Toyota recalls and related issues: BusinessWeek-Media owes Toyota an apology
03-14-10, 12:59 PM
#1171
LOl at much of this though I haven't gone through the entire thread. My conclusion, almost mirrors the YT vid of how to drive the F&!ing Prius. Seems our Gov't still is trying to get around stoopidity and no matter how many lawsuits, anti-stoopid devices they conjure up, scenarios like these will continue to happen till humans cease to exist.
03-14-10, 01:55 PM
#1172
Great piece, driver error is the elephant in the room. So many of these are parking lot and driveway events. I wonder if SNL will do something after the Prius hoax is revealed.
Another VERY worthwhile read:
RUNAWAY TOYOTAS? WHAT ABOUT DRIVER ERROR?
by John McElroy - Autoline on Autoblog
No one wants to touch it. Not Toyota, not NHTSA, not any politician. But the issue has to be raised. Driver error is most likely at the root of these sudden unintended acceleration incidents.
Unintended acceleration is not a new issue for the auto industry. It's been around for decades and complaints have been filed against virtually every automaker. Even more telling, it was around long before electronic throttle controls (ETC) ever showed up in cars.
But we've managed to work ourselves into a hysteria where everyone automatically assumes that ETC is the culprit. That's a dangerous assumption that will likely lead us down a dead-end path, and could prevent us from implementing a fairly easy design change that could cure most of these incidents.
While it is possible that "ghosts" in the electronics could be causing a problem, no one has been able to find them. Toyota has done exhaustive investigations into this. So has every other major automaker. So have all the suppliers that make these systems. Independent laboratories, universities, and government agencies have investigated it. But none of them have ever found the problem. Never. And it is my contention that they probably never will.
Professor David Gilbert of Southern Illinois University did come up with a contrived way of re-wiring Toyotas to induce unintended acceleration. But Toyota successfully (in my opinion) debunked his wiring scheme as something that could never happen in the real world.
We saw the same hysteria back in the late 1980s when Audi was in the headlines for unintended acceleration. None of the people involved in incidents back then believed they had their foot on the gas pedal. In fact, they'd swear on a Bible that they had their foot on the brake. And, they insisted, the harder they pushed on the brake the faster the car went.
Many non-automotive experts tried to cook up explanations as to how there was some sort of gremlin that was causing the problem. None of them made any sense. NHTSA then conducted an exhaustive investigation at the time that dragged on for a couple of years. It finally concluded that the problem was nothing more than "pedal misapplication." That's its term for driver error.
There was something good that came out of all that. Audi came up with the idea of the shift-lock mechanism, which requires a driver to put his foot on the brake pedal before moving the shift-lever out of Park. That took care of most unintended acceleration cases, but not all of them.
The dirty little secret of unintended acceleration is that the overhwelming majority of people who experience it are elderly drivers, typically in their 60s and 70s. This has been true since about the time that the automatic transmission became available to the masses (that's right, there are virtually no cases of unintended acceleration involving cars with manual transmissions). In the past, whenever you read about some car driving through a storefront, or barreling down a sidewalk, it almost invariably involved an elderly driver. And the same is true today.
Some people ask me, "OK, how do you explain Toyota's higher incidence of sudden acceleration?" My answer is that Audi also had a higher incidence back in its day, but it still was an extremely rare event. In fact, from 1999 to 2009 Toyota's reported incidences of unintended acceleration were 0.009 incidents for every million cars it sold. Now that is an extraordinary low number.
The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and National Public Radio have all done statistical analyses of unintended acceleration, but their data are all over the map. It all depends on how you slice the numbers. Interestingly, they show that Ford has a higher number of reported incidents than Toyota does. But Toyota has a higher number of crashes.
And that brings us back to the drivers. Years ago Consumer Reports did a hatchet job on the Dodge Omni and Plymouth Horizon, saying they were more prone to spin out if you accelerated up to highway speeds, yanked the steering wheel 90 degrees, then let go of the wheel. It was a bogus test, but it did get me to research the issue. As I dug into the data I was astonished to find that Omnis were more prone to get into accidents (of any kind) than Horizons even though there were absolutely identical cars. When I asked Chrysler's safety expert what was going on he said, "That's easy to explain. Who drives a Dodge? A young male who drives more aggressively. They simply get in more accidents than the kind of people who buy Plymouths."
Could it be that the elderly people who buy Toyotas are simply more likely to get in crashes due to unintended acceleration? I don't know, but it's something that should be looked into. I think that investigating the demographics and psychographics of the people who encounter this problem would be very illuminating. Last week I got a call from an elderly gentleman who said he has Type II diabetes, which has left him with virtually no feeling in his feet and he often can't tell which pedal he's pushing on. That makes me wonder if any of these Toyota drivers have Type II diabetes.
If the powers that be would entertain the idea that driver error may be at the heart of this problem, we could start to do something about it. If people are unknowingly stepping on the wrong pedal, maybe all we need to do is add a bigger gap between the gas and the brake pedals. Maybe it should be a foot-long gap.
Unless or until we admit that the drivers could be at fault, history suggests we're never going to find the answer.
http://www.autoblog.com/2010/03/12/r...ror/#continued
RUNAWAY TOYOTAS? WHAT ABOUT DRIVER ERROR?
by John McElroy - Autoline on Autoblog
No one wants to touch it. Not Toyota, not NHTSA, not any politician. But the issue has to be raised. Driver error is most likely at the root of these sudden unintended acceleration incidents.
Unintended acceleration is not a new issue for the auto industry. It's been around for decades and complaints have been filed against virtually every automaker. Even more telling, it was around long before electronic throttle controls (ETC) ever showed up in cars.
But we've managed to work ourselves into a hysteria where everyone automatically assumes that ETC is the culprit. That's a dangerous assumption that will likely lead us down a dead-end path, and could prevent us from implementing a fairly easy design change that could cure most of these incidents.
While it is possible that "ghosts" in the electronics could be causing a problem, no one has been able to find them. Toyota has done exhaustive investigations into this. So has every other major automaker. So have all the suppliers that make these systems. Independent laboratories, universities, and government agencies have investigated it. But none of them have ever found the problem. Never. And it is my contention that they probably never will.
Professor David Gilbert of Southern Illinois University did come up with a contrived way of re-wiring Toyotas to induce unintended acceleration. But Toyota successfully (in my opinion) debunked his wiring scheme as something that could never happen in the real world.
We saw the same hysteria back in the late 1980s when Audi was in the headlines for unintended acceleration. None of the people involved in incidents back then believed they had their foot on the gas pedal. In fact, they'd swear on a Bible that they had their foot on the brake. And, they insisted, the harder they pushed on the brake the faster the car went.
Many non-automotive experts tried to cook up explanations as to how there was some sort of gremlin that was causing the problem. None of them made any sense. NHTSA then conducted an exhaustive investigation at the time that dragged on for a couple of years. It finally concluded that the problem was nothing more than "pedal misapplication." That's its term for driver error.
There was something good that came out of all that. Audi came up with the idea of the shift-lock mechanism, which requires a driver to put his foot on the brake pedal before moving the shift-lever out of Park. That took care of most unintended acceleration cases, but not all of them.
The dirty little secret of unintended acceleration is that the overhwelming majority of people who experience it are elderly drivers, typically in their 60s and 70s. This has been true since about the time that the automatic transmission became available to the masses (that's right, there are virtually no cases of unintended acceleration involving cars with manual transmissions). In the past, whenever you read about some car driving through a storefront, or barreling down a sidewalk, it almost invariably involved an elderly driver. And the same is true today.
Some people ask me, "OK, how do you explain Toyota's higher incidence of sudden acceleration?" My answer is that Audi also had a higher incidence back in its day, but it still was an extremely rare event. In fact, from 1999 to 2009 Toyota's reported incidences of unintended acceleration were 0.009 incidents for every million cars it sold. Now that is an extraordinary low number.
The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and National Public Radio have all done statistical analyses of unintended acceleration, but their data are all over the map. It all depends on how you slice the numbers. Interestingly, they show that Ford has a higher number of reported incidents than Toyota does. But Toyota has a higher number of crashes.
And that brings us back to the drivers. Years ago Consumer Reports did a hatchet job on the Dodge Omni and Plymouth Horizon, saying they were more prone to spin out if you accelerated up to highway speeds, yanked the steering wheel 90 degrees, then let go of the wheel. It was a bogus test, but it did get me to research the issue. As I dug into the data I was astonished to find that Omnis were more prone to get into accidents (of any kind) than Horizons even though there were absolutely identical cars. When I asked Chrysler's safety expert what was going on he said, "That's easy to explain. Who drives a Dodge? A young male who drives more aggressively. They simply get in more accidents than the kind of people who buy Plymouths."
Could it be that the elderly people who buy Toyotas are simply more likely to get in crashes due to unintended acceleration? I don't know, but it's something that should be looked into. I think that investigating the demographics and psychographics of the people who encounter this problem would be very illuminating. Last week I got a call from an elderly gentleman who said he has Type II diabetes, which has left him with virtually no feeling in his feet and he often can't tell which pedal he's pushing on. That makes me wonder if any of these Toyota drivers have Type II diabetes.
If the powers that be would entertain the idea that driver error may be at the heart of this problem, we could start to do something about it. If people are unknowingly stepping on the wrong pedal, maybe all we need to do is add a bigger gap between the gas and the brake pedals. Maybe it should be a foot-long gap.
Unless or until we admit that the drivers could be at fault, history suggests we're never going to find the answer.
http://www.autoblog.com/2010/03/12/r...ror/#continued
03-14-10, 02:15 PM
#1173
Lexus Test Driver
Great piece, something that HAS to be looked at. It would explain so much including the other Prius crash where the woman claims she started her Prius and it suddenly accelerated and struck a stone wall. It makes sense that she had her foot on the throttle and not the brake. There was nothing wrong with her car, the problem was with the user, user error.
03-14-10, 03:00 PM
#1176
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03-14-10, 03:14 PM
#1177
bumping this for the "guests" who are reading this
this guy is awesome
Yep, a lady did this too. So there should be NO excuse for not knowing how put your damn prius in neutral is there???????? [sarcasm] 
how to stop a prius
NOT WORK SAFE LANGUAGE - bitkahuna
if this is a repost, i apologize. click the link and enjoy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ4Pt...layer_embedded
NOT WORK SAFE LANGUAGE - bitkahuna
if this is a repost, i apologize. click the link and enjoy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ4Pt...layer_embedded
this guy is awesome
hahahahaha
Look a lady made a video.....(lol at her screaming at the end)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II_03...layer_embedded
Seriously if you cannot figure out how to put a car in Neutral and slow it down...
Look a lady made a video.....(lol at her screaming at the end)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II_03...layer_embedded
Seriously if you cannot figure out how to put a car in Neutral and slow it down...
03-14-10, 03:48 PM
#1178
Lexus Champion
Is the media frenzy/coverage on this whole thing dying down or it it just my imagination?
More outlets are now reporting on the suspect San Diego Prius incident. Maybe the tide is turning??
More outlets are now reporting on the suspect San Diego Prius incident. Maybe the tide is turning??
03-14-10, 06:01 PM
#1179
Investigation
March 15 (Bloomberg) -- Tests by Toyota Motor Corp. and U.S. regulators on a Prius hybrid whose driver said it sped out of control couldn’t replicate his account, according to a report prepared for U.S. lawmakers.
Officials from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Toyota sought to recreate the acceleration that Prius owner Jim Sikes reported to the California Highway Patrol in a 911 call as he drove on an interstate highway outside San Diego last week. Sikes said pressing on the brake pedal didn’t work.
“It does not appear to be feasibly possible, both electronically and mechanically, that his gas pedal was stuck to the floor and he was slamming on the brake at the same time,” according to a draft of the memo written by aides to Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, has recalled about 8 million vehicles worldwide for defects that may cause sudden unintended acceleration. Sikes reported on March 8 that his 2008 Prius hybrid accelerated at speeds up to 90 miles per hour.
A California Highway Patrol officer, alerted by emergency dispatchers, caught up to Sikes and, using his public-address system, coached him to apply the emergency brake as well as the brake pedal. Sikes told CNN the car then slowed enough that he was able to shut off the ignition and bring it to a stop.
“These findings certainly raise new questions surrounding the veracity of the sequence of events that has been reported by Mr. Sikes,” Kurt Bardella, a spokesman for Representative Darrell Issa of California, the top Republican on the House oversight committee, said yesterday. The panel is one of three that has held hearings on Toyota’s recalls and auto safety regulators’ response.
Override Software
Sikes’s Prius has brake override software, which cuts engine power “if the brakes are applied with moderate to heavy force,” said Mike Michels, a spokesman for Toyota’s U.S. sales unit, based in Torrance, California.
“We hope to be able to share our findings soon” on the Prius investigation, he said in an e-mailed statement.
While Sikes’s car was included in a November recall to reshape accelerator pedals that the company said could be entrapped by floor mats, the Toyota City, Japan-based automaker has said it hasn’t yet provided a fix to dealers for the affected Prius models.
Investigators’ inability to replicate the sudden acceleration in Sikes’s vehicle doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, said John Gomez, the driver’s attorney.
‘Doesn’t Show Anything’
“That’s not surprising; NHTSA’s never been able to replicate one of these incidents,” Gomez said yesterday in a phone interview. “Toyota denies they happen at all. Mr. Sikes drove the vehicle for three years without incident. The idea that they couldn’t make it happen again really doesn’t show anything.”
The congressional staff memo, which was reported yesterday by the Associated Press, recounted observations from tests on the Prius conducted March 10 and 11 by the safety agency and Toyota, with Sikes and his lawyer present. The first day, Sikes’s car was placed on a lift so engineers could inspect the brakes.
“The investigators removed the front tires from the car and a handful of brake dust fell out,” according to the memo. “Visually checking the brake pads and rotor it was clearly visible that there was nothing left.”
The next day, the congressional observers joined a test drive in a 2008 Prius provided by a Toyota dealer, and the field technician was unable to duplicate the conditions Sikes reported, the Republican aides said in their memo.
“Every time the technician placed the gas pedal to the floor and the brake pedal to the floor the engine shut off and the car immediately started to slow down,” according to the memo. “NHTSA and Toyota field representatives reported the same results with the 2008 Prius owned by Mr. Sikes.”
03-14-10, 06:30 PM
#1180
http://www.autoguide.com/auto-news/2...as-a-hoax.html
Last week James Sikes made headlines when his 2008 Toyota Prius raced out of control of a California highway, with speeds approaching 100 mph. Sikes claimed this was a case of unintended acceleration, with repeated attempts to stop the car not working. A believable story considering Toyota’s long list of recent recalls, it now appears to be a hoax with Runaway Prius Guy quickly becoming the next Balloon Boy.
A story that was riddled with misinformation (several outlets erroneously reporting that a California Highway Patrol officer had to use his cruiser to slow the Prius), Jalopnik uncovered that Sikes is in debt to the tune of $700,000 – motivation to fake the incident in order to get a settlement or to take Toyota to court. Sikes has repeated that he has no interest in suing Toyota, but now his story has been completely called into question.
A federal investigation of the Prius, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, has shown that the condition of the car’s brakes does not support Sikes’ story, in particular his insistence that repeated and forceful use of the brake pedal did not slow the car. According to the Journal, the investigation, “didn’t find signs the brake had been applied at full force at high speeds over a sustained period of time.”
It’s not yet clear if the damage from this story can be repaired, but Toyota is on the march to repair its name, recently debunking the ABC News story and the work of professor David Gilbert of Southern Illinois University.
A story that was riddled with misinformation (several outlets erroneously reporting that a California Highway Patrol officer had to use his cruiser to slow the Prius), Jalopnik uncovered that Sikes is in debt to the tune of $700,000 – motivation to fake the incident in order to get a settlement or to take Toyota to court. Sikes has repeated that he has no interest in suing Toyota, but now his story has been completely called into question.
A federal investigation of the Prius, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, has shown that the condition of the car’s brakes does not support Sikes’ story, in particular his insistence that repeated and forceful use of the brake pedal did not slow the car. According to the Journal, the investigation, “didn’t find signs the brake had been applied at full force at high speeds over a sustained period of time.”
It’s not yet clear if the damage from this story can be repaired, but Toyota is on the march to repair its name, recently debunking the ABC News story and the work of professor David Gilbert of Southern Illinois University.
03-14-10, 08:56 PM
#1181
Driver School Candidate
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The UAW is fanning the flames behind the scenes.
Why?
Because toyota/lexus is killing the companies they extort in the name of labor representation.
Why?
Because toyota/lexus is killing the companies they extort in the name of labor representation.
03-14-10, 09:51 PM
#1182
Lexus Fanatic
Are people lying plainly about issues with their cars....yes. Is Toyota still to blame for some of these fatalities........yes.
What if your mother or pregnant wife was killed in an accident involving a Toyota???? Would the tone change??....yes
People are taking advantage of the position Toyota is in but they did not put Toyota in that position, Toyota did.
just my 2 cents
What if your mother or pregnant wife was killed in an accident involving a Toyota???? Would the tone change??....yes
People are taking advantage of the position Toyota is in but they did not put Toyota in that position, Toyota did.
just my 2 cents
03-14-10, 10:21 PM
#1183
Driver School Candidate
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I've had at least 20 instances of Z cars catching the pedal all the way down on the floormats in my years servicing nissans.
Far more than than the toyotas I have serviced.
People have a short memory on trumped up crap and fall for the hype again and again.
Remember the Corvair? It had a swing axle irs nearly identical to the car that ralph nader drove when he wrote his book. He also ignored that the car had gone to a corvette style IRS because his book was already written.
Guess what happened when the book came out?
People suddenly realized they had a patsy for an accident they had because they were in a corvair.
Same thing happened with Audis in the very early 80s and the 300zx in the mid 80s.
The 300zx is why we have a shift interlock in automatic transmission cars.
Infiniti put hooks in thier floormats to keep them from sliding and interfering with the gas pedal long before toyota did.
Why? because they had problems with pedal interference.
The carload of people killed was sporting floor mats from a different model line toyota which was the cause of the accident (well, that and the cop's inability to deal with adversity).
Fault goes to the individual dealership in that one.
Then you have the fact that about 50% of high line toyotas and lexus cars have owners who stack two or more floor mats on top of each other.
The news reports I saw had aftermarket floor mats.
The gas pedals that stick were made in elkart indiana and it seems they were made of a slightly different formulation of material than the original spec. set forth by toyota.
We've got people blaming accidents on "sudden acceleration" on cars that are not drive by wire and are not the ones with pedal/floor dimensions condusive to entrapment risk.
What we have is a very small amount of legit problems and a huge amount of people who want to place the blame for thier failures to drive properly on a manufacturer with deep pockets as well as a party (united auto workers) who knows that millions of dollars they could receive hang in the balance.
Far more than than the toyotas I have serviced.
People have a short memory on trumped up crap and fall for the hype again and again.
Remember the Corvair? It had a swing axle irs nearly identical to the car that ralph nader drove when he wrote his book. He also ignored that the car had gone to a corvette style IRS because his book was already written.
Guess what happened when the book came out?
People suddenly realized they had a patsy for an accident they had because they were in a corvair.
Same thing happened with Audis in the very early 80s and the 300zx in the mid 80s.
The 300zx is why we have a shift interlock in automatic transmission cars.
Infiniti put hooks in thier floormats to keep them from sliding and interfering with the gas pedal long before toyota did.
Why? because they had problems with pedal interference.
The carload of people killed was sporting floor mats from a different model line toyota which was the cause of the accident (well, that and the cop's inability to deal with adversity).
Fault goes to the individual dealership in that one.
Then you have the fact that about 50% of high line toyotas and lexus cars have owners who stack two or more floor mats on top of each other.
The news reports I saw had aftermarket floor mats.
The gas pedals that stick were made in elkart indiana and it seems they were made of a slightly different formulation of material than the original spec. set forth by toyota.
We've got people blaming accidents on "sudden acceleration" on cars that are not drive by wire and are not the ones with pedal/floor dimensions condusive to entrapment risk.
What we have is a very small amount of legit problems and a huge amount of people who want to place the blame for thier failures to drive properly on a manufacturer with deep pockets as well as a party (united auto workers) who knows that millions of dollars they could receive hang in the balance.
03-14-10, 10:34 PM
#1185
Lexus Connoisseur
