@some guy: @alhutch: The Toyota cars involved DO have the catches for the floor mats, as decribed for several other cars – rear-facing J hooks. But people tend to purchase non-standard mats to replace them, not realizing the danger in doing so. Try as you might, it is impossible to make things “idiot-proof”. And ALL of us have our idiot moments, whether or not we want to admit it.
ChrisD
@Night Eagle: They don’t know for sure that the data recorders weren’t receiving an errant accelerator signal. They’re interested in the brake signal.
A record of the brakes being applied fully and the accelerator applied fully would suggest that the accelerator was stuck and the driver had the presence of mind to actually hit the brakes. What they are finding, however, is that the brakes were NOT being pressed when the driver said they were, which suggests that the driver might have been pressing the wrong pedal.
There was at least one case where a security camera had footage of the car and the brake lights did not come on until after the crash occurred, yet the driver’s first reaction was to blame the car. And let me head you off at the pass… The brake lights can’t be shut off by the computer, they’re connected directly to the brake light switch on the brake pedal.
back envelope
@Adam Hyland :
Any car designed in the last thirty years will come to a stop within less than s=50m from a speed of v=36m/s (about 60mph) if the brakes are slammed really hard on a dry road. This is the the only “basic automotive knowledge” you need, the rest is high school physics.
Since the average speed during deceleration is 18m/s, this means the car will come to a halt in less than 3 secs, meaning deceleration is about 1.2g (36m/s/3s=12m/s^2).
So, unless your car accelerates considerably faster than it would if dropped off a cliff (1g=9.81m/s) , the brakes will win over the motor.
Any 4WD vehicle that does not have sufficient power to continuously spin all 4 wheels on a dry road in a burnout in 1st gear will come to a standstill if the brakes are slammed hard and fast.
There may be a few sports cars that have more power than that, but they will have much better brakes, too – unless they are 60ies-era muscle cars.
There are only two exceptions to this:
a) if brakes were not properly maintained (worn pads or old brake fluid)
b) If brakes were not initially applied hard enough, but just a little bit, until they were totally overheated
Tom Hilton
@Fernando: That’s not actually the speed limit; it’s the suggested minimum.
Seriously, though: if you’re slower than the flow of traffic (and at 55, you probably are), you have no fucking business in the left lane whatever the speed limit is.
Rollo
@back envelope
“Any car designed in the last thirty years will come to a stop within less than s=50m from a speed of v=36m/s (about 60mph)”
36 m/s is actually 80.5 mph, not 60. *No* road car designed in the last thirty years will come to a stop in 50m from that speed using brakes alone. Your initial assumptions are wrong, so your conclusions are worthless.
Gerard
Here’s my problem with all these “sudden acceleration” claims:
In my 2004 VW, if the car is moving at more than about 10 MPH and I have the brake depressed, even lightly, for more than about 1.5 seconds, the computer overrides any throttle pedal positioning and takes the engine to idle. Instantly.
It is physically impossible for the engine to be revving and the brakes to be applied at the same time. The computer will have none of that.
Is VW/Audi the only manufacturer that does this or is it a standard safety feature on most cars?
ElecCham
@Tom Hilton: Um… in Montana, perhaps, and maybe Nevada. Not in any state I’ve ever lived in – that’s why it says “SPEED LIMIT” (and a “minimum” posted underneath it – generally 45mph ’round these hyar parts). A cop is perfectly within his or her rights to ticket you for doing 65mph where the sign says “SPEED LIMIT 55”.
That said, in response to Fernando… just ’cause you’re not wrong, doesn’t mean you’re not dead.
kicker_of_elves
@Comrade Luke:
They have. It’s a circular bin where you can safely place the floormat and have it disposed of, simultaneously eliminating the creeping mat issue and saving your life.
CeeJay
Hmm, well. I don’t wish to question the findings but couldn’t it be the case that if the engine management units thought that the accelerator was floored and the brakes not applied that the data recorder would receive the same, potentially incorrect data. When you are accustomed to power assisted braking and that assistance fails, it takes a lot of effort to stop a car that is under full acceleration – particular on an automatic car, where the gearbox will shift down to try and provide the acceleration being demanded.
My question has always been, why doesn’t anyone ever pull the gear shift to Neutral? Not easy if you are a split second off the back of the car or wall in front but not so for all the cases of cars being driven for miles at high speed.
Brian
@Tom Hilton:
LOL YES!!!!!!!
Keep your hopes high, and it may happen :)