Another 15-minuter
All new cars carry a “black box” in them. I think the Prius has one in them.
“Mr. Waltz said data captured by the car indicated that the brakes and accelerator were depressed about 250 different times during the incident.”
Sounds like the guy tried the break — I don’t think this is evidence that he was lying.
“Mr. Waltz said data captured by the car indicated that the brakes and accelerator were depressed about 250 different times during the incident.”
Sounds like the guy tried the break — I don’t think this is evidence that he was lying.
I didn’t think that the black box reveled anything, because there was no collision.
Geeez Arch, where’s Edith???
What there an Obama sticker in the car?
I have had some minor and low level experience working in "cooperation" with the Japanese in the auto industry. From my vantage point I found the executive level Japanese to be arrogant and condescending toward those they deemed to be inferiors which is most people. In my role at the time as a subordinate to an American executive, I was one of those inferiors who at times had to try to interact with the Japanese executive. I found them invariably to be imperialistic and arrogant in their approach to their "lessers".
As I've watched this Toyota thing play out, I've seen much of the same thing, imperial arrogance in Toyoda and his direct reports toward our country and toward the approach to their problems. I think they arrogantly failed to understand that in Maobama and his stooges they were not playing with the traditional American administration basic philosophies. I think they totally underestimated the hold that unions, including the UAW, have on Maobama.
This is a big opportunity for the UAW to "bring Toyota to their knees", as they like to shout to their noble worker membership during contract negotiations. They haven't been able to organize very many domestic Toyota operations and they're angry. I still get the UAW propaganda from time to time in the mail because my son worked for a brief time at a Ford plant while going to college, and that stuff drips with their hatred for Toyota.
I think it very possible that as part of the dust settling on this problem, the UAW will be welcomed into the domestic Toyota plants and the "workers" will be the ones to find the solution and all will be good again. Paybacks are hell.
I must admit that I suspected it would end this way the minute I heard the story.
A man by the name of Inanian (sp?) who is an expert on cars was on WOR’s John Gambling show this morning. Gambling was under the impression that Sykes was trying to scam Toyota. Inanian said the highway patrol smelled the burning brakes (not reported by the press), they were metal on metal, which I assume means completely worn and that just because Toyota says they could find no problem doesn’t mean there was no problem.
How many times have people taken their cars to mechanics who can’t find the problem but the owner knows there is a problem?
1) Toyota has tested and retested the Prius in question, and each time they pressed on both the gas and the brake, the engine was killed by the computer, and
2) The CHP officer that chased the guy down said "'When I saw him, I could smell the brakes,' said Officer Todd Niebert, a 14-year CHP veteran. 'I could see his brake lights coming on.'"
If the brakes were coming on, the engine should have died. If it didin't there was a computer problem.