BS Alert 2! Steve Wozniak (And The Media) Still Spreading Prius UA Obfuscation

The Truth About Cars ^ | March 9, 2010 | Paul Niedermeyer

[hamboy]

One of my pet gripes about the media and celebrities is the lack of follow-up and accountability. Remember all the hoopla about Steve Wozniak’s Prius with the mysterious electronics glitch that he could manipulate to create UA? My take was that obviously his cruise control had a minor bug that only showed up at over eighty mph. Woz readily admitted that he could disengage it with a tap on the brakes. Well, thanks to his celebrity status and the coverage, the story ended with Toyota agreeing to take his Prius for a week to test it thoroughly. So what happened?

Beats me. It’s not like anyone in the media is going to take the time to follow that potentially interesting story up. But based on a recent flurry of Steve’s name in a number of news stories in response to the runaway Prius, it appears nothing. NBCbayarea has a story today “Woz to Runaway Prius: I Know How You Feel”, in which the Apple co-founder expresses his sympathy:

[hamboy]

Even Apple's co-founder is baloon boy?

[tallyhoe]

I personally think it is a software glitch that is causing the acceleration problems with Toyota! I’m not saying cruise control I’m saying acceleration! The computer on board cars now control everything. I don’t think it is a mechanical problem.

[counterpunch]

[William Tell]

tallyhoe said: "I don’t think it is a mechanical problem."

What do you make of the claim that the average age of the drivers who experience problems may be quite high?

[tallyhoe]

What about the police officer in his car with this problem?

[William Tell]

tallyhoe said: "What about the police officer in his car with this problem?"

What about him?

If you start eliminating cases because of the age-bias, and the number of cases falls very low relative to the millions of cars on the road, you are faced with the distinct possibility that there is no systematic failure.

Every physical system is subject to breakdowns. Memory chips and microprocessors can fail. They WILL fail. Some percentage of such failures could lead to runaway acceleration.

If the number of such failures falls well below the rate of people being hit by lightning, then the economics of the situation may well argue for doing nothing. It may be that multiply-redundant fail-safe features could improve the failure rate, but the price of such a system would insure that few purchased it.

[hamboy]

It was operator's error:  Steve Wozniak Admits He Doesn't Know How To Use Cruise Control... Kind of  Submitted by Danny on February 3, 2010 - 9:19am

Yesterday the internet was on fire with talk of Steve Wozniak finding a new reason for Toyota to recall more cars. By the close of business, though, the Woz had appeared on CNN and told his side of the story in order to calm down the masses.

As we covered yesterday, Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, made a comment during Discovery Forum 2010 that he was having trouble getting Toyota and the NHTSA to pay attention to his complaint about a problem he perceived he was having with his 2010 Prius' cruise control. The comment was made to highlight how hard it can be to get organizations to pay attention to you sometimes.

The problem with Woz's cruise control? User Error. From what has been gathered over multiple sources and quotes from Wozniak about the problem, here's what we can summarize:

1. He wants to increase his casual speed from 85mph to a more chippy 90mph.
2. He taps the CC lever a couple times
3. He doesn't notice his speed increase much immediately.
4. He impatiently taps it up about 10 more times...then 5 times more.
5. Suddenly the car goes into WOT mode to increase his speed.
6. He gets a little nervous when the speed exceeds his target of 90mph...well he tapped it to go up to 100mph, the car is still accelerating,
7. He taps down a few times, but the number of "up" taps still exceeds the number of "down" taps so the car continues to accelerate.
8. He frantically taps down several more times finally exceeding his up-tap threshold...eventually acceleration stops, and a bit of deceleration begins.

Then there is also the information that Wozniak has a Prius V with the Advanced Tech package. The AT package comes with radar cruise control. Here's an alternate explanation:

1. Steve is going 85 MPH and so is the guy in front of him (Car #2)
2. Steve wants to go faster, so he presses up on the cruise control stalk a few times to inch closer to the person in front of him
3. Car doesn't change speed because the radar is telling the Prius' computer to keep a certain distance away
4. Steve presses up on the cruise control stalk a few more times
5. Car #2 moves to the right.
6. Steve's car accelerates like a bat out of hell to reach the desired speed that he has been requesting while held in check by the Prius' radar cruise control.
7. Steve pulls back on the cruise control stalk or hits the brakes to stop the acceleration.

Again, these are just hypotheses based on various statements Wozniak has been making. He kind of admits to it being User Error in the below video from CNN:

[uglybiker]

[tallyhoe]

I’m not saying that Prius has A problem but I think that Toyota’s problem is the computer and not the gas pedal!

[tallyhoe]

Does the Prius have anti-collision?

[hamboy]

Does the Prius have anti-collision?

What do you think?

[tallyhoe]

I don’t know! I was just wondering. Some models of the Volvo have anti-collision warnings!