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:
- He wants to increase his casual speed from 85mph to a more chippy 90mph.
- He taps the CC lever a couple times
- He doesn't notice his speed increase much immediately.
- He impatiently taps it up about 10 more times...then 5 times more.
- Suddenly the car goes into WOT mode to increase his speed.
- 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,
- 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.
- 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:
- Steve is going 85 MPH and so is the guy in front of him (Car #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
- Car doesn't change speed because the radar is telling the Prius' computer to keep a certain distance away
- Steve presses up on the cruise control stalk a few more times
- Car #2 moves to the right.
- 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.
- 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:
